#TIL: 📝 The US has an awesome law called the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) that takes on the bureaucratic beast! 🦁🚫 With PRA approvals taking around 6-9 long months, buckle up for a wild ride! 🎢
So, let me break it down for you! 😎✌️ The PRA is like a superhero whose mission is to fight against paperwork overload and make our lives easier. 💪💼 It’s all about reducing unnecessary forms and forms that take forever to fill out. 🤦♀️📄
Imagine this: You’re a small business owner itching to launch your new product, but you get bombarded with a mountain of paperwork to navigate through. 🏔️😱 Well, fear not! The PRA swoops in and aims to cut down on those time-consuming hurdles. 🏃♀️🏃♂️
Now, let’s talk about the approval process… 🕒⏰ Brace yourself, my friend, because you’ll have to wait patiently for about 6-9 months before getting the official thumbs up. ☝️📅 It might sound like a long time, but trust me, it’s worth it to ensure a streamlined system. ⌛️🛠️
And hey, don’t forget the power of emojis! They make everything more fun and engaging, right? 😉 So, remember, next time you hear about the PRA, think of it as the superhero leaping into action 👊🏻 to save us from the clutches of bureaucracy! 🦸♀️💥
#PRA #PaperworkReductionAct #SaveTheDay #LessPaperMoreProductivity 🌟
But wait, you’re going to need certification to start this approval process! That will take 3 years if everything is in order.
I just bet there’s a rather cushy job preparing minutes of the remuneration subcommittee of the executive board of the Paperwork Reduction Department
Is 6-9 months relatively faster or slower?
I remember being handed a customs form where more than half the form was taken up by a Paperwork Reduction Act notice.
Yep, That’s working.
I hope this doesn’t diminish farmer’s ability to not grow alfalfa.
>We want to be good stewards of the public’s time, and not overwhelm them with unnecessary or duplicative requests for information.
The PRA puts a burden on the government in order to avoid wasting the public’s time. There is no contradiction.
Welcome to Disney Fast Play TM!
YOU HAVE BECOME THE VERY THING YOU SWORE TO DESTROY!
Hermes Conrad is off somewhere, weeping at the beauty of it all.
The Paperwork Reduction Act is actually a pretty significant hindrance on the government getting the information it needs to make policy effectively. I have been involved in research, and the requirement to not trigger the PRA approval process (and therefore the at least 6-9 month delay in the work) is that you can only ask the same questions of 9 people (or organizations or whatever). So picture trying to collect data on a fast moving issue to do something in response — if you don’t want to trigger the PRA (and make your attempt to learn what the government should do to effectively solve the problem so slow to essentially fail from the outset — you have to base your effort to figure out the solution on what 9 people said (or a survey of 9 companies or whatever.). Some people have argued that is really the goal of the PRA (to make government more “stupid” and therefore more inneffective) though my assumption is that it is just an unintended effect of something that seemed like a good idea at the time. Congress has even acknowledged this reality by carving out some exemptions to the PRA for some narrow topics that they thought it was particularly important for government to be able to collect information… but that hasn’t led to reform of the PRA overall.
That’s America for you!
Nice.
I was working in banking back in the 80s when this first came out. The idea was that computers were going to make paper forms unnecessary and less paper would be required. Quite the opposite happened; with printers the use of paper increased.
Harry Tuttle, heating engineer, at your service.
Laws are added and seldom removed.
SimCity 3000 has a city ordinance parodying this law:
> The Paper Reduction Act reduces garbage levels in the city by calling attention to the vast amount of paper wasted in the normal course of running a business. It requires all production managers to file a fifty page report whenever paper usage at their business or factory exceeds, by ten percent or more, the previous month’s levels. These reports are to be typed on the Standard Form 23/6-A (rev. 2), and must provide written justification for the paper usage variance.
>
> The monthly cost of this ordinance, based on Sim population, pays to bind and store these reports in public reading rooms. The ordinance is found to be an effective means for reducing garbage production, because managers will do “whatever it takes” to avoid writing a report.