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Audit
This
Numbers
tell interesting stories; some people become quite fascinated with them. In
monitoring government programs perhaps the key number that will be quoted is
how much money went into the program. I suppose the analogy in the private
sector is market capitalization, or, more simply, how much is something worth,
how much wealth has been pushed into the program - or company - by people
willing to invest in it.
By
that measure, the Yankees are the best team in baseball; they are, in fact, the
team with the highest value, currently estimated at $4.6 billion. But…
They
have a $9 million negative operating income. (The Dodgers are worse off - they
had a negative $90 million operating income this year.) Further, neither has
won a world series in a long time.
What
about government?
But,
wait, government isn’t baseball.
That’s
what is sometimes called a “Blinding Flash of the Obvious,” a BFO.
But
there’s something to be learned in this - simplistic - “dialectic." The
best baseball team in the world is the Washington Nationals. How do we know
that? Because they just won the World Series. Fans don’t really care how much
they’re “worth.” We might argue that if they played another 7 game series the
Astros might win. But, we’d settle it based on an “outcome" model. Next
season we’ll do it again.
But
not government. Government measures all sorts of things based on input models.
And if a problem persists, spend more money on it. And the media keep score:
the most important programs are the ones with the most money. But there’s a
fundamental problem with this keeping score based on inputs: this is akin to
saying the best baseball team is the one with some combination (quick, someone
develop a formula) of highest paid line-up, most fans, and if we really want to
get picky, most revenue or even highest earnings. (Is that EBIT or EBITDA?)
To
which, any baseball fan would answer: What planet are you from?
In the
real world, outcomes matter, inputs - not so much. Mike Trout is the highest
paid athlete in baseball because he is the best hitter in baseball. And while
Bryce Harper is a fantastic athlete, I suspect Phillies management is more than
a little antsy about his performance this past year. Good stats for some guy
making a few million. But for one of the highest paid players in
baseball? Hmmm.
Consider
the Department of Education… Separated from HEW under President Carter to
improve the test scores of US Students, and slow the rapid growth in education
costs. Since then? Scores remain the same (there is more than enough evidence
that the education “product” has actually worsened), and education costs have
risen at approximately twice the rate of inflation - for 40 years.
The
Federal Reserve. Created in 1913 to reduce the impact of recessions and the
business cycle, and to protect the value of the dollar. Since then we’ve had a
slightly lower number of recessions than during the previous century, but we’ve
also had the Great Depression, and the Great Recession, and the value of the
dollar has fallen 90%.
DOD.
Misguided procurement stories are so pervasive it’s difficult to where to
begin: F-111/TFX, the Knox class frigate, MX, B-2, F-35, LCS. Everyone’s
favorite aircraft carrier, USS Ford. Or the more unpleasant record of
winning tactically but not strategically, at least for the last 7
decades.
Despite the highly polished and impeccable public image,
anyone who has spent any time in uniform can tell you story after story of
money going down “rabbit holes” big and small, of incompetence that has to be
seen to be believed, of foolish behavior and idiotic decisions; the ability for
DOD to pull off great operations is legend, but there’s an equal ability to
screw up a two-car funeral.
How
much did the Department of Energy contribute to making the US energy
independent? Three guesses, first two don’t count.
Agriculture?
Commerce? HUD? Spend a little time looking at what their original missions
were, and what they do now…
This
is one reason we need to push back whenever any of the candidates - Senator
Warren, et al - come up with another program to push trillions of dollars (tens
of trillions, actually) into massively expanded government programs, as if
somehow the government knows what it’s doing.
Why do
we think that suddenly they’re “going to get this right?”
How
about, before we let government absorb any more programs we insist on an
outcomes based audit of a few major offices and see what that looks like. Then
we can discuss government expansion. Audit Outcomes, not inputs.
Call it a BFO.
Reprinted with permission from
NANAZU SAYS THAT IF YOU'RE NOT READING YOUR SOCOTRA HOUSE PUBLISHING DAILY YOUR GLIB QUOTIENT IS DEFICIENT
Call it a BFO.
Reprinted with permission from
www.vicsocotra.com/NANAZU SAYS THAT IF YOU'RE NOT READING YOUR SOCOTRA HOUSE PUBLISHING DAILY YOUR GLIB QUOTIENT IS DEFICIENT
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