Gebbia wants to change the retirement process from its current paper-based system to “an online digital process that will take a few days at most.”
This can only go wrong, like it always does when some fancy big idealist tries to take a limping but still working system and overhaul it to a full digital "seamless and easy" procedure.
I have no doubt the current process is inefficient, because its the federal government, but these people retiring are getting a lot of benefits. It should take a moment to make sure they qualify properly and are getting only what they should be getting. They could probably cut a lot of the inefficiency while still keeping it fully hard copy and reliable.
I like a lot of what DOGE is doing, but we should also be weary of reaching the other extreme, where we lose site of doing things fully properly just to make it quick and minimalist, or just part of Musk's futurist all digital utopian ideals.
What, you think going through 3 months of paid training and 2 months of afterhours training in order to file specific documents and send them around the country (paper only, no email), which then are re-assembled a salt mine (again paper-only, no emailing them) to be brought down a once-a-week elevator which is then, a week later, verified by another person, at which point, another week later, another third party comes in and files just that one paper set (other retirees need to wait) could POSSIBLY have ANY inefficiencies to it?
Thank you for summing it up better then I could have, another thing to mention is the long trip by buggy down in the mine which I think is about half an hour drive to reach the spot where new documents are added? I could be wrong on that though.
It genuinely is, fundamentally ridiculous.
Like, I do prefer backup paper copies of things, but...I do not think this system should be the primary system...it should be done as a backup and thus having a lag between "new data dumps" would be fine. It just doesnt work for something that requires more spontaneous and more immediate responses though, so it should never be a primary system.
This can only go wrong, like it always does when some fancy big idealist tries to take a limping but still working system and overhaul it to a full digital "seamless and easy" procedure.
I have no doubt the current process is inefficient, because its the federal government, but these people retiring are getting a lot of benefits. It should take a moment to make sure they qualify properly and are getting only what they should be getting. They could probably cut a lot of the inefficiency while still keeping it fully hard copy and reliable.
I like a lot of what DOGE is doing, but we should also be weary of reaching the other extreme, where we lose site of doing things fully properly just to make it quick and minimalist, or just part of Musk's futurist all digital utopian ideals.
If memory serves, the current method takes months so honestly I'd be surprised if they found a way to make it worse.
Seriously the current retirement process is kind of comical.
What, you think going through 3 months of paid training and 2 months of afterhours training in order to file specific documents and send them around the country (paper only, no email), which then are re-assembled a salt mine (again paper-only, no emailing them) to be brought down a once-a-week elevator which is then, a week later, verified by another person, at which point, another week later, another third party comes in and files just that one paper set (other retirees need to wait) could POSSIBLY have ANY inefficiencies to it?
Thank you for summing it up better then I could have, another thing to mention is the long trip by buggy down in the mine which I think is about half an hour drive to reach the spot where new documents are added? I could be wrong on that though.
It genuinely is, fundamentally ridiculous.
Like, I do prefer backup paper copies of things, but...I do not think this system should be the primary system...it should be done as a backup and thus having a lag between "new data dumps" would be fine. It just doesnt work for something that requires more spontaneous and more immediate responses though, so it should never be a primary system.