Taking it digitally - September 4, 2008

During my undergrad, I worked in a small computer lab in the student government building. It was pretty much the perfect job because most shifts were long afternoons with nothing to do but surf the web and read. Occasionally, if it was particularly slow, I'd sleep.

There were only a few times a year when I actually had to do anything that resembled work. Every so often, student groups were able to apply for funding to hold whatever awkward beer soaked social they had planned.

The process for this used to be, if not simple, at least rational. You, as the president or officer of your group, downloaded the application -- a word document. You then filled it out (in word, they're required to be typed) and turned it into the office by 5pm at which time you also signed up for a hearing slot, so you could present your awkward beer soaked social to the board that gave out funding. When you showed up at your hearing, you were expected to bring seven copies of the application, one for each member of the board. Since these applications run between 15 and 60 pages it can get to be a lot of paper.

Then, in an effort to do ... something, save paper maybe, management decided that we were going to "take the process digital" -- a phrase I heard a lot -- the end result being that the applications would be posted to a website instead of printed out.

Now, if I was going to design this system, I'd keep it simple. It would be easy to set up a webpage where you could sign up for a hearing at the same time you uploaded your completed application. Then since computers are fancy, there's all sorts of thing you could do automagically. Turn it into a PDF. Post it to another page so board members could look at it, etc. Boom. You've gone digital.

What we ended up with is neither simple nor rational. You, as the president or officer of your group download the application. You fill it out then print it and bring it to the office before 5pm where you sign up for a hearing slot. Then someone takes that application, pulls all the staples out, Xeroxes any double sided pages to be single sided, and brings it to someone like me. I take that application and scan it into a PDF. Since using a regular scanner would have been asinine, we bought a $3000 digital sender. It's a scanner with a network card so the PDFs get copied to the webserver automatically. Since the digital scanner has a crappy touch screen, we use abbreviated names for the applications. The abbreviated names don't make sense to anyone but the person who scanned them in, so we create a spreadsheet that maps the abbreviated name to the real name. That spreadsheet is posted to the website, along with all the PDFs which still have cryptic names, by the webmaster.

The old way used to take one person half a day. Once all the applications were in, one person looked through them to make sure they had all the requisite signatures and information before putting them in the appropriate box.

The new way takes three people three days. It takes one person to ensure that all the applications are ready to be scanned, it takes another person to scan them in and it takes the webmaster to actually put them online with the spreadsheet. I've never seen technology used to so thoroughly de-automate a process.

So the next time you wonder why higher education is so expensive, this is it. No one has a clue what they're doing.

Posted by Ben Corman at 4:38 PM

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So the next time you wonder why higher education is so expensive, this is it. No one has a clue what they're doing.

This is one of the most painful, most frustrating lessons one can learn. Generally, it can also be applied to any system or field.

Posted by: Ilan Bouchard at September 4, 2008 05:31 PM

True, but I found it's particularly bad in education.

Posted by: Ben Corman at September 4, 2008 07:45 PM

If you think about it, each step of the process makes sense ON ITS OWN. It sounds like Person A came up with an idea, told Person B to implement it, B finished one step and handed it off to C, who doesn't care about A's vision and just did the bare minimum before passing the buck to D who's even further removed.

Sounds like a bureaucracy to me.

Posted by: Tree Frog at September 4, 2008 08:53 PM

Education is bad about doing things that make no sense, but try working for a large corporation. Most high positions are so insulated from what actually happens in a facility that they almost always have incorrect if not opposite information.

We have this 'awesome' system for dealing with computer or network problems that require you to log in to the system, fill out a few pages of forms, and submit your computer problem to IT. But what to do if your computer, which you need to fill out the forms, doesn't work? Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Posted by: Lee at September 5, 2008 05:10 AM

I can't help but agree with you here. I worked in almost the same exact office as an undergrad. The one thing that I will say was different was that people couldn't prepose "beer soaked" socials. If we wanted to do something that involved alcohol the funding never came from the institution. That's one thing I will give the university its due on, they were good at making sure people got the right funding for the right reasons. If organizations wanted money they needed to provide reciepts for everything and if there was any inclination that alcohol could be involved it was turned down.

I never understood spending in schools. I attended a university in New Jersey and it was interesting to see that they would cut the budget, fire professors, get rid of sports teams, and then buy new buses/scanners/dorm room furniture.

Posted by: Anonymous at September 5, 2008 10:49 AM