FatCratz

Travel Incentives

This story was reported to me last night, and inspires in part the return of FatCratz.

A federal employee--we'll call him Bureaucrat Bob--travels to different field locations with a team of colleagues to perform oversight functions. The trips are budgeted to last a week, but he has completed the fairly standard review in as little as two days. However, normally the trip takes three or four days, as the pace of the team's work slows perceptibly when on the road.

Why does it slow? The weariness of being on the road and away from family? Strange food? Poor sleep?

No, not exactly. It's called per diem. People slow down because they are collecting extra pay, and because the trips are "budgeted" at a week's time, there is no pressure to return. Why not do two days work in four, collect extra pay via per diem, and enjoy a few days away from the family? 

This fact is supported by tons of anecdotal evidence, but here's a more concrete situation that recently arose.

Some team members, in the nature of the case, must be on hand but have little work to do during the review. They sit and read children's literature, or check email, or browse the web. Recently, after three days of doing nothing, one of these "free riders" proposed a day of training activities on Friday, requiring a half day's work. Why propose a half day of work at the end of the week that could have been done on any of the days leading up to it? 

Because that would add a day of per diem, and push the trip into the weekend, and give the employee Friday afternoon off, and allow the team member to travel on the weekend and take comp time. All of this was rather explicitly explained as the motivation for the proposal.

So, the incentives and work rules around federal travel have the following consequences. Additional days of lost work at the home office, as the traveler is vacant. Multiple days of lost productivity during the trip, so the "work" can be saved for the final, "bridge day" to the weekend. Comp time accrued, which results in future paid leave and lost productivity to the taxpayer. 

The net effect is a 3x multiplier for lost productivity. On your dime. 

This would be funny, if it wasn't your money.

The Joys of Government Travel

In a piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Victoria Toensing illustrates the FatCratz impulse with a few stories from government travel hell:

The government rules allowed no flexibility. If you traveled on a plane that served food en route, as was the case on my late afternoon flight from D.C. to New Orleans, you could not get reimbursed for eating after you landed. It mattered not that the food looked spoiled, and that you really did spend money on a restaurant meal. There would be no, albeit meager, $20 reimbursement for that dinner.

FatCratz doesn't deny the need for ethics regulations. But since all most Americans ever hear about are flagrant ethical violations, we have a constant call for more of them. Without any sense of how inflexibly they are applied, or what it is like to live under their sway. 

But not for long.