anti forma

I am long overdue for a blog entry. Alas the adjustment to a new job -- not to mention a bout with bronchitis -- has subdued this modern literary giant. I emerge, hacking, yet writing.

My re-entry into federal service was ushered in via bureaucracy. I received an official letter offering me employment and directing me to a Census website where I was directed to complete upwards of fourteen forms. I think my favorite form was the employee address verification form, as if I would have, say, lied about my address on my direct deposit form for payroll. (Yes, I just report to work for fun; paychecks are optional!) At a minimum, the forms were redundant in that they required me to complete my name, and several forms asked me to complete my date of birth, address, and social security number. On top of that, I needed to complete an online form that started the wheels turning on a background check, requiring the same information. I completed a form for fingerprinting that the fingerprinting office ended up not using.

The offer letter was vague about what forms specifically I needed to submit prior to my employment, and which I should bring my first day of work, so I just sent them all in, and made a copy. At orientation I was given most of the forms back; the orientation staff said I hadn't needed to submit all of them prior. This made me wonder: Why I had been given a  huge fed ex envelope big enough to send all of them?

Then at orientation we dedicated forty five minutes to reviewing the forms, which were also in the orientation package I received that morning. Trees are optional, I guess.

On the one hand I appreciate that the orientation staff (who were very pleasant and earnest) had prepared for all contingencies. At the same time the process seemed redundant and wasteful. When I completed my mortgage application (rivaling these forms in their bureaucracy and complexity), the law office had already completed the administrative information; all I needed to do is sign. Now, granted, in this situation I am an employee, not a client. Still, I can't help but wonder why the web wizards at Census, who prepared this site (and at least there is this site with all the forms in one place), could not have prepared a portal wherein I could have entered all the information once, answered some questions about where I was living, and generated all the proper forms with the information all completed, saving me time, and reducing the possibility of errors. Or, given I had worked for the federal government, not to mention the SAME EMPLOYER before, why could I have not been prompted simply to update my contact information the way I might in LinkedIn or facebook? Not to mention the bigger issue as to why the federal government does not prepare a consolidated employee profile, rather than these separate forms. I know the government has to deal with a variety of hiring programs and backgrounds, but surely, from what I could tell, the backgrounds are not so diverse that a consolidated form covering most cases would not have streamlined the process.



Last, but not least, some of the forms were needlessly vague. A form I received after orientation, a health insurance enrollment form, asked about previous health insurance. I assume the form was referring to previous health insurance while employed with the federal government; but whither new hires? Simply adding the phrase "if applicable" in (parentheses) would have made the form applicable to all.

For my current carping, I guess this process represents an improvement over the process when I first went to work at Census twelve years ago, and I was sent the forms in the mail, and there was no centralized repository of forms. I remember calling the human resource officer half a dozen times with questions. I guess back then my expectations were lower. I was grateful to be having my first job where I actually made more than $30K a year.