The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Numbers, Data, and Maps Oh My!

The Rules of Bureaucracy

Rule #O: "The Rules of Bureaucracy are mutable, non-canonical, non-ordinal, and contradictory, except in the cases where they are not."
Rule #1: "Document everything you do; if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen."
Rule #2 [The Sixty Minutes Rule]: "Never do anything that would cause Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Steve Croft, Leslie Stahl, or even Andy Rooney to persue you down a hallway with a camera crew."
Rule #3: "Nothing Simple is Ever Easy"
Rule #4: "It's about the money; follow the money."
Rule #5: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Rule #6: "Politics is the enemy of good government."
Rule #7: "The biggest detriment to public service is the public."
Rule #8: "The second biggest detriment to public service is the service."
Rule #9: "There's a reason; there's ALWAYS a reason."
Rule #10: "The Law is a harsh mistress: The rigorous and exacting application of which can benefit of society when used correctly to advance good policy and block bad, and be the bane of society when used incorrectly to advance bad policy and block good."
Rule #11: "Public service often involves waking up in the morning, opening up the newspaper, and discovering that someone, somewhere out there thinks that you're a dickhead."
Rule #12: "No one really knows what you do."
Rule #13 [Luke's Rule]: "No one ever acts like the bastard they really are."
Rule #14: "Bureaucracy endures."
Rule #15: "The longer you work in bureaucracy, the more Catch-22 resembles non-fiction."
Rule #16: "Politicians are not smarter than you."
Rule #18: "Money is not created equal."
Rule #19: "Mediocrity is normalcy."
Rule #17: "Within any bureaucratic structure, resources (e.g. people, money, knowledge, etc.) are not distributed uniformly."
Rule #20: "Don't assume a fiduciary liability without a committed resource allocation."
Rule #21: "If you do your job and obey the law, they can't reasonably fire you."
Rule #22: "The Budget will always be wrong."
Rule #23: "Always sign in blue."
Rule #24: "A Bureaucrat must be able to explain and justify his/her actions to laymen without resorting to the phrase 'because the Rules say so.'"
Rule #25: "Never voluntarily relinquish control of an original document."
Rule #26: "Sometimes you just have to say 'Screw the rules'"
Rule #27: "Change sucks."
Rule #28: "Sometimes the answer is 'No.'"
Rule #29: "It is very easy to make difficult decisions when no one has a clue what's going on."
Rule #30: "If you hang around long enough, eventually you will become an expert in something."
Rule #31: "Data, technology, and automatic processes can never completely supplant human interaction."
Rule #32: "Cover thine own ass."
Rule #33: "It's not real until it has its own acronym."
Rule #34:There is nothing more dangerous than an elected, resourceful idiot.
Rule #35: It will always take longer than expected.
Rule #36: Coming Soon...

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Numbers, Data, and Maps Oh My!

I know what everyone in the Burghosphere is thinking: where can I get massive amounts of data without actually having to go to the Census Bureau or the BEA or, you know, do work.

Well, wonder no longer folks as the usually secretive Mayor's Office has posted a whole bunch of data for people that are interested in Police Rape or whatever.

Now, you too can be Chris Briem and create blog posts with actual facts, instead of wildly rambling opinion pieces about how the neighbors down the street are purposefully trying to steal your garbage.*

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* No, not really. Mr. Briem is as they say around UCSUR, the shiznit..

3 comments:

Bram Reichbaum said...: I'm too lazy to even go check out the website.

Tell me, o, is it a good thing? Is there a wide variety of interesting information? Or is it evil and must be NUKED!? Are they keeping things from us?

Seriously, I had a post planned for the 1-year anniversary of PittMAPS. It involved Stewie Griffin and Brian on the couch and a sucker punch. It's good to see PittMAPS is doing the do regardless.; 10:00 PM
Sherry Pasquarello said...: my head hurts.; 7:43 AM
Anonymous said...: Is it me or do the bar graphs suck. I have never seen temporal data sorted by alphabetical.; 7:59 PM

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The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Numbers, Data, and Maps Oh My!

3 comments:

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