Letters to the editor can be sent to: Editor@voxpop-ne.com

Thanks for the magazine, again. I have sent a copy of the Missile article to my son who is still on active duty and is assigned to Test and Evaluation of missile systems. The bureaucracy sometimes drives him nuts.

"A Case Study of State Bureaucracy" - When then Governor Nelson "reorganized" the State Government, he supposedly reduced Five separate State Agencies to three. In effect, there is only one of any consequence: Health and Human Services (NHHSS). Two things: first, now only one person, the Policy Cabinet head of NHHSS, now testifies before the legislature instead of the previous five; the governor now controls all the budget information going to the legislature through the one person instead of through five previously quasi-independent Agency heads.

Second: when Nelson, faced with the results of years on inaction on the part of the governor's office and the legislature and facing the Year 2000 computer situation, instigated a crash program (N-FOCUS) for the State Welfare system (then DSS, now NHHS), it was a hugh fiasco. I like to compare it to: each module was written by someone from a different country: much internal inconsistencies and interpretations. (And, of course, when the first field test failed miserably, the program was instituted State-wide the day after the end of the failed pilot test anyway.) A side affect was that, in addition to updating, it would be a complete revision of how the automation system of the DSS/NHHS operates. Part of the reason was to reduce the size of government by automating decisions.

The most crucial parts did not work and were scrapped, but not before the damage was done. For two years HHSS employees had to work on horrible work-arounds. Manning figures were cut because automation "would reduce the number of people needed and would reduce the level of training and experience needed": Social Service activities would be reduced to data-entry of information and the new system (N-FOCUS) would, theoretically, make the decisions and approve the benefits. Never happened because, even if the system worked (it didn't), it was too humongous to operate (they couldn't afford to pay for the computor program maintenance costs). Because the system didn't work, the full-time postitions which were cut, or just not filled, fell victim to "downsizing" government in the politics of electing a governor.

The Social Service Workers for the former ADC and for the disabled, aged, and blind, are responsible for caseloads up to 180 - 200 % of what a contract management team (hired by Nelson to prove

that State employees were underworked) said should be the case-loads. At the time of the study several years ago, the contractors said caseloads were 50% over optimum. It has only gotten worse.

The former State Auditor, with whom I usually disagreed, tried to bring the system to a halt because of cost over-runs, etc, but could not because of the limitiations on the State Auditor Office at that time. Ah, well, nothing changes, and is not likely to change given the entrenchment of the incumbents and the no-change to money raising. Keep up the good work.

Fr. Nick
Lincoln