Many, many years ago, in a land not so far away, there was a man who was the boss. This man got to work on time, left on time and, in between coming and going, he never seemed to do anything yet his work was always done.

He looked immaculate, spoke immaculately and when you went to his office his desk was immaculate. He could have given a TV interview on any given day before there were TV interviewers. He always returned his phone calls and he always gave the perfect answer; not a helpful answer but a perfect one; in fact, that man sometimes would even answer his own telephone and speak to you.

Remarkably, this was in the days before voice-mail, Blackberrys, internet, email and personal assistants and HR “professionals”. He never had files on his desk, no papers, no in-box or out-box, not even a pen and definitely his computer was never turned on. People wondered did he even go to meetings or the bathroom; did he have a super efficient secretary who did his work before he got to work in the morning?

Was he really that smart or that efficient or did he really have nothing to do?

This debate went on for years but alas no one ever found out his secret.

He eventually retired and moved on to other things and apparently did nothing there too, again without “HR”. Others replaced him over the years but things were not the same, his replacements looked like they needed more time in the day to get all their work done, some were sick, some were weak; don’t even think about speaking to them on the phone because they were always in meetings.

They had email, Blackberry, personal assistants, internet and even radios but no one could speak to them. Rumour has it they were busy checking on outputs of their people and writing their own outputs for other people to file away. So many people.

A certain talk show host made a remarkable statement last week. She said that while working as a social worker in Florida, she had close to 90 clients and she had to write her notes by hand; when she returned home to Cayman, there was a very expensive computer program which was very high-tech and confidential, etc., etc., which she had to learn to use to document her interactions with her six clients.

Immediately my restless mind jumped to the hospital Cerna system, which after almost a decade of use finally seems to be doing what it is supposed to do. I also remembered hearing about our very strange accounting system that the entire government uses but which is apparently only understood by the office of the Auditor General.

Is it possible that we send our people away too often to learn about “stuff”? Stuff that, in good faith, they bring back here and foist upon an unsuspecting civil service who, by the way, will need “training” to operate.

Do we really need a Department of Parks and Cemeteries?

Do their employees really need brand new double cab F150s, usually with a baby carriage in the rear cab and one garbage bag and a rake in the tray?

Do we really need huge Chevy police cars like the ones used by our insanely rich neighbours to the north or can we make do with smaller more fuel efficient and [by the way, more reliable] Japanese or
Korean vehicles?

Why do we have to provide so many Blackberrys to people who already need to communicate less with each other?

What would happen if one of those police cars hits one of those F150s while in hot pursuit of a no-good criminal like a ganja smoker?

After the police reports and the cemetery incident report and both officers go to the HSA; the police department will probably have to rent two vehicles - one to replace the police car and another F150 to replace the one for the cemetery cleaner.

Then the Department of Parks will have to invoice the Police Department and after the Department of Vehicles fixes both cars they will invoice the Police Department and the cemetery people, who would have to write a pay slip for Treasury to get all these cheques ready, further confusing the poor overworked civil servant. The HSA will then invoice CINICO for the two hospital visits and guess who ends up paying for all that invoicing: “we the people”. It is almost the same thing money launderers do when they want to hide illegal money.

I won’t get into the human resources nightmare that was created and the proposed Human Resources Authority I hear about on the street. That reminds me of the US-style health insurance system we have adopted where the real work is done by the doctors, who each have about four or five people working for the insurance company trying to tell him/her how to do their job and how much it should not cost. Guess who pays the four or five people, who not only never deliver any health care to the patient, but in reality try to limit that care? The patient ends up paying them to deliver less health care.

A wise old man told me a few days ago that, when he worked for government, the cemeteries and parks were taken care of by the Department of Agriculture because the Parks and Cemeteries had dirt. No F150s, driving around with a government sticker in those days, no baby carriages in the back. Public Works actually worked; not farmed out their work, and if the police car hit an ambulance the government paid the bill and the boss sat at his desk and never worried about his “output”.