by D. Cupples | The Federal government spent six times more in 2006 than in 2000 on contractors that do paper shredding. Either the government has grown since President Bush took office, or the number of executive-branch secrets has.
Radar Online (via Memeorandum) comments:
"In 2000, the feds spent $452,807 to make unpleasant truths go away; by 2006, the "Cheney Effect" had bumped that number up to $2.9 million. And by halfway through 2007, the feds almost matched that number, with $2.7 million and counting. Pretty much says it all."
The chart of paper-shredding spending trends is from USAspending.gov
Fifteen years ago, I worked for a government contractor and I used to tell people that they moved the shredder closer to my printer to make my job easier. This is not necessarily untrue. I did spend about a half hour to an hour a day shredding.
However, now I work for a hospital and not even where patients are and any piece of paper that needs to be disposed of has to go into a special bin which is locked and has just a slot opening. No paper goes in the trash. This apparently is part of our HIPAA rules. I do understand putting any patient data in there, but God forbid that anyone find out what everyone in the department ordered for lunch or that I need to remember to call someone. :P
Ridiculously, we cannot be trusted to shred our own papers so we outsourced it.
Posted by: J. Lynne | December 17, 2007 at 11:12 AM