Federal shredding budget soars

Van sez, "Nice bar-chart showing skyrocketing increase in federal contracts for shredding services. In 2000, the government spent a little over $450k to dispose of pesky documents; by 2006, the cost of keeping secrets had risen to $2.9. And 2007? At midpoint, $2,7 million and rising..." Link (Thanks, Van!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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RealCatholicMen

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Whn ws n th mltry, snt tn f dcmnts ff t th shrddrs. Lts f clssfd dcmnts gt prntd t, sd nc n sm mtng nd thn r nvr ndd gn nd hv t b prprly dspsd f, vn thgh 99% f thm wld prbbly b f nly mnr pssng ntrst t nyn, nywhr, ncldng th ppl n th mtng. Hvn frbd nyn wnt prntt f th src cd fr clssfd cmptr prgrm. Y nd p wth rms f ppr tht hv t b shrddd.

t rlly s tht mndn.

t wld b ntrstng t s wht’s mkng th nmbrs g p, thgh. Mr dcmnts bng prntd thn bfr? Nw rls fr wht qlfs s “clssfd”? Nwr rgltns n hw t hndl shrddng tht mks t cst mr pr dcmnt? Myb smn wh’s bn n th gvrnmnt r mltry mr rcntly cn gss s t th cs.

Sdly, th ppl wh cmpln th ldst bt th gvrnmnt, mltry nd plc r th ppl wh hv n xprnc wrkng n th gvrnmnt, mltry r plc, whch s prbbly why th gy y lnkd ddn’t hv nythng bttr thn flppnt rmrks. Bt hy, tn n ltr whn dscss th prblms wth nclr fsn rctr dsgn! mn, th gl s ntrtnmnt, nt nfrmtn, rght? Wh nds xprts!
Moon

I work in a government office and we didn’t even have a shredder until last year. (We’re as innocuous a government office as you can have with lawyers in it.)

This had something to do with Freedom of Information Act changes rather than something sinister, I believe.

/I am pretty sure the White House is doing a LOT of shredding, though – all those documentaries about the Nazis keeping great records and paper trails have not been wasted on them, I’m sure.
Nick D

“This had something to do with Freedom of Information Act changes rather than something sinister, I believe.”

What do you mean by that, Moon? I don’t get it. Why would changes in FOIA mean more shredding?

The only explanation for that which I can think of certainly IS sinister.
Cory Doctorow

And you explain the meteoric rise in shredding budgets how?
Moon

It has to do with record keeping. If you don’t keep the records, you don’t have them when somebody make a “give us EVERYTHING you have on…” FOIA request.

All of the stuff shredded is just bullshit paperwork – duplicate copies of stuff that we kept before because it made our job a little easier.

Nothing sinister or covert going on.
hassan-i-sabbah

Great idea-military service for all!
Knocks any ideas about asking questions right out ofright to your silly little commie heads.After all its not a good idea to think too much, as one may start to question if one man has the power to dictate on a woman’s right to decide when to have kids (or not!)
Rah! Rah! Rah!salute the flag/pope Apologist nonsense. you have not made a point,merely waved a flag.
hassan-i-sabbah

Great idea-military service for all!
Knocks any ideas about asking questions right out ofright to your silly little commie heads.After all its not a good idea to think too much, as one may start to question if one man has the power to dictate on a woman’s right to decide when to have kids (or not!)
Rah! Rah! Rah!salute the flag/pope Apologist nonsense. you have not made a point,merely waved a flag.
Nick D

I’m still not sure I get it (maybe I’m being thick), but thanks for the explanation anyway.
Moon

To give you a quick example, somebody files a complaint and a lot of copies are made of the complaint because eventually these copies may be needed (and they are needed in MANY cases). Now, the rules have changed saying that you have to give EVERYTHING in the file if a FOIA request is made. So, now people are going back and shredding a lot of this stuff.

/That’s just an example and it’s not even a very good one – I’m new on the FOIA desk.

Again, though, I’m sure the Bush administration is deleting a lot of stuff just so they don’t leave a paper trail to their sleazy deeds. I’m just saying PART of this is due to a change in the rules.
Nick D

But why would they shred the old stuff? Is there a limit to how long they have to keep these records? Is that what you’re saying?
Shrike

Have to chime in with my 2 cents here…

After serving over nine years in the USAF I think I can speak with some experience. Besides the obvious trick of making stats and graphs show whatever you want, here you go:

1. Huge increase in identity theft issues over the last few years just make it safer to shred. Most personnel documents in the Air Force (I’m assuming the Army is the same) have your SS# plastered all over it.

2. Current trend of the government to outsource EVERYTHING they can. Government contracts are big business and having contractors shred frees up govenrment personnel for other tasks. It’s a win for both sides.

3. As stated earlier, when one screw-up drops the wrong document in the trash and some inspector finds it, it’s easier just to shred it all just to be sure.

Now, I don’t doubt that the current administration is destroying potentially damaging documents. But, those are probably shredded/burned/eaten internally and don’t even show up in the data.

You could probably build a graph with the same curve showing government contract expenses for bathroom cleaning and slap a “What is the Government Flushing Down the Toilet” headline on it as well.
anomie

I’m no fan of the Bush administration, but it seems like going to war could create the need for quite a bit of extra shredding under any circumstances. This is a pretty intellectually lazy article.
SAE Miller

It is interesting that there is a plateau in the graph. Also, it appears that the 2007 spending will not exceed last years. So perhaps, the first derivative of the spending is now negative. (Which I am not sure it is because 2007 is not over). Also, the y-axis of the graph presented has no numerical values. That is very deceptive. I’m sure that even if you agree or disagree with the results, that the lack of numerical values on the axis of the graph may be misleading.

Finally, why is there such a short time history presented? Where is the data from the 80′s and 90′s? Maybe that spending was higher also with the Cold war?
KnoxHarrington

Cory, I would explain the rise in shredding spending the same way I would explain the rise in spending on “instruments and lab equipment“, or “medical, dental and veterinary supplies” or any of a number of other things that appear to have doubled or tripled in the last 6 years.

The first thing to remember is that this is only contract spending. Anything done in-house doesn’t show up. Let’s not ignore the “Clinton Contractor Shuffle,” where you contract out some service, at greater cost, but get to pat yourself on the back for decreasing federal payroll. Then you bring the task back in house, and congratulate yourself for increasing efficiency. This is a very popular move for administrators. The trend in the mid 90′s was to contract most of this stuff, then to do it yourself, and recently contracting has been back in vogue.

Secondly, either there was a lot more in-house shredding going on in 2000, or this data set is incomplete. The only agencies listed in 2000 with shredding contracts were the IRS and the Department of the Army. In fact, there aren’t even five agencies listed under the top 5 until 2003. I find it hard to believe that those are the only two agencies who had documents to dispose of. So we’re really comparing the outside shredding budgets of the IRS + Army in 2000 to most or all of the Federal government in 2007.

Actually, I see now that the data is estimated to be 65.22% complete. It’s much more likely that newer data has been more fully migrated in than older data. Keep in mind then that 35% of contracts are not being counted, and those are much more likely to be older contracts.
lumberjack

You can click on the link to get an complete list of transactions, and the White House isn’t even listed. And if it *had* been listed, it would just be one transaction out of a list of 1,396.

You can see that the biggest increase is at the IRS and that they shred more than all the other agencies combined. You don’t want them warehousing your old tax forms do you?

No, this is just wishful thinking.
andremolnar

It should be noted that the white house at least tried its part to reduce shredding costs by using email to communicate.

Pressing the delete key is far more cost effective.

They managed to ‘lose’ 5,000,000 emails during the period when shredding costs were at an all time high.
RealCatholicMen

ls sggstd sm nswr’s t Cry’s qstn n my 4th prgrph.

‘ll dd n mr: Th vr-prsnt pssblty tht cntrctrs r smply rppng ff th gvrnmnt nd shld b nvstgtd.

nd n, Hssn, ‘m nt sggstng mltry srvc fr vryn, jst ths ppl wh wnt t mk ntllgnt rgmnts wtht lkng cmpltly rdcls. thrws t’s lk m syng, “Lk, why ds t cst s mch t nvnt nclr fsn pwr plnt? Thr’s n wy sht mtl nd nls cst tht mch!” Whn w spk bt thngs w hv n xprnc wth, w rsk lkng slly t ths wh d.
jere7my

Sae: The 2007 data only covers the first half of 2007, according to the site.
KnoxHarrington

If there’s one thing all BB readers might agree on, it’s that this kind of information is far too late in coming. USAspending.gov just launched earlier this week, I believe. Sae, I think most of the older information you would want is out there somewhere, but the OMB and GPO websites are uniformly awful, like almost all government sites. As far as I know, you’d have to wade through hundreds of pages of PDFs to see if there’s anything there about shredding. And most of that will be missing, or incomplete, or summarized. And virtually nothing will be easily machine readable, so it would be tough to compile the kind of interface they use at USAspending.

“What, people might actually want data in XML? In 2007? Fascinating!” I’ve spent too much time trying to scrape HTML from “public” information sources to buy into the idea that the government is very good at investing for the future.
phlavor

I feel the need to speak to this subject as have some personal insight. I work as in an office that builds Federal office buildings and like any other public or private entity that deals with large construction projects, we generate a LOT of paper. Our document storage space needs outnumber our personal office space 2:1 and that is just the documents that we keep.

Regardless, we are an office of socially conscious people and the Federal Government has a recycling program that we would all happily utilize for non sensitive documents. Sensitive documents would go into one of our many high volume shredders.

About two and a half years or three years ago a high level employee walked by the white paper recycling bin in the basement and noticed a roll of building drawings right on top. This was rightfully categorized as a security breach but what happened next was, in my opinion, heavy handed.

It was deemed that the employees that handled the documents were not to be trusted to decide whether a document was sensitive or not. Paper recycling bins were pulled from the building and an attitude was taken “if it is printed material, it is sensitive material and it should be shredded.” The shear volume of the shedding that that attitude has generated would necessitate a full time employee that does nothing but feed paper into a shredder all day, hence our need to involve outside companies and list it as an expense rather than just do it ourselves. I should also note that if you want white paper to be recycled in our building, the only way to achieve that is to have it shredded.

While this is just one instance, I see it as being indicative of the paranoia that has affected the decision making process in the government and has in turn driven that graph higher. Unfortunately, this has made the public more distrustful of an administration who has as much to hide as any other administration but has shot itself in the foot by making it’s employees shred it’s Dilbert cartoons.
MTW

I work for an agency in the Department of the Interior, and in my opinion the increase in shredding activity is largely due to better security measures taken to protect government employees from the rising and very real threat of identity theft. That is a good and responsible thing to do.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

RCM, I take exception to your assumption that “veterans” and “leftists” are mutually exclusive sets, and that leftists are by their nature peculiarly prone to misinterpret the military. There are plenty of left-of-center vets. I know quite a few of them myself.

I’ll also point out that the current administration is stuffed full of right-wingers who’ve never served in the military, and who’ve practically made a policy of ignoring and circumventing the regular military’s advice and standard practices.

Furthermore, I don’t think your central argument stands on its own merits. First, that curve reflects overall federal spending on shredding services. I don’t see any data identifying it as military spending.

Second, — and let’s temporarily assume, purely for the sake of the argument, that that increase in spending is military in origin — if shredding documents is such a normal military practice (which I’ll agree it is), why should the cost of shredding be rising so steeply? That curve says “new or increased activity,” not “continuing practice.”

Third, same temporary assumption: if shredding documents is such a normal military practice, why is the increased spending going to outside contractors? The military already has the shredders and the manpower to run them.

There may be legitimate reasons for this rise in shredding costs, but you haven’t convinced me that they’re the reasons you give.
Nick D

“…this has made the public more distrustful of an administration who has as much to hide as any other administration but has shot itself in the foot…”

I just can’t let that slip past without comment. This administration has far more to hide than just about any we’ve ever had.

And besides, this kind of policy has Bush written all over it. It’s the same hamfisted approach his administration has applied to just about everything its turned its attention to.

This kind of all-or-nothing decision-making, wherein any shades of grey or exercising of judgment is eliminated, is pretty the trademark of the Bush Administration.
allen

I also worked in a government facility with a 100% shred policy. I think this has been an increasing trend, and not one that would really seem that unreasonable to me, given how poor judges people tend to be of what is and isn’t sensitive, and how relatively inexpensive shreadding is.

I don’t like waste either, but I don’t think the shredding costs are indicitive of more concealment of secrets by the government as much as they are indicitive of a more earnest attempt to keep what secrets it has. Certainly the percentage of spending has increased, but 2.7 million is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money is spent on things like boilerplate OPSEC (operational security) plans.

Reading Bruce Schneir or Kevin Mitnick is enough to convince me that hoping to attain security in any real sense is just a silly dream, but if we ARE going to strive from some level of governmental secrecy, a 100% shred policy isn’t a bad start.
Nick D

Realcatholicmen: are we to assume that in the future you will not be commenting on any topic that you are not an “expert” on? (posts 1 and 8)

I’ve read all your posts and they are on a variety of topics so wide that not even an indescribably worldly and brilliant polymath such as yourself could possibly< ?I> be conversant on.

In other words: we listen politely to you spouting off on any topic that strikes your fancy… please extend us the same courtesy.
Nick D

be conversant in. In other words: most of us listen politely to you while you weigh in on any topic that strikes your fancy… please extend us the same courtesy.