http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/20/2245215/canadian-bureacracy-cant-answer-simple-question-whats-this-study-with-nasa""It seemed like a pretty simple question about a pretty cool topic:
an Ottawa newspaper wanted to ask Canada's National Research Council
about a joint study with NASA on tracking falling snow in Canada.
Conventional radar can see where it's falling, but not the amount — so
NASA, in collaboration with the NRC, Environment Canada and a few
universities, arranged flights through falling snow to analyse
readings with different instruments. But when they contacted the NRC
to get the Canadian angle, "it took a small army of staffers— 11 of
them by our count — to decide how to answer, and dozens of emails back
and forth to circulate the Citizen's request, discuss its motivation,
develop their response, and "massage" its text." No interview was
given: "I am not convinced we need an interview. A few lines are fine.
Please let me see them first," says one civil servant in the NRC
emails obtained by the newspaper under the Access to Information act.
By the time the NRC finally sorted out a boring, technical response,
the newspaper had already called up a NASA scientist and got all the
info they asked for; it took about 15 minutes.""
Disclosure: I worked at the NRC for ~12 years up until 2 years ago.
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