US Research & Development Suffers Because of Glacial Supervisor Actions

Is it any surprise that the bureaucracy’s failure to make timely decisions is having a negative impact?

LANL spending on travel supervision (not the travel itself) increased to 1.6M from 200k. This does not count the 700k spent on a new system to manage (slow down?) the issue.

“The length of DOD’s and DOE’s conference review and approval processes, which has increased since implementing their policies, poses a challenge to timely decision making about conference requests that DOD and DOE have yet to fully mitigate. Information provided by DOD and DOE officials indicates the length of their conference review and approval processes has increased from a period of weeks to as much as 9 months after implementing their policies, in part, due to the multiple levels of review required. As a result, DOD and DOE officials stated that approval decisions are often not made until close to the start of a conference, which creates a disincentive for the departments’ scientists and engineers to take on active roles, such as presenting research or serving as a keynote speaker, and may lead to increased registration or travel costs”

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-278