I’m with a company that occasionally requires me to work from the offices of various government
agencies, contract-by-contract. This means I’m frequently subjected to approval processes to
gain temporary access to government buildings and various other amenities.
It’s surprisingly common to find layers of different processes to gain access to resources that
seem like they could benefit from being combined. Building access does not incorporate, for
example, having a login to the computer system, which may also be separate from access to the
phone system. The degree of difficulty to access different things can also be wildly inconsistent.
Let me share with you just one, recent, example.
I was an approved contractor who would work onsite for more than five months, and was swiftly
and easily granted a photo ID to swipe myself in and out of practically every door in the building.
Lulled into a false sense of security, I imagined it would be similarly easy to gain access to the
building’s Wi-Fi. I only needed Internet access, after all, not access to the agency’s files or other
systems. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The approval process for Wi-Fi access is not only inexplicably separate from every other access
process but the Internet also seems to be the only resource to which access can be applied for
and granted for only one day at a time. That’s right, I needed to apply for, and be granted, Wi-Fi
access separately for every day that I would be working on site.
The daily application process is made more frustrating by the access form (hard-copy only and
printed on blue paper) that needs to be completed each day and signed by the approver. The
form demands bizarre and seemingly irrelevant details, all of which were provided on the
previous day’s form and the one before that. This is even more frustrating because each form,
once approved, is processed by the same person who processed all the forms that have gone
before.
How is it possible that a photograph, a signature, and a signed contract earns sufficient
institutional trust for close to six months of unfettered access to a government building and
everything in it, but reading email while I’m there requires this daily supplication process?
