Fax and spend: one bureaucrat explains how his agency's technology bedevils his life and wastes your money.

• Author: Adelman, Clifford

Every 25 minutes, the lights go out. I sit at my government desk doing what government desk-sitters do: crunch data on the computer, write memos and reports, edit documents, answer mail from citizens, and make and answer phone calls. I may squirm around during all of this, but I stay in my chair. Then, the lights go out.

It's the sensor's fault. If there's no movement in the room for 25 minutes, the light circuit shuts down. To turn the lights back on, I have to get out of my chair and walk until the sensor tells the electrical system that there's something alive in the room.

The round trip across the room costs the government two minutes of my time every hour. That turns out to be 17 minutes a day, 85 minutes a week, 4,250 minutes or approximately 71 hours per year. The system was installed by the building's owner to save on the power bill. I don't know whether the savings are passed on to the government, but I doubt it. At the rate I am paid (including benefits), the light sensor costs the government about $3,800 in lost labor annually.

To save that time (and Uncle Sam that money), I plan to buy a used basketball at a yard sale. Then, when the lights go out, I'11 throw it at the filing cabinets opposite my desk to trip the sensor. The ball will bounce neatly back under my desk.

The new administration is considering ways to cut at least 100,000 jobs in the civilian federal workforce over the next five years. There's no doubt that some agencies are bloated and, as any thorough desk audit would reveal, could take the hit. But new technologies--light sensors among them--are partly responsible for the bloat. The time I spend trekking across rooms to turn lights back on means less time to cover a given territory of tasks. And that in turn means someone else has to pick up the work I cannot complete.

Light sensors are just the beginning. Have you ever phoned the most technologically advanced offices within any federal agency? Here's what you're likely to hear: Voice Mail Machine #1: "Good day! You have reached the Office of Technological Planning, Management, and Evaluation Systems of the U.S. Department of Blah Blah. If you have a touchtone phone and wish to speak to the computer branch, press one, followed by the pound key, now; if you wish to speak to the telecommunications branch, press two, followed by the pound key .... "

Anyone who has recently called the government can tell you that between the time you pick up the phone and work through...