Sorry, wrong number.

• Author: Grossman, Seth
• Position: Attempting to make a phone call to government offices

Haven't Al Gore and his Reinventing government team been laboring for the last five years to make federal agencies more efficient and user-friendly? Recently, the Monthly asked me to investigate one avenue of their progress--or lack thereof--by phoning a dozen Washington agencies with simple questions to see how easy--or not so easy--it was to receive an answer.

For the first test in the survey, I called the Alcohol Treatment Routing Referral Service of the Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. My ostensible purpose was to locate the facility nearest me that offers treatment for alcoholism. I thought this question could be easily answered by a hotline that billed itself as the "Alcohol Treatment Routing Service" I was wrong. Upon dialing the number, I reached a recording detailing a menu of services I could access from the line. I selected the choice for referral to the treatment center closest to me. After a couple of rings, the operator informed me that the number I had called was disconnected. Disconnected? I tried the hotline once more to make sure I had not dialed incorrectly and again I got the same result. I dialed the number for the third time and chose the option to receive printed material. The line transferred me to a completely different agency, where I had to listen to a whole new recording with its own set of choices before I could actually reach the option to receive the printed information.

Clearly helping alcoholics find the road to recovery isn't of particular interest to the government, but what about helping smokers kick the habit? Certainly, I reasoned, with all the anti-tobacco hubbub in recent months, the government is keeping its Smoking and Health Information Line well staffed. Certainly not. After calling the number--and choosing to hear the information in English--I selected the "quit tips" option from the electronic menu. But when I selected the option to receive the information by mail, a recording informed me that I would have to send a written request to a given address before I would be sent any helpful tips. This hotline's middleman approach to helping smokers seemed like bureaucracy at its worst.

My next call, to the Drug Treatment Referrals line, reached yet another electronic menu, and I chose the selection for treatment options in my state. I was promptly disconnected. I went through the same process again three hours later, only to achieve the same result.

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