Clearly, Rev. 2

The following was written by a guy my dad works with and it pretty much sums up how government works. Remember this the next time someone mentions government run health care.

In order to maintain clear and concise communications in regards to our operations, our management has provided a unique and highly sophisticated system with which we are to achieve this goal.

We have a Document system:

• We create documents to document documentation and documents on how to prepare documents.
• We write plans and procedures that tell us how to write plans and procedures.
• We have planning meetings to develop plans and we document these meetings in the document control system via the document control plan (we also have a document history plan that documents the document history.)
• We have a document writing team that rewrites the documents we write and then writes changes to their changes for us to review and rewrite for them to review and rewrite as needed.
• We create acronyms to save typing time and space that meaning of which depend on what plan, procedure or document or what organization you are dealing with.
• We have replaced Webster’s Dictionary definitions with “as it pertains to this document,” planned by the planners in accordance with the procedure for writing plans and procedures and documented on the appropriate document and saved in the document control system.
• We comply with requirements spelled out by NNSA, NDOT, DOE, DFNSB, OSHA, EMSHA, SPCA, PETA, PTA, EPA, ASTM, ATM, ASME, JNPO and the EIEIO to name a few.
• We have CORRs, ORRs, and Sores (the latter results from the first two)
• We have
  “Action steps”
  “Conditional action steps”
  “No actions steps”
  “Conditional terms with a purpose”
  “Unconditional terms with no purpose.”
• We have parameters for the following words; Shall, Should, May, Will, Must, If, When, Then, Or, and AND + VERIFY & INSURE (ENSURE) The last two being the latest, greatest buzz words to be put under the scope.

An example of some clear direction:
"Certain checklist can be structured to authorize the performance of other documents."
"Make the scope and applicability of documents readily apparent."

After all this we have a Validation and Review process that we document on documents sent to document control for documentation.

We have a procedure to document a design review to review the designers design but don’t include the designer.

We have demonstrations to demonstrate the validation to ensure the verification of procedures and checklists and we document these demonstrations.

Then we send the draft validated and reviewed document to the USQ process for review. It is also checked for spelling, punctuation, and grammar as these are the most important issues for the safety, health, and well being of the workers and the general public.

In the event of changes, the process starts over.

We also have a change control process and tracking process and long list of other handy aids to make the system a leaner, meaner, seamless, streamlined, efficient, effective, and all around superior tool for safe program execution.

It’s really all pretty clear once you get the hang of it.

-Dale Cain