Requirements

Even well intentioned requirements come at a price. Requirements should be as few as they can be. Continue reading →

I told this story at the ISPCS meeting last month, so pardon me if you have heard it already. It is a mostly true story.
Recently I traveled to a somewhat remote government facility. At the mid-day break in our meetings, the facility director took us to the cafeteria where the food was excellent and very reasonably priced. Then he surprised us with the story of how hard it had been to keep the cafeteria open.
It seems that the government regulations on cafeteria operators are quite lengthy. There are requirements to buy the food ingredients from certified vendors to ensure high quality of the food. There are requirements to post the nutritional content of the foods so that the customers can make informed choices about their meals. There are requirements to provide “healthy choice” meals which must meet certain defined nutritional content. A whole lot of common sense, very good requirements that almost anybody would agree are reasonable.
The outcome was that no operator could run the cafeteria there at a profit. After going through several operators, the director ...