The Government

You may or may not know, depending on how closely you read one of the previous posts, that I am not only working at Vanderbilt, but I am also going to be working at the Veteran's Hospital in Nashville. They sent me a huge packet of forms to fill out last week and I had a week to read and sign them all and mail them in. So I spent a day filling out all of their lovely forms and doing all of their computer tutorials so that I could get certification. By the way all of the computer tutorials were completely useless because I will not be ordering labs and medications. Most of the contracts were about privacy issues, pages and pages about what I cannot do with VA information, and also some of the usual application stuff for background checks. There were some interesting things in some of the contracts that I signed, so I figured I would share them with you.

First of all the Government Ethics form was the most entertaining. It started out saying, "Executive branch employees hold their positions as a public trust." Besides the obvious, I found it interesting that I am an executive branch employee. So I guess it is the president and then me, haha, I don't really think anyone would want to give me that much power. Next was the section on gifts from outside sources. It said, "an employee can never solicit or coerce the offering of a gift, or accept a gift in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. Employees may accept a gift from an outside source if the gift is valued at $20 or less, with a total value of gifts from the same person or organization not more than $50 in a calendar year." David gave me $51 before I signed this piece of paper, although when I went downstairs the next morning it was gone. Now everyone has a limit on how much they can spend on me a year. I have to wonder though if politicians sign a piece of paper like this, because they obviously do not follow it and I most likely will not either. There was also a section on gifts between employees which was not quite as entertaining and limited gifts to no more than $10, food, and refreshments.

On the declaration of federal employment form, I found out that the collection of my information from that form has an estimated public burden of 5-30 minutes with an average of 15 minutes. I am going to be a public burden! There was even an address to send comments or suggestions, including suggestions for reducing the burden, on the form. And the form then went on to ask me the same questions that previous forms in the packet had asked me, hmm . . . I wonder if getting rid of this form all together and just using the previous forms could reduce the public burden.

And then came the compliance awareness handbook complete with a learning objective and motto. The compliance motto was "Do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason". Wow that is so enlightening. After that came the underwhelming section on what compliance and business integrity is. "Compliance and business integrity is a management and oversight function, grounded in the Veteran's Health Administration Mission, Vision and Values of trust, respect, compassion, commitment, and excellence. It requires a commitment of leadership and coordination among functional areas. Compliance is not an audit or inspection function, though it includes important audit and inspection activities. It is not a legal function, though it includes important legal activities. It is also not a quality management function, though it includes important continuous quality improvement activities." Blah, blah, blah. I cannot believe someone gets paid to write that kind of stuff. I have to admit that after reading that paragraph, I gave up on the document and did not read any further.

Also, in the giant packet of forms were a couple of quizzes that I had to take on suicide risk factors and the computer stuff, but they included the answers. Seriously, what is the point? I would have to be pretty dumb to not put those answers down, although I did read the answers and verify that they were indeed correct just in case it was some sort of integrity check.

And that brings me to the end of their forms. So you may want to think twice before you take a government job. By the way, unlike Vanderbilt, they did not pay for the return postage which actually costs a lot because it was a lot of papers.