Gobble the Gobbledegook

Mostly good points. I reckon the 5 minute management technique ought to be mandatory in all organisations. this means that it should take no more than 5 minutes to digest a written report and make a decision on it. it requires discipline and structure and brevity of argument, or the dissection of information into bite sized chunks.

Newspapers are occasionally guilty of using silly and offensive jargon as well. I remember when Don Dunstan died The Canberra Times published an article referring to “Dunstan’s time in gubernatorial office”. I repeatedly wrote to the newspaper asking why that ugly American word was used, the letters weren’t published. I then wrote to the journalist concerned asking whether he’d apologise for using the word and give an undertaking that he would never use it again. There was no apology and I didn’t get a reply but I noticed that his byline disappeared from the paper shortly after.

I still remember when a para was not complete without ‘Inter Alia’ being used.

Jargon exists. It’s necessary.
Sometimes, not. Motives vary.

(Calculon voice-over: “Paaauuuse!”).

Technical terms in a fair use context,
is not gobbledigook, it’s just… an engineering proposal.

(“I said, paauuuuse!”)

I quit!

(“You’re fired!”).

Yipee!

You missed the necessary comma after “Development” in para 3.

So your quoting examples from the private sector that were in most cases probably written by ex-public servants for consumption by current public servants proves what? And I would hesitate to class the CPSU and IPA private sector in any real sense of the term.

My theory is that public servants generate large quantities of fecal prose in order to justify their existence and/or classification. If there ever was a public servant who could write a high level report in a page over half an hour instead of 80 pages over three weeks writing time plus proof reading and multiple up-chain approval, they would be efficiently dividended rather smartly because they would have no work to do the remainder of the time.

I’ve never forgotten the lament I once heard from a lovely, middle-aged lady: “I used to be able to write. Then I joined the Public Service.”