Double government productivity for 9.99 per worker

Note: If you are an underpaid and way overworked government employee, you may find the title unfriendly or even offensive. Please bear with me, this post is about your lazy co-worker next door.

Ever since the first 24/7 streaming webcams appeared on the web, the blogster thought, wow, we should have one of these in every government office.

This also explains the high price of 9.99 per worker. Today, you can get them for 2.99 or less if you buy in bulk. 

Now that police body cams are all the rage, why not go further and make all of government more transparent? Wouldn't you love to see how the IRS processes your tax return, or how the break room at your least favorite agency is packed much of the day while the counters are understaffed?

If you like more interesting work environments, hey, maybe you'd be able to catch a utility worker watching porn while splicing cables.

Or think of a camera in the office of state governor Mr. C. - how long do you think it would take for that one to be nicknamed "empty chair cam"?

Unlike 20 years ago, there are almost no technical hurdles that would amount to a violation of privacy. The office cams would not have sound capability. Software today is more than capable to automatically fuzz faces, which would also prevent lip reading, protecting both the employees and visitors.

Cameras for all hierarchies would level the playing field, as they say.  Why, for example, should a cop on the beat be watched while the commissioner is not?

Why should the personnel at the counters of the DMV be on camera all day (faces not fuzzed, by the way) while the chief sits in the office picking his nose?

Fuzzing out the face would also eliminate the grossing out caused by nose picking recorded for posterity.

Of course, there are certain sensitive job activities where employees would object to being recorded, such as locker rooms at a VA hospital and such. That's obviously exempt.

We might see many a governor's office be declared a locker room, or at least attempts to do so, but there are ways to make such maneuvers less appealing. For example, the duck approach: if it doesn't look like a locker room, it's not a locker room. Or, if the governor insists, he should have to change in front of the cam for six months or least least 50 times before the status of the office gets adjusted.

The above examples have been U.S. centric, so we would like to add a few international ones.

In some countries, bribes are common, so why not have an exchange of envelopes on camera? You can still claim it was a stack of forms for a building application or some other permit.
In other countries, acts of physical violence, or ad-hoc torture, would be likely to plummet, turning urban wasteland into the great Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Why are we so sure we could vastly improve government productivity by installing office cams?

That would be because the blogster worked in government. Not sure in which of the nine lives of the Twitter profile - number four or five, depends. Yes, twice as productive as the runner up, four times as productive as the lazy co-worker.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy The Men Who Stare at Votes.