It’s ironic that conservatives, who want minimal government and minimal regulations, complain loudly about “lack of oversight” when something goes wrong, and are all too willing to initiate oversight hearings by Congressional committees. For their part, liberals seem to press for too many regulations, and there are never enough resources to oversee their enforcement.
Business and industry have become so inured to government regulations and oversight that they sometimes seemingly have abandoned any self-regulation or self-oversight; these functions are not revenue-producing. Since accountants took over business and industry, increasing emphasis on this quarter’s bottom line causes it to function just on the edge of regulation. Companies should be most knowledgeable about the needs for safety and standards in their domain, but seem more and more to depend on the government to direct them. This is not only less expensive, it lets them off the hook; if something goes wrong the first thing they claim is “we passed every government inspection” or “we met every government requirement.”
It’s getting to the point that industry and even the public indict “lack of oversight” rather than blaming the perpetrators of, or those responsible for, the act itself. “You didn’t watch me closely enough, so I stole.” Weird. Just today I saw where hundreds of hospital medical data breaches result in “minimal guidance from the federal agency tasked with oversight.”
History shows that organizations have not always functioned responsibly using internal processes or standards, that greed and the next quarterly report are just too strong. So unfortunately, oversight is a required and legitimate government function. But just because we can’t look everywhere is no excuse for illegal or irresponsible behavior. If people didn’t lie cheat and steal — or more politely, “act irresponsibly” — we wouldn’t need oversight at all.
Unfortunately, it’s not only industry. We often bemoan “lack of oversight” when investigating fraud, whether the IRS, food stamps, welfare or charitable organizations. It’s sad that the wrongdoing is accepted as normal and the oversight is blamed.
So we need to have oversight in the public interest, but we don’t want overzealous bureaucrats building little regulatory empires, which only lead to scorn of the whole regulatory process and even of government itself.
Opinion: (1) As promised by President Obama, we need a thorough independent scrub of regulations considering effectiveness, applicability and benefit tradeoffs against both cost and the public interest. (2) There could be a simple common-sense independent screening of proposed new regulations, which may be issued hurriedly and excessively after an incident. (3) Available good professional organization standards should be studied and recognized as sufficient, like industry standards we were transitioning to when I was with the government.
And finally, (4) Industry, business, and organizations must think beyond the next quarterly report, and realize that their long-term health and reputation will benefit from serious self-oversight before incidents hit the news.
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