I used to work at a large bank. It was the bank that would come into your small New England town and take over the bank you used as a child.
Generally on a long weekend (Columbus Day or Washington’s birthday most often) we would “merge” this bank into computer system.
Now, most of the time these mergers went without a hitch. Once they did not. We had to extend our shut down time.
From that date forward we included several new signs in our “package.” Those signs were printed in medium quantities and kept in storage until they were needed (if they were needed.)
We never used them again during my tenure. But, they are probably still there. Looking as fresh as the day they were printed. They could have them printed at a local PIP shop in about 4 hours.
I know you want to think that these guys had this all planned out. Well, to a certain degree, they have had it planned out. But you are thinking these is some master cabal in DC that did all of this in secret.
If you worked for me and you had not prepared your staff and signage for this possibility, I would fire you.
If you did not have the right button for your B52, I would make sure you did not ever rise above the rank you were today.
Its called management. Many folks have never seen decent management.
I am not defending Obama. I am simply saying that good managers plan for these things. And not every manager in the government is an idiot.
The idea of saving money or working efficiently while employed in government is a foreign idea. The very reason a government employee cannot be fired is they can't find work in the real world. Just as an quick example, government trucks needed to check in so they bought them laptops with cell phone modems so they could check in from anywhere. They spent the money and then found out that the trucks were mostly running in rural areas with no cell signal. So the employees would have to drive for miles to get to areas that had a signal and even then the signal would drop out as they tried to send data. No one even bothered to check to see if the plan worked before buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. There were literally hundreds of such lame ideas and decisions made. Another was to install GPS in each truck at the cost of thousands per truck and pay to have them tracked. When the employee wanted to go home for lunch or who knows what else, they disconnected the power plug that was hidden under the hood. When signal was lost they sent a tech from almost 200 miles away to find out what was wrong. The GPS was plugged back in and no problem found. After a few times they replaced the unit for even more cost. The whole purpose for the program was to prevent employees from taking excessive breaks and going out of their area. If every employee screwed off 2 hours a day it would have been cheaper to pay them than maintain the GPS system. Up until then the boss watched the drivers. The problem with that was he was as bad if not worse than the employee's. He knew all the guys hiding places and would go discipline one every once in a while when he was being evaluated. It was a mess for decades.
Now, instead of the taxpayer going through all this, why not just contract the whole thing out and eliminate all of the salaries, health care, and retirement, along with the equipment cost and maintenance? Did anyone EVER do a cost analysis? NO! To eliminate a whole division would have affected the higher ups salaries and responsibilities and you know the idea of government is "WE MUST GET BIGGER!!! Saving money isn't even on the radar.