Unnecessary business regualations

Just one off the top of my head is this "privacy" (or illusion of, I should say) that all businesses are forced to "inform" you of when you do business with them - insurance, investments, medical, yada, yada, yada)

The expenditure of paper, postage and ink has to be vast; not to mention the time/money for employees to do this rather than something productive.

 

FISMA.
Sarbanes-Oxley.

nothing but extra paperwork that takes time away from getting the job done....

 

Rules concerning daycares are ridiculous. A relative of mine owns a daycare. Inspectors can come in at random and write her up for some VERY stupid rules:
1. The daycare must have a live plant somewhere
2. There must be at least 3 different ethnic groups represented with the dolls (white, black, hispanic, Native American, etc.)
3. At least one room must have decorations hanging from the ceiling, and these must be changed on a regular basis.
4. Certain types of learning centers are necessary (music, art, play kitchens, soft toys, water toys, etc.) Soft toys must stay in their "quiet" center, so if a kid drags a stuffed animal around during the noisy "music" time, that's considered an infraction of the rules over the daycare.

Absolutely idiotic! Small business owners should be able to decorate their business and run it as they see fit, provided the environment is safe and healthy.

 

Sarbanes-Oxley - the bane of accountants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act

 

The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002...recognized the importance of information security to the economic and national security interests of the United States. The act requires each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by another agency, contractor, or other source...FISMA requires agency program officials, chief information officers, and inspectors general (IGs) to conduct annual reviews of the agency’s information security program and report the results to Office of Management and Budget (OMB)....
Security experts Bruce Brody, a former federal chief information security officer, and Alan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute – have described FISMA as a well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed tool, and argued that the compliance and reporting methodology mandated by FISMA measures security planning rather than measuring information security. Past federal chief technology officer Keith Rhodes said that FISMA can and has helped government system security but that implementation is everything, and if security people view FISMA as just a checklist, nothing is going to get done

 

FISMA - A knee jerk reaction to a problem with the IT Gurus causing every Federal Employee to take at least annual remedial training in IT Security, PII, and "something else".

That's three hours per person, at least, every year totally wasted...

As in most federal Computer Systems they are so locked down there isn't really much "we" can do to be proactive...

My home computer stays patched better than the ones at work!

And, mine runs about 10 times faster, even though much older, because my home computer doesn't have many mutually conflicting security software products all trying to run at the same time....

Computer Security now displaces Military Intelligence as the ultimate oxumoron!