A Note from the Editor
Social media has always befuddled me.
The last social media platform that I really understood was MySpace, and I readily admit that I really don’t know why I got MySpace to begin with. I was a soldier at the time, so it may have been as simply as someone asking,
“Are you on MySpace?”
I didn’t do much with it though. I remember spending a great deal of time figuring out which song I wanted on my profile, and I settled on “So Cold” by Breaking Benjamin. That song defined my life at that time, and by many measures it still does.
But beyond that song, I don’t remember “using” MySpace for anything.
Now, Facebook was different. I used it for only two things: playing Farmville and birthday reminders. But as a social media platform, I didn’t see the point. I mean, people were posting pictures of themselves, or their food, or a restaurant they were about to eat at, or their feet. It all seemed so stupid to me, and I didn’t see the point of it all.
Why would I want to “check in” at an Olive Garden? I didn’t really want anyone to know where I was, except for those people who were with me when I went somewhere. I also didn’t see the point of updating my status whenever I went or did something different than my last status update. It just seemed weird to me.
I haven’t been on MySpace since I updated the song on my profile. And I left Facebook in 2018 after a dead friend of mine sent me a friend request.
I hung out on Twitter for a while, before it was X, but it was just madness. I arrived on the tweeting scene in 2015 and was done with it by 2017. However, it was during that time when I learned about concepts like “posting into the void” and platform algorithms. I had no idea how easy it was to post every single day, spend hours crafting a post that someone might notice, only to go unnoticed in a sea of hundreds of thousands of users. Sure, I didn’t really know how to post things, or what hashtags were for, and when my teenagers would say “hashtag” anything I thought they sounded #stupid.
I figured that maybe someone would be interested in what I was posting or commenting. But, alas, I received almost no responses, except for a bunch of beautiful people who had 0 followers and followed thousands of Tweeters, and who also had made no posts. I didn’t know what people meant by the word “bot”, and it is likely that I had 100% bots in my cozy little circle. So, I left Twitter behind.
Now, you may be asking yourself, “what is the point of all this?” Why am I talking about something that you definitely know more about than I ever will? Well, I’ll tell you.
When I first had the idea for what would become bureaucracy.news, I knew that I wanted to report on the bureaucracy, the machine, the leviathan. I saw that most people were believing and regurgitating whatever their preferred media channel told them to say, and it became easy to determine which talking heads whispered in their ears by the buzz words and phrases they repeated ad nauseum.
Few people, it seemed to me at the time, were not looking for the answers to their questions, or worse, they weren’t asking any questions at all. They believed everything they heard from their trusted news sources, without question. And that bothered me. No longer did we discuss anything, we just yelled berating and unholy epithets at each other from across the social media universes.
So, I decided to just report on the information that the government published about itself, regardless of who was in office, and I certainly don’t care if it’s about good or not so good things. If the government mucks something up, I say it. If they do something positive, I say it. But I wanted more than anything for the people to have the information that they were too lazy to verify. And I don’t mean that as an insult, but just the reality of life.
To gain a wider reach for my articles and investigation, I knew that I would have to return to social media. Bureaucracy Times started with just a website and an X account.
I learned quickly that gaining traction on X was like starting a diesel engine in the arctic…it takes time. And even after months passed, I had gained little forward momentum on X. So, I started looking for other platforms.
I went to Bluesky because I read somewhere that most of the good journalists who left Twitter landed there. It took me a while to figure things out, but it only took a couple weeks before someone actually “liked” one of my posts. That was a good day.
A couple months after landing on Bluesky, I decided to enter a platform at the opposite end of the political spectrum: Truth Social. I’ve been there for nearly two months now, and I still haven’t received one like. And the only upvotes I received were my own…I was just experimenting.
But, I did get banned from Truth Social twice, and that was a hoot and a half! I wasn’t even mad because it gave me a sense of pride in some weird way. I mean, someone, or some bot, had to have read my articles, right? Why else would I get banned shortly after posting something? It doesn’t really matter. It’s just another platform that has a unique algorithm that scores accounts based on what they post, how they engage, and how often they’re on the platform after posting.
So, to bring it full circle, social media is a necessary evil to my mind. I don’t care for it, but it really has become the replacement for the old public square where ideas were shared and debated. And if I’m being honest, I’d rather be in an actual town square surrounded by every type, kind, and age of person, and engage in discussion…in person.
But I will say one thing. I have definitely seen an exponential increase in engagement with my writing over these last few months. When I first launched bureaucracy.news, I may have gotten 2 engagements per week. This past week, we had hundreds. So, there is something to say for being consistent and persistent.
I started reading declassified files, OIG reports, and legislative nonsense simply to put the information out there. Most normal people won’t spend time digging through a Federal Register that consistently exceeds 600 pages, looking for anything interesting. Most Americans don’t subscribe to over 80 newsletters from government agencies, waiting for inspector general reports to tattle on the agencies they overwatch. But I do, and so does the small crew of editors and writers who support this site.
We don’t do it for the money, primarily because we’re not making any. We have other jobs that pay us, which allows us to come together a couple times a week to read and discuss FOIA responses, decide which articles to write, and then edit whatever we can throw together. And all of this happens in our off time!
We’re just happy readers are showing up!
This Week’s Most-Read
The numbers are in. Here’s what you were reading this week:
- USPS Said Its Lost-Mail Center Returned 39% of Packages. The Inspector General Found Less Than 1%
- The $21 Billion Contract That Was Worth $74 Million
- The IRS Lost $304 Billion to Fraud. Its Best Defense Was a Mission Statement.
- Pentagon Spent Decades and Billions Hardening GPS. The Military Still Isn’t Ready to Lose It.
- We Asked America.gov 15 Questions the Government Already Answered. It Did Surprisingly Well.
Coming Up Next Week
A look at what’s heading your way next week:
An Electric Griddle Cost $54 Million, According to the Federal Government
The Bureau of Prisons paid a price tag that would make any home cook weep, and the OIG wants to know how it happened.
The Hospital Built on a Document That Never Existed
A VA construction project moved forward on the authority of paperwork that auditors couldn’t find — because it was never created.
America Runs on Stolen Cooking Oil. The Government Tracks the Fuel, But Who Tracks the Grease?
Used cooking oil has become big money in the renewable fuel market, and someone figured out the oversight gaps before regulators did.
From the Investigative Desk
The Watchdog, the Chatbot, and the Question Nobody Seems to Be Asking
The VA Office of Inspector General has quietly begun integrating AI tools into its investigative and audit workflows. We know this because the OIG said so — briefly, in budget justification language buried in appropriations documents most people never read.
What they haven’t said is much else.
They haven’t said which tools. They haven’t said what data those tools are accessing. They haven’t said whether veterans’ personally identifiable information (medical records, claims data, service histories) is being routed through third-party AI systems. And they haven’t said who approved any of it.
This isn’t a story about AI being bad. It’s a story about a government watchdog adopting a powerful new capability with almost no public accounting for how it’s being used, what guardrails exist, and whether the people it’s supposed to protect have any say in the matter.
We filed a FOIA request with the VA OIG asking for any policies, guidance documents, or memoranda governing the use of AI in audit and investigative work. The clock is running.
In the meantime, we’ve been reviewing what AI governance frameworks exist across the federal government, from OMB’s guidance to agency-specific policies, and comparing them against what the OIG’s own budget language actually implies.
The gap is significant.
What we’re trying to answer: Does the VA OIG have written policies governing its use of AI tools in active investigations. And if so, why haven’t they been made public?
FOIA Watch
A status update on our active FOIA requests:
GSA — AI Procurement Records: Filed September 22. Request covers procurement documents, vendor contracts, and internal communications related to GSA’s acquisition of AI tools for federal agency use. Acknowledged. Awaiting document review.
VA OIG — AI Governance Policies: Filed October 3. Requesting any written policies, directives, or guidance documents governing the use of artificial intelligence in VA OIG audit and investigative operations. Acknowledged. No documents produced.
Richmond VA Medical Center — Patient Safety Incident Reports: Filed September 28. Requesting incident reports and corrective action plans related to environment-of-care deficiencies cited in recent OIG inspection reports. Pending acknowledgment.
DOE — Grid Modernization Contract Communications: Filed October 1. Requesting internal communications related to contract awards under the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program. Pending acknowledgment.
The government runs on paperwork. So do we. The filing cabinets remain undefeated.
On Our Radar
A few things that haven’t become stories. Yet.
DOT’s Airline Subsidy Math Doesn’t Add Up
The Essential Air Service program subsidizes flights to remote communities. But a growing number of routes are subsidized at rates that exceed the cost of simply flying passengers first class on commercial carriers. Nobody in the department seems to think that’s a problem worth revisiting.
The FTC’s Quiet Warning on Healthcare Pricing
The Federal Trade Commission issued a report last month flagging anti-competitive pricing practices in hospital and pharmaceutical markets. It got almost no coverage. The practices it described are ongoing.
America.gov: Still Worth Watching
We tested it a few weeks ago and it performed better than expected. Since then, we’ve noticed the results getting less consistent. We’re not ready to call it a regression, but we are watching.
Until next week —
hannotek, Editor @ Bureaucracy.News
