The Cost of Redundant Data

Duplication is a waste of labor, time, and resources.

At all four levels of government—local, county, state, and federal—we have multiple copies of the exact information. It’s sad when you realize the waste, and what all those people and resources could be used for.

At just the federal level, the Federal Register lists 448 agencies. No, I’m not kidding. Here’s the link, so you can see for yourself.

Federal Agencies: https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies

Do you think there is ANY duplication? YES! Your personal data is being replicated at:

The United States Post Office

The Internal Revenue Service

The Social Security Administration

The Department of Revenue

The Census Bureau

And perhaps additionally at:

The Veterans Administration

Medicare/Medicaid

Welfare offices

And many, many, many, many, many, many, many more. (See what I did there!)

Each of these agencies has buildings with people in them. These people aren’t cheap. Besides their salaries, they have pensions and, in many cases, have some of the best benefit packages available. They use supplies—computers, phones, etc.

Today, there are approximately 3.5 million federal employees in the United States.

The people who work at these agencies would otherwise be working in the private sector. These agencies are paid with your tax dollars. The more agencies, the higher the total cost. All this excessive duplication means one thing: higher and completely unnecessary taxes.

And that’s just the federal level. Let’s dig in a little bit further. For example, your name and address information at the United States Post Office is repeated:

At local levels for property taxes, sewage, electric, trash, water, EMS, fire department.

At the county level for property assessment, county taxes, etc.

At the state level for income tax, census, and voter registrations.

ALL of this adds additional cost. Not only to collect and store this information, but to keep it accurate. What is the total cost of duplication? How much do you think it costs to maintain hundreds or thousands of copies of your name and address?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks the number of employees who work in government.

Take a guess at how many people work in state and local government. If you think that most employees work at the federal level, you are wrong. The BLS states that, as of October 2023, there were 19.9 million people working at the state and local levels.

These 19.9 million represent approximately 13% of our nation’s workforce.

Here’s my point. Much of the same computerized information that is used at the federal level of government is the exact information used at lower levels. We are paying for these many times over. If we were able to significantly reduce the amount of duplicated data, we could combine many of these resources. We would become more productive. We could lower taxes.