Deloitte's dumb rules stop us from telling you about everyone else's dumb rules

Deloitte Access Economics in Australia is pitching the idea – quite possibly correct – that corporate bureaucracy is more costly than government regulation.

It's an attractive enough idea, especially in a country where the government has trumpeted as “red tape reduction” the repeal of legislation covering the phase-out of the AMPS telephone system and telegraph regulations.

Certainly, the egregious examples trumpeted in Deloitte's canned statement make enjoyable reading. There's the company that sold data in Excel format, but wouldn't let a subsidiary put spreadsheets on a Web site; another that demanded staff complete an ergonomic study to move desks, and then introduced hot-desking; and yet another that wanted a record of guest coffees but let its staff place unlimited orders for alcohol.

All up, the firm reckons, corporates idiocy soaks up AU$250 billion a year of Australia's economy with nothing to show for it (except, of course, keeping a lid on unemployment).

There surely had to be an IT angle in all of this, Vulture South reasoned, and decided to seek a copy of the report.

At this point, we encountered some dumb rules of Deloitte's making.

The first is that while Deloitte promotes the report on its own site, because the point of the report was the joint launch with treasurer Joe Hockey [think Chancellor in the UK, Treasury Secretary in the USA - Ed] to foster private sector layoffs efficiency, Deloitte points at an external Website to access the actual report.

The second is that you have to register to get a copy of the report – but the Website will only show the registration fields if cookies are enabled. Since the data collected in registration is, at a minimum, salutation, full name, e-mail, title, employer, country, state, industry and a privacy policy checkbox, that looks like a dumb rule.

The third dumb roadblock to productivity is that registration resulted not in access to the report, but a promise that it would be delivered via a separate e-mail, and the fourth is that some five hours after The Register submitted the form, the e-mail hasn't arrived.

The final way that Deloitte got in its own way is that at 10:51 AM, more than an hour after The Register filled out the registration request, Deloitte sent out its official announcement of the launch of the report. We replied asking for a copy of the report, but alas, haven't heard back from Deloitte. ®