New Employee Discovers Entire Department Exists to Approve Work of Another Department That No Longer Exists

A newly hired analyst at the Department of Secondary Review made an unsettling discovery last week when she attempted to contact the Department of Primary Analysis, the agency whose work her department has been reviewing for thirty years, and was informed that Primary Analysis was dissolved in 2003. 'I was trying to send back a batch of files with corrections,' said analyst June Newstart. 'The phone number went to a pizza place. The email bounced. The physical office is now a storage closet. So I asked my supervisor, and she got very quiet.' The Department of Secondary Review, which employs 34 people and operates on an annual budget of $2.8 million, was established in 1994 with the sole mandate of reviewing and approving outputs from the Department of Primary Analysis. Primary Analysis was dissolved during a restructuring in 2003. No one informed Secondary Review. 'We've been receiving files,' insisted Secondary Review Director Alan Continued. 'We review them, stamp them, and file them. Thirty-four people come to work every day and do this.' An investigation revealed that the files Secondary Review has been processing since 2003 are auto-generated test documents produced by a legacy software system that was never decommissioned. The system generates approximately 200 documents per month, each containing placeholder text and the words 'SAMPLE DATA -- DO NOT PROCESS.' 'In fairness, we review documents, not read them,' Continued said. 'Reading them is Primary Analysis's job. Which, as I now understand, no one is doing.' The Office of Government Accountability has recommended dissolving the Department of Secondary Review. The recommendation is currently under review by the Department of Tertiary Oversight, whose own mandate is being quietly investigated.