Amy Winehouse: Honey, you need the EPA

Submitted for your approval: Marcus Peacock, deputy administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Peacock has an official EPA blog called Flow of the River. He says on the site that he started the blog "to describe what EPA is doing to improve its operations and make what EPA does more open to the public."

On that note, I give you this posting on Peacock's blog from yesterday. It concerns Amy Winehouse (pictured left), a world-renowned vocalist whose life, if you haven't heard, is a wreck. Among her problems, she's a drug addict and her husband is in serious legal trouble. Her problems, according to Peacock's blog, are the result of a bad management system. Had she the same management system in place at the EPA, which strives to identify problems early and correct them, she'd realize how screwed up she really is because somebody would have told her.

"There is a general rule in performance measurement that applies here: always bring bad news early," he writes. "One of the reasons EPA tries to measure things on a quarterly basis is so we can spot where problems are developing and correct them before they get big."

And later: "A good management system not only forces people to consider how they are doing but rewards the early identification of problems. Bring bad news early.

"Regardless of what great work we may or may not enjoy because of Amy Winehouse's harsh reality, the current situation can’t be good for Amy Winehouse."

What Winehouse's struggles have to do with the operations of the EPA, its' 17,000 employees or $7.7 billion budget is up to interpretation. Some might joke that if you work in the Bush administration's EPA, which hasn't shown much interest in environmental matters, you're as bored as the Maytag repairman, but let's not go there.

-- Scott Streater