Unfortunately, this one is a little truer than not - sometimes . . . . . Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in the United States government - - - - -
it seems that way too many other strategies are used to revive or keep "dead horse" programs and pork barrel funding initiatives alive, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other government sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase dead horse riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Changing the requirements and regulations to declare that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hiring contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Doing an A-76 (competitive sourcing) study to see if contractors or another government agency can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchasing a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declaring the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Forming a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisiting (and then revising) the original performance requirements for horses.
20. Saying this particular horse was procured with cost as an independent, non-significant variable.
---- and ---- if all else fails -----
21. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.