All these pesky so-called "climate auditors" have got nothing on JAMSTEC, who really know how to do these sorts of things properly.
There have been allegations of some shady practice in the awarding of contracts, and fishy accounting - not within JAMSTEC itself, I hasten to add, but we are all part of the same compost heap that is the Japanese governmental and quasi-governmental bureaucracy, so tend to get trawled in the same nets. Therefore, JAMSTEC is undertaking an audit to check whether the problem extends to its staff.
This audit consists of a non-anonymised questionnaire that goes something like this:
===
Q1: Have you engaged in shady accounting, and do you have any illegal slush fund? Yes/No (tick as applicable)
Q2: If the answer to Q1 is "yes", where is this money kept?
I certify that the answers to Q1 and Q2 are correct. Name _____
===
There follows some blurb to the effect that if the questionnaire is not returned by the deadline, someone will come and talk to me to help me understand how important it is.
Jules is lucky enough to get to go to monthly management meetings. At the last one, there was substantial discussion about the questionnaire, and it was decided that we should all tick the "No" box.
We are lucky indeed to have such inspirational leadership.
(I took a punt and had already sent it back - fortunately, I managed to guess the correct answer.)
There have been allegations of some shady practice in the awarding of contracts, and fishy accounting - not within JAMSTEC itself, I hasten to add, but we are all part of the same compost heap that is the Japanese governmental and quasi-governmental bureaucracy, so tend to get trawled in the same nets. Therefore, JAMSTEC is undertaking an audit to check whether the problem extends to its staff.
This audit consists of a non-anonymised questionnaire that goes something like this:
===
Q1: Have you engaged in shady accounting, and do you have any illegal slush fund? Yes/No (tick as applicable)
Q2: If the answer to Q1 is "yes", where is this money kept?
I certify that the answers to Q1 and Q2 are correct. Name _____
===
There follows some blurb to the effect that if the questionnaire is not returned by the deadline, someone will come and talk to me to help me understand how important it is.
Jules is lucky enough to get to go to monthly management meetings. At the last one, there was substantial discussion about the questionnaire, and it was decided that we should all tick the "No" box.
We are lucky indeed to have such inspirational leadership.
(I took a punt and had already sent it back - fortunately, I managed to guess the correct answer.)
12 comments:
:LOL:
Do you presume, perhaps because of obscurity or a language barrier, that your managers do not read your blog? Or is there really some deeper cultural difference that I don't understand.
I say this because I'm thinking an abundance caution might lead me to self-censorship regarding blogging about a topic like this.
The deeper cultural point is that the British and the Japanese have more similar senses of humour than do the British and the Americans.
I think that Climategate proved that!
jules --- That's becuase the British and Japanese do have a sense of humour. Americans only have a sense of humor.
Jules is management? Or some sort of employee rep?
Oh yes, jules is The Boss, and not only at home...
(don't ask what the Japanese is for "conflict of interest")
Come to think of it that second question should really allow for a "Sorry, I blew it all in Vegas" answer or maybe "The Yakuza Code of Silence forbids me from answering."
To put things in perspective, I'm currently at a workshop where the organiser announced with a laugh that he had to put down the coach trip outing to Nikko (popular tourist destination) on the agenda as a "science tour" to justify the funding.
Anyone here read Japanese? Some of this looks like it might be interesting (if off-topic for this thread):
http://lams-yokoyama.blogspot.com/
東京大学大気海洋研究所 横山祐典研究室 (Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo)
and http://www.kingjim.co.jp/sp/recolo_ir5/
Re: "lams-yokoyama". Yusuke Yokoyama is a paleoceanographer, and the blog articles are written by graduate students of his lab. It contains lists of scientific papers they read with a short summary (which looks interesting to me), but it does not contain substantial scientific discussions as far as I browsed.
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