Last week, during an offline week in greece, I ran across this very curious new concept: the Kafka Index, created in France. It is basically and index that measures the complexity of a project/law and its impact. Referring to Franz Kafka's great novel "The Trial" in which a man tries to struggle against an atrocious bureaucracy, this index will be public (yeah, let's see what institutions are kafka-esque) and would be in the form of 1-100 scale "measuring how many hurdles, from forms to letters or phone calls, are needed to win state permits or aid for a project" (via). For those who can read french, here is the account from the Assemblée Nationale:
un indice - provisoirement baptisé « indice Kafka » - va par ailleurs être créé pour mesurer la qualité des projets de loi. à la place des études d'impact, qui ne fonctionnent pas, chaque projet de loi sera accompagné de deux notes : la première traduira la complexité de la loi et la seconde appréciera son impact, notamment en termes de coûts. Les grilles d'analyse élaborées ont été appliquées à des lois passées et donnent des résultats très intéressants. Cet indice étant public, chaque ministre sera incité à travailler davantage pour améliorer les dispositions de ses projets de loi ;
And it's only a provisional name!
Why do I blog this? Although it sounds amusing, I am curious about how people put meaning behind this kind of measure. I would prefer having visualization of the process liek the temporal description with the people in charge... hmmm activity theory?