http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=GTIJDXNEDOQOXQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/04/15/wkafka15.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/15/ixworld.html
By Henry Samuel
(Filed: 15/04/2006)
France has created a "Kafka index" that measures the complexity of a project or law against its usefulness to cut red tape.
The index - referring to Franz Kafka's The Trial, which describes one man's fight against a nightmarish bureaucracy - is a scale of one to 100 measuring how many hurdles, from forms to letters or phone calls, are needed to win state permits or aid for a project.
"It is an indicator to measure as objectively as possible the most complex procedures so that we can then simplify them," said a government spokesman.
The index will be regularly updated on a website, raising the prospect of a hit parade of France's most Kafkaesque ministries.
By Henry Samuel
(Filed: 15/04/2006)
France has created a "Kafka index" that measures the complexity of a project or law against its usefulness to cut red tape.
The index - referring to Franz Kafka's The Trial, which describes one man's fight against a nightmarish bureaucracy - is a scale of one to 100 measuring how many hurdles, from forms to letters or phone calls, are needed to win state permits or aid for a project.
"It is an indicator to measure as objectively as possible the most complex procedures so that we can then simplify them," said a government spokesman.
The index will be regularly updated on a website, raising the prospect of a hit parade of France's most Kafkaesque ministries.