There are seven (7) types of redundancy, each of which is found frequently in organizations of all kinds. Some types of redundancy are relatively benign; some less so.
Type One. Defensive Redundancy. The purpose of defensive redundancy is to give auditors and such people a security blanket. For example, your auditors will ask you whether your institution's database is backed up. Do not give the auditors a flip answer, because auditors are not flip people (except, according to reliable rumor, when 9 p.m. rolls around and they are still awake). You may think your information is backed up, but the auditors don't really want to know whether the information is backed up, they want to know whether it is backed up in an underground vault in eastern Nevada. Welcome this line of thinking! Never argue with an auditor, never resist an auditor, and never, never laugh at an auditor. Tell your auditors that you are extremely pleased with their recommendation and that you will immediately ask your superiors to budget $30 million dollars to construct a redundant data center built underground in - where was that? - eastern Nevada.
Type Two. Rhetorical Redundancy. The purpose of rhetorical redundancy is to give assistance to administrators who wish to re-consolidate power. The classic example is provided by the teaching of statistics in a college or university. It is highly likely that your own institution originally placed the responsibility for teaching statistics with the Mathematics folks, but that over the years various other faculties - City Planning, Agriculture, Industrial Engineering, Political Science, and so forth - decided that their best and brightest majors were being systematically and slowly disemboweled by the Math department. These other departments therefore came to the conclusion that all mathematicians (or, in statistical jargon, 100% of all mathematicians) are crazed madwomen. Of course, I use the technical term "madwomen" inclusively, to cover deranged mathematical persons of both sexes. So what did those other faculties typically do about this (possibly unfair) perception of the insane cruelty of the Math department? Quite understandably, they created "Statistics for City Planners," "Statistics for Agricultural Economy," "Statistics for Industrial Engineering," "Statistics for Political Scientists," etc. Obviously, what that maneuver created was not a pretty picture. You can see the problem immediately: the word "statistics" appeared four times in that single unfinished sentence! Whoa! Whoa! Redundancy alert! Redundancy alert! Beep the Provost! Beep the Provost! Now, all (or at least many) provosts can count to four, and know as well as you and I (or even better than you and I, for they are provosts, and we are not) that if you have four statistics courses you have at least three statistics courses that are shockingly redundant. In fact, it doesn't even take a provost to be shocked; any senior administrator who can count as high as four (and there are dozens of them throughout this great nation) will deplore this sad state of affairs - even if the madwomen in Math don't themselves happen to care one way or the other, and in fact don't give a damn about anything but fractals - if they even care about fractals, which is unlikely, because why should anyone care about fractals, for crying out loud - do you? Well, a problem identified is a problem solved! - and the bastard Statistics courses (which, ironically, is also what the students call them) are then done away with. And so now a new generation of spoiled, ignorant, ungrateful students will soon find out what Real Life is all about, when they are made to take the Math department's diabolical "Statistics Of Your Worst Conceivable Nightmare" course - which will improve student characters though not student minds.
Type Three. Turf Redundancy. Turf redundancy has this in common with rhetorical redundancy: it's entirely a matter of opinion. Entirely. According to one opinion (mine, for example), we are all redundant, each and every one of us. God simply did not need this completely ridiculous number of specimens of all races, colors, creeds, and athletic shoes to decide whether His so-called "human being experiment" was a success. It was obviously not a success, and the experimental design was (forgive me, O Lord, but You really need to try to be honest here for a second) megalomanic "Big Science" overkill. Surely one human subject was enough to test Your inane hypothesis - or maybe two or three or four human subjects. But clearly by the time young Cain came along and he and his brother started screaming at each other and started hitting each other, for God's sake, at that point You as Principal Investigator should have declared Your grand experiment a total screw-up - destined to bring forth nothing but television and skateboarding. At least, that is certainly my own humble opinion, though others are free to have entirely different opinions. For instance, others may perhaps feel that some individuals (e.g., they themselves) are necessary and nonredundant whereas other people (e.g., you the reader) should hit the road. Well, unfortunately, that rather hostile attitude suggests the existence of a problem resolvable only with attack weapons. For if two people are really doing exactly the same thing, there is no logical reason to call one of them redundant rather than the other. Do you see what I'm saying? And since you are the one who's been identified as redundant, surely you understand that! Hey, where are they taking you? Will you be coming back, do you think?
Type Four. Parkinsonian Redundancy. I have named Type Four redundancy in honor of my hero the great C. Northcote Parkinson (who discovered Parkinson's Law, which states that work will expand to fill the time allotted for it). Parkinsonian redundancy is quite different from turf redundancy. Whereas with turf redundancy two or more individuals are fighting to do the same job, with Parkinson redundancy there is no real job to be done, and so it is impossible to declare any particular worker redundant, because no one is doing real work. They are doing "make work." They are creating confusion and blowing smoke. They are making mountains out of molehills. Frequently, they are high elected officials. I and other redundancy connoisseurs celebrate Parkinsonian redundancy as a sublime example of redundancy in its most aesthetically satisfying form. Of course, jobs are not at stake in this type of redundancy, because there is no job to do. There is only scurrying-around to do, and some people are simply superb at this. Superb! Have you ever known anyone who can take an inconsequential, stale, paltry, pitiful, unoriginal, alleged "idea" and turn it into a War To End All Wars? I have.
Type Five. Mindless Redundancy. Mindless redundancy is, well, mindless, and it is ... everywhere you turn! Whereas other types of redundancy have some sort of general lofty purpose (such as mollifying your auditors, turning your institution into a shambles or routing your enemies), mindless redundancy is simply blather. It is the stuff of speeches that go on and on and project descriptions that go on and on. In its purest form, Type Five redundancy is a 68-page committee report that can be completely and accurately summarized in three simple declarative sentences.
Type Six. Negative Redundancy. I coin the term "negative redundancy" to define the result of a vigorous organizational downsizing program that was so effective that the organization has been left without enough people to do the job. Of course, no one cares about this, because getting the job done is not the purpose of downsizing. The only purpose of downsizing is to reduce the level of office gossip in an organization. Unfortunately, this strategy is usually only partially successful. True, it reduces the number of gossipees - but the number of gossipers somehow always remains constant, as does the percentage of worktime hours devoted to gossip and the ugliness of the gossip itself (as measured quantitatively on the Newcomb-Pratt SGSV Standard-Gossip Sheer-Viciousness scale).
Type Seven. Recursive Redundancy. Type Seven redundancy is, as you might imagine, exactly the same as Type One redundancy - word for word, sentence for sentence, idea for idea. Rather than reproduce its description here, I will omit it, in order to save paper and ink, which, unlike information technology visionaries, are in short supply. Please go back now to Type One, and start re-reading.
[This column first appeared in Edutech Report, and is being reprinted in the spirit of the topic at hand.]
John Gehl is editor and publisher of Educom Review. [email protected]