2010 and 2011 survey results: How much time do foresters spend maintaining document workflow?

From March 19th to March 29th 2010 and from February 29th to March 9th 2011 Greenpeace Forest forum held a survey. The question was “How much times do foresters spend on red tape (e.g. preparing various plans, reports, certificates and formal replies for control and overhead organizations)?”

It was recommended that only people who are familiar with the current state of business in this field take part in the survey. To evaluate the amount of time spent on red tape it was also recommended to take into consideration time spent on telephone conversations, sending emails and other actions which deal with preparation and submission of plans, reports, certificates and other documents, and also time for smoke breaks and other service breaks inevitable in this kind of work.

Most Greenpeace Forest forum visitors (approximately two thirds) are the people whose job is somehow connected with forest so they are really the ones to be asked about the current state of forest management. Therefore, even though the results of the poll are not entirely representative they reflect the forestry professionals’ opinion in general.

253 people took part in the 2010 survey and 315 participated in 2011 survey. Their answers were divided as follows (in % from the quantity of people participating).

http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4403/alexeyyaroshenko.7/0_5092f_10167a4c_XL.jpg

Both survey results are almost identical. Evaluation based on the average value for each interval shows that foresters spend ? of their work hours maintaining document workflow (75,5 % in 2010 and 76,4% an 2011). In 2011 the question about the time spent by foresters on red tape was discussed with several forest management specialists and also at the session of Public Environmental Council under the Federal Forestry Agency. These discussions confirmed that the survey results were correct.

Taking into consideration the expenses on forestry from the federal budget this means that document workflow in this field costs at least 10,6 billion rubles a year, which is 32% of all the money spent by government on forest management.

Link to the survey:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6634 (2010 survey)

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8849 (2011 survey)