Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Immigration department to change name to a bad acronym.

Public Servants tend to refer to their own and other departments by acronym. Thus the (old) Department of Family and Community Services was referred to as "FaCS" (FACKS).

Now that they're Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, one person I know insists on pronouncing FaCSIA as though it were spelled fascia (i.e., FAY-SHA), but most people still just call it FACKS, or FACK-SEE-A.

Whether or not the D -- for 'Department' -- is pronounced depends on whether or not it makes a good acronym. Social Security was always called "DSS", not just the "SS". If the D in FaCS had been pronounced, the acronym could well have sounded very much like "The effing Cs".

Still, the Department of Primary Industries and Energy has -- or at least had -- an acronym (DPIE) that is pronounced "Dopey", so not everyone thinks about the acronyms before naming the department.

And it shows. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DEE-MA) has changed name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. It won't stop them being dicks, though.

[END]

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I've been through a name change with the Depatment of Health and aged care - to the department of health and ageing. We didn't care about the care anymore - just the process of decrepitude.

I'm at FACSIA now and people aren't dealing with the IA part very well, mostly because we have a backlog of stationery that has FACS written on it. I just answer the phone "Childcare - Simon Speaking".

DOHA was a nice "Dough-ha" now its DOHAAC that we pronounce Dee-Hac.

When you add in to the mix that the state governments have their own FACS and Health departments - you can see why the public are already angry before they even find the right person to talk to.

I think largly it's why people think they get "The runaround" they just don't know who to call in the first place. It's pone of the reasons I've gone to FACSIA for a year - career wise - it's a good idea to know who's responsible for what if you want to get thinkgs done.
The days of taking a month to find the guy who tells you it will take a year should be well over.

I feel it's actually a really good argument for a centralised government body on some things - especially health. After 6 years I knoe exactly what thing neither body wants to deal with and will handball to the other - and in the meantime people die.

Having said that - health and facsia and Centrelink used to be a huge "department of everything" and I can't remember things being much better.

KFS