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Comment by alaithea | Hacker News Reader

Have you worked for the federal government? Employees literally have to fill out forms and follow a strict process to buy anything when they don't have these charge cards.

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If my experience in non-federal government is any guide, they have similar requirements when they use the card, the difference is that it is after the fact and if the application gets rejected, the payment is the employee’s responsibility. The amount of red tape is the same either way, but with the caed the red tape happens after the purchase.

The federal government actually operates in the opposite way. They cosign a credit card under your name, you have to pay it off at the end of every month, and they reimburse you after the fact.

That's pretty much the mechanism of acheiving the effect that I was describing on State governments I’ve seen, too. I was just trying to generalize on the level of responsibility, rather than detailed payment flow.

With the card, the urgent next-day-delivery order is already on its way while the red tape waits for approval. And the worker enters the order into the supplier's website directly.

With a standard order, the urgent order is entered into Oracle Financials, waiting for approval, and some time during office hours in the next 1-2 days someone in finance will copy the order into the supplier's website, omitting one order line by accident.

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