It fascinates me that we have the technological capability to make documentation and reporting easier through single-source production, and yet our 20th (19th?) century thinking prevents us from taking advantage of the potential.
Example
Faculty at CUNY are now required to enter their scholarly/creative activity into a CUNY web-based reporting system. As almost anyone can quickly recognize, this is yet another report piled on top of existing reporting.
As far as I can tell, there was no consultation with individual colleges on the design of this system and the potential integration of the system with local college online reporting systems. The result is an expectation that we'll take the time to "repeat" our reporting in multiple systems.
Why would anyone embrace technology if it means writing, re-writing, and re-writing the same text in multiple systems? The embrace of technology just seems idiotic in that kind of context. Copy-Paste works, but it really doesn't take advantage of the wonders of the database.
Fortunately, we have a responsive web team on campus. When I brought this new "report" to their attention, we were able to begin work on a mechanism to push the data entered in our local systems to the CUNY system.
The setup is not nearly as seamless as it might be. But it's a whole lot better than what would otherwise be the case.