The counting house¶

A figure in grams per kilometre. A recycling rate. A count of crimes recorded last year. A certificate in operating a spreadsheet. A percentage of patients seen within four hours. Each is produced by a defined procedure, each can be checked by anybody with the procedure, and each is somebody’s performance.

A measurement introduced to see whether something is working becomes, once people are judged by it, a thing to be managed. The managing is rarely deceit. It is the ordinary response of anybody whose work is reported as a number, which is to attend to the number.

The number remains correct. It simply stops answering the question it was introduced to answer.

Disclaimer¶

The observatory notes that it publishes counts, files, dated entries and standing assessments, and is therefore producing a measurement of something itself. The clerks have declined to say of what, on the grounds that knowing would only encourage them.