I suggested a while back that all the reporting requirements these days give an increasing number of more and more minor incidents visibility at the top, thus prompting an increased desire for oversight, which is why we have this ridiculous snowball to deal with now.
Have you seen the plethora of daily OPREP reporting ...its out of control.
"Airman Smith stubbed his toe. No impact to mission."
There is a point where data becomes noise. If everything is important, then nothing is important.
Having sat the watch where we posted the OPREP reporting for the whole Navy I can agree with all the above. We would see the effects of the latest OPREP/Navy Blue guidance and it often echoed what you saw was focused on in the news like suicides or suicidal gestures/ideations, alcohol-related incidents and sexual assaults. In many of the daily summaries we did a majority of the incidents were alcohol related in some way to include domestic violence and assaults along with DUIs. It was a little depressing to see the constant string of reports of the babd behavior from around the Navy.
A little perspective was necessary though, with an active force of over 320,000 not including all the reservists, dependants, government civilians and other odds and ends that ended up in the OPREPs relatively often the numbers really aren't that bad at all though. The summary that is briefed regularly up to the Navy leadership is nothing but that bad news though. When that is what you see every morning how do you think leadership is going to react? In today's instant communication age they are also reacting to the simple fact that even the little things are splashed all over the internets/twitter/Facebook and the public knows about it and demands results. When we have folks racing to post about casualties before the network on post is shut down how do we expect to keep even minor stuff internal?
Do I like it? No, but it is something we have to live with for now unfortunately.