Sound Familiar?

The following was copied from a book called Einstein's Bridge, by John Cramer. See if any of you guys who work with me think of he same thing I thought of when I read it.

"Right," said Roger. "The DOE labs have essentially halted scientific research while everyone scrambles around attending safety seminars, writing detailed safety procedures for every conceivable scenario of possible disaster, and filling vast bookshelves with thousand-page documents that no one will ever read."

Now, in the book it's part of a plot to halt government funding of the Superconducting Super Collider, basically by making the project appear inept. The thing that this paragraph reminded me of is a current business practice that is meant to improve products.