He gave managers overlapping responsibilities, partly because he thought that confrontation would increase the amount of business information available.

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Oddly, this huge and critically important industry is overseen by an assortment of regulators whose overlapping responsibilities are understood by almost no one.

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The efforts of the Office of National Drug Control Policy provide a useful model for how such coordination across agencies with overlapping responsibilities might be carried out.

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Not only will Wahid have to keep his disparate ministers focused on a unified policy, he will very likely have to intervene to resolve disputes among those with overlapping responsibilities.

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Most of us get by on a patchwork of public and private services, with overlapping responsibilities: the fire department (paid for with tax revenues, usually) will put out the fire, while most homeowners have insurance to pay for the damages.

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"The proliferation of organizations with overlapping oversight and assistance responsibilities is a source of potential confusion among agency personnel and may be an inefficient use of scarce technical resources, " said Jack Brock, director of governmentwide and defense information systems at the General Accounting Office, speaking before Congress in February.

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