I read the post, yes.
I outlined the utility of reports.
If his boss was wasting peoples' time he should have went to his boss's boss. What he did instead was lie. Lying is bad. By falsifying data in the report, whatever utility in the report existed is gone.
I have assigned reports as a task to ensure that the task gets done yes. I find it reasonably effective, especially when I don't have the time to do my own day to day inspection of work. I myself have also found problems when I have produced reports that I know will likely not be viewed. But I did find problems. And this was entirely due to having done an actual inspection that was required by the report spec.
I don't really consider myself a techie, that is true. I began programming around 1980 on a TRS 80 model 3. I wrote video games in basic. I didn't get back into programming until the early 90's doing database stuff in Paradox for DOS. My latest IT job has been intranet programming in Perl, and MySQL.
I also have an MBA in Entrepreneurship, with a Certificate in Business Ethics. My focus was on ethical strategies for new business development and re-engineering. I'm the turnaround guy that can come into a company and tell you what is going wrong, provide you with a new business strategy, and give you a list of the people you should hire and fire.
The report may have been pointless. However, it was not for the one producing the report to decide. It was between his boss and his bosses boss. If there was a problem it should have been made known to upper management so they could remove the report.
Management may have been incompetent, but this was malice. This was intentional deception of management to serve a personal interest.