Well here it is, the world has a crisis, an economic one. People are losing their jobs, the rich management who made poor decisions are taking a breather and requesting public money to kickstart the economy and........ WAIT, WHAT? The business leaders who brought about this mess in the first place by abusing public funds to line their pockets, the same leaders who push the citizenry into becoming consumers and production machines, the same leaders who now face the consequences of their corruption..... THEY WANT WHAT?
Isn't that how we got into trouble in the first place? Bad decisions, no preparation for the future, reacting to situations instead of THINKING and preventing unusual situations. What do we get from this economic downturn? A knee-jerk reaction where all the nations immediately agree on a solution (proving that with the proper political will, the governments of the world can make an important decision..... of course this decision bailed out the rich from troubles more than the majority of us who are now suffering job losses).
The economy has shown its hiccup and demonstrated that our current direction is a bad one.... How do we respond? We slow down this metaphorical car but maintain the same direction despite the last bump where we damaged our car. The bureaucracy stays the same, the corruption is found and covered up (to be replaced by a yet more sophisticated corruption scheme that we will uncover in 20 years and act as shocked when it is discovered as we are "shocked" today), the business leaders or industrialists are not replaced or brought to trial..... So nothing has really changed.
If an employee or a bureaucrat had done that much damage to his company or to his bureaucratic system, we all know how that would end: a lost job and prison time. Yet when the leaders of our society do this (and I really don't mean politicians), they keep their money, they keep their assets..... AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY, they request public funds to bail them out..... So much for the trillions of dollars of profits done by these leaders (guess that money is gone). So the poor who followed the direction of the rich, now have to pay for obeying their master's direction.
Should society be run on charisma? knowledge? wisdom? riches? Well at the moment, it is run by riches irrelevant how you got the money, you now have the law firm to defend your acquisitions. With riches, you sponsor the charisma you need to transmit the message you want. You hire the knowledge you want and you pay for "wisdom" from sophists. Anyone tells you something you don't want to hear, you have the money to ignore that unpleasant sound....
Plato's Republic mentions that the metaphorical city would be in ruins if it was run by the industrialist who seeks after riches..... Here we live in a society that is run by the motivation of acquiring riches and we have a hiccup to make us pause and reconsider our future..... How do we respond? Seems like we will continue to fund the confirmed rich to continue stealing from us and make decisions that are senseless for society but very profitable for the few rich.
Maybe I should become a sophist.... I'd have more money and flatter my rich customer with trivialities....
So to conclude, what economic crisis? We aint changing anything..... more of the same attitude, produce and consume, ignore anything unrelated to those two activities and let the rich leaders continue in their role of our coaches as we continue to produce and consume.... If we work hard enough, we may finally get that carrot dangling in front of our faces, just beyond our reach.... just a bit more effort now!
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The cheese and listeriosis issue
Well if you have read the previous blogs about listeriosis, you should remember that I saw the cheese issue was a knee-jerk reaction. As in when the meat infection spread was known to have been caused by a slow response time based upon the existing evidence.... the cheese infection was a super quick response time based upon non-existing evidence. For the meat, we "knew" that X products were infected and we slowly had a recall. For the cheese, we "assumed" that X products were infected and we promptly destroyed the whole batch.
The retail store owners are upset and have lost quite a bit of money. They are not requesting compensation, they are demanding it. Their argument? The inspectors were told that 3 brands out of several dozens were infected, so the inspectors decided to destroy all the brands of cheeses without verification. The store owners pleaded to place the other brands in a special refrigerator so that they could each be tested for the infection. If the infection was there, then they would agree to destroy it (common sense). The government inspectors, from a bureaucratic mindset, could not understand the request.... they had one task: do a show of force to eliminate public fears; forget evidence, forget common sense, just do something, anything to demonstrate that they have controlled the listeriosis infection in the cheese. Avoid a repeat of the meat infection. No thinking, just reaction.
Naturally, the store owners want compensation for destroying cheeses that were not proven to be infected. How does the government bureaucracy respond to this? They make a statement that the government is not in the habit of providing insurance when the merchants lose products through a disaster, in this case, a listeriosis infection. That would be like a firefighter who decides to fight a house fire accross the street from your house, decides to run accross the street towards your house, busts down your door, sprays your entire house down with water ruining your furniture and electronic devices. When you point out to him that your house did not have a fire and that you demand compensation for his act of vandalism, he answers: "Fire departments do not compensate a person who has water damage from fighting a fire." Can you be any more brain dead than that as a bureaucracy? This proves that they are not listening to the complaint. The merchants do not want to be compensated for the listeriosis infected cheeses that were destroyed, they want to be compensated for the perfectly intact cheeses that were not infected but were destroyed nonetheless.
The government bureaucracy would then say "how do you know they were not infected?" To which the merchant would say: "how do you know that they were?" The merchant offered a proposal to verify but the inspectors rejected the proposal.... probably because it would have cost the government too much money to inspect, instead they stole from the store owners and now they don't want to admit their crime. As much as it is interesting to know that there is an independent judicial branch in the government to arbitrate between the brainless bureaucracy and the unfortunate merchant.... I find it sad that it even reaches that stage. Its pretty obvious who is at fault, we don't need to spend more money in the courts to deal with this.
Alternative argument: if the cleaning and cutting areas were not properly controlled environments, then the solution was to fine the owners and publicly state that the store did not proceed in the proper procedures. Destroying the cheeses was not the solution, at least not until the verification was made to prove an infection. If the merchant did in fact have improper storage or improper cleaning methods, inform the public and fine the merchant. Remember, use proper judgment and punish harshly deliberate incompetence. If the merchant is at fault, destroy his reputation and explain why he is at fault. If the bureaucratic machine is at fault, then they bloody well must compensate such a foolish act, moreso if they wasted the time of the courts. Human judgment should prevail, not written regulations that can never see the entire issue. If humans can err, how much more can rules written by humans err? There is no way you can cover every possibility imaginable with a written rule. The rule can only be a mnemonic device to help point you in the right direction of where you should go in any given situation.
Exercise for my readers: Try to write a training manual on how to ride a bicycle. Try to cover as many possible outcomes as you can. Then ask someone if they can read your manual and have acquired the skill of riding a bicycle from just reading your instructions. (If you succeed, submit your brilliance to scientific journals as you will have been the first human ever to succeed such a task).
Rules guide, they do not command us. Bureaucrats are expected to have the rules command them and this is a bad road to take. The two listeriosis cases, the meat and the cheese, were caused by this wrong direction. Even if both were opposite actions to each other, one was a lack of action, and the other was a very firm reaction.... both suffered from a lack of human judgment and both followed bureaucratic procedures.
The retail store owners are upset and have lost quite a bit of money. They are not requesting compensation, they are demanding it. Their argument? The inspectors were told that 3 brands out of several dozens were infected, so the inspectors decided to destroy all the brands of cheeses without verification. The store owners pleaded to place the other brands in a special refrigerator so that they could each be tested for the infection. If the infection was there, then they would agree to destroy it (common sense). The government inspectors, from a bureaucratic mindset, could not understand the request.... they had one task: do a show of force to eliminate public fears; forget evidence, forget common sense, just do something, anything to demonstrate that they have controlled the listeriosis infection in the cheese. Avoid a repeat of the meat infection. No thinking, just reaction.
Naturally, the store owners want compensation for destroying cheeses that were not proven to be infected. How does the government bureaucracy respond to this? They make a statement that the government is not in the habit of providing insurance when the merchants lose products through a disaster, in this case, a listeriosis infection. That would be like a firefighter who decides to fight a house fire accross the street from your house, decides to run accross the street towards your house, busts down your door, sprays your entire house down with water ruining your furniture and electronic devices. When you point out to him that your house did not have a fire and that you demand compensation for his act of vandalism, he answers: "Fire departments do not compensate a person who has water damage from fighting a fire." Can you be any more brain dead than that as a bureaucracy? This proves that they are not listening to the complaint. The merchants do not want to be compensated for the listeriosis infected cheeses that were destroyed, they want to be compensated for the perfectly intact cheeses that were not infected but were destroyed nonetheless.
The government bureaucracy would then say "how do you know they were not infected?" To which the merchant would say: "how do you know that they were?" The merchant offered a proposal to verify but the inspectors rejected the proposal.... probably because it would have cost the government too much money to inspect, instead they stole from the store owners and now they don't want to admit their crime. As much as it is interesting to know that there is an independent judicial branch in the government to arbitrate between the brainless bureaucracy and the unfortunate merchant.... I find it sad that it even reaches that stage. Its pretty obvious who is at fault, we don't need to spend more money in the courts to deal with this.
Alternative argument: if the cleaning and cutting areas were not properly controlled environments, then the solution was to fine the owners and publicly state that the store did not proceed in the proper procedures. Destroying the cheeses was not the solution, at least not until the verification was made to prove an infection. If the merchant did in fact have improper storage or improper cleaning methods, inform the public and fine the merchant. Remember, use proper judgment and punish harshly deliberate incompetence. If the merchant is at fault, destroy his reputation and explain why he is at fault. If the bureaucratic machine is at fault, then they bloody well must compensate such a foolish act, moreso if they wasted the time of the courts. Human judgment should prevail, not written regulations that can never see the entire issue. If humans can err, how much more can rules written by humans err? There is no way you can cover every possibility imaginable with a written rule. The rule can only be a mnemonic device to help point you in the right direction of where you should go in any given situation.
Exercise for my readers: Try to write a training manual on how to ride a bicycle. Try to cover as many possible outcomes as you can. Then ask someone if they can read your manual and have acquired the skill of riding a bicycle from just reading your instructions. (If you succeed, submit your brilliance to scientific journals as you will have been the first human ever to succeed such a task).
Rules guide, they do not command us. Bureaucrats are expected to have the rules command them and this is a bad road to take. The two listeriosis cases, the meat and the cheese, were caused by this wrong direction. Even if both were opposite actions to each other, one was a lack of action, and the other was a very firm reaction.... both suffered from a lack of human judgment and both followed bureaucratic procedures.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Can Bureaucracy be improved?
As I mentioned in a previous blog, the bureaucracy in and around government (public service), could be considered another branch of government. In yet an even earlier blog, I mentioned the flaws of bureaucratic thinking stifling human judgment by an over-reliance upon regulations instead of using the rules as a guideline to determine the right course of action. There are some who believe that the primary purpose of any bureaucracy is to sustain itself and this is irrelevant to what the bureaucracy is mandated to do. For example, a department of social welfare which is mandated to help the non-working poor by providing a bit of cash for survival and some tools to help the non-working poor find some employment will have its mandate at odds with the self-sustaining aspects of the bureaucracy. If there is a decision that would be made to guarantee that the working poor would successfully find employment and no longer need the services of this bureaucracy, then this decision would take a back seat and another decision would be found to continue the same level of funding from the government purse or attempt to provoke an increase in funding.
Remember, this decision made by the career bureaucrat would solve a major societal problem and as a result cut his department by 50%. Who would make that kind of solution available to a politician in charge who will not be there in a few years? This bureaucrat would have spent 20 years in this department and is close with his colleagues who will continue on when the bureaucrat retires. The loyalty to the department is high, so a decision to sabotage the future of that department is not likely to be made or even offered to the politician in theoretical rulership.
Another flaw of the bureaucracy is the unnecessary secrecy or confidentiality on its procedures. For whatever reason, the bureaucrat keeps the mystique alive by not answering the client with the proper help that is needed unless the client uses the special jargon and procedures to get the help needed. The bureaucrat will not volunteer this information, because it is against the regulations to influence a client. The client will not know how to navigate this web of mystery unless he was a former bureaucrat, or has a personal relationship with another bureaucrat who has counselled the client as to what to ask for and when.
One of the first things that any bureaucracy will do is to have the new employee sign a non-disclosure form to keep everything confidential and to only allow the department of public affairs to reveal anything to the public through the media. Naturally, we have such public communications present a positive spin on any developments. So the public is never informed of the options available to them, the minister in charge who has just recently taken over the leadership of this bureaucracy does not know the internal structures and relies upon the opinion of the long-term public servant who may or may not have an agenda contrary to the public good.
When the man was tasered in a Vancouver airport by the RCMP and the man died afterwards, what do you suppose the minister in charge was told about the incident? About the same as what the public was told, the man was incoherent and violent and did not comply with the instructions given by the officers at the scene. We, the public believed the statement (why would we doubt them?), then the video taken by a witness was broadcast around the world, and we saw a completely different event than what was previously stated. This would be an example of a bureaucracy protecting its own interests above all else. Do not assume that other bureaucracies are immune to this kind of practice and that this situation with the RCMP was an exception to the day to day operations. This is an incident that caused the death of an individual and lucky for us that a video testimony was there to prevent the usual confidentiality of the bureaucracy.
Possible solution for bureaucrats to have more loyalty upon their mandate than to self-perpetuate the actual bureaucracy. Reward innovation, if the team of bureaucrats come up with a plan, and as a result of that plan it makes their department obsolete, reward them with lifetime salary benefits as if they had continued working there. Remember the department no longer exists so we save money on future recruiting and training and on equipment. The bureaucrat has the option to get into a new career or schooling or even retirement without loss of his reward.
Possible solution for the confidentiality problem, the culture of silence: again reward a legitimate whistle-blower. If there is a practice which is contrary to ethics and is deserving of public awareness for potential discussion. Encourage the bureaucrat to file a report about it to his manager while keeping a copy for himself. Then the bureaucrat allows a reasonable amount of time to correct the situation. If the situation is not corrected, then the bureaucrat has the duty to inform the public of this illicit or unethical practice. The whistleblower who does find a problem and a solution should be promoted or rewarded in some other way. Again, intelligence, judgment and innovation must be rewarded and not stifled (as it is in the current bureaucratic culture).
Bureaucracies seem to reward seniority or experience. Perhaps we should include innovation and judgment in the equation. You may find a brilliant innovator promoted before a 20 year experienced bureaucrat who only repeats the same technique blindly. Would this be so bad? Bureaucracy is the grease making the government machine working. It is in everyone's interest to have better scrutiny on this "grease" and reward this "grease" if it performs above its normal function.
Remember, this decision made by the career bureaucrat would solve a major societal problem and as a result cut his department by 50%. Who would make that kind of solution available to a politician in charge who will not be there in a few years? This bureaucrat would have spent 20 years in this department and is close with his colleagues who will continue on when the bureaucrat retires. The loyalty to the department is high, so a decision to sabotage the future of that department is not likely to be made or even offered to the politician in theoretical rulership.
Another flaw of the bureaucracy is the unnecessary secrecy or confidentiality on its procedures. For whatever reason, the bureaucrat keeps the mystique alive by not answering the client with the proper help that is needed unless the client uses the special jargon and procedures to get the help needed. The bureaucrat will not volunteer this information, because it is against the regulations to influence a client. The client will not know how to navigate this web of mystery unless he was a former bureaucrat, or has a personal relationship with another bureaucrat who has counselled the client as to what to ask for and when.
One of the first things that any bureaucracy will do is to have the new employee sign a non-disclosure form to keep everything confidential and to only allow the department of public affairs to reveal anything to the public through the media. Naturally, we have such public communications present a positive spin on any developments. So the public is never informed of the options available to them, the minister in charge who has just recently taken over the leadership of this bureaucracy does not know the internal structures and relies upon the opinion of the long-term public servant who may or may not have an agenda contrary to the public good.
When the man was tasered in a Vancouver airport by the RCMP and the man died afterwards, what do you suppose the minister in charge was told about the incident? About the same as what the public was told, the man was incoherent and violent and did not comply with the instructions given by the officers at the scene. We, the public believed the statement (why would we doubt them?), then the video taken by a witness was broadcast around the world, and we saw a completely different event than what was previously stated. This would be an example of a bureaucracy protecting its own interests above all else. Do not assume that other bureaucracies are immune to this kind of practice and that this situation with the RCMP was an exception to the day to day operations. This is an incident that caused the death of an individual and lucky for us that a video testimony was there to prevent the usual confidentiality of the bureaucracy.
Possible solution for bureaucrats to have more loyalty upon their mandate than to self-perpetuate the actual bureaucracy. Reward innovation, if the team of bureaucrats come up with a plan, and as a result of that plan it makes their department obsolete, reward them with lifetime salary benefits as if they had continued working there. Remember the department no longer exists so we save money on future recruiting and training and on equipment. The bureaucrat has the option to get into a new career or schooling or even retirement without loss of his reward.
Possible solution for the confidentiality problem, the culture of silence: again reward a legitimate whistle-blower. If there is a practice which is contrary to ethics and is deserving of public awareness for potential discussion. Encourage the bureaucrat to file a report about it to his manager while keeping a copy for himself. Then the bureaucrat allows a reasonable amount of time to correct the situation. If the situation is not corrected, then the bureaucrat has the duty to inform the public of this illicit or unethical practice. The whistleblower who does find a problem and a solution should be promoted or rewarded in some other way. Again, intelligence, judgment and innovation must be rewarded and not stifled (as it is in the current bureaucratic culture).
Bureaucracies seem to reward seniority or experience. Perhaps we should include innovation and judgment in the equation. You may find a brilliant innovator promoted before a 20 year experienced bureaucrat who only repeats the same technique blindly. Would this be so bad? Bureaucracy is the grease making the government machine working. It is in everyone's interest to have better scrutiny on this "grease" and reward this "grease" if it performs above its normal function.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Branches of Government
Since we are in electoral panic this month, I decided to look at the Canadian system and offer some critiques of the way things are. I want to to briefly mention each of the well known branches of government and mention 2 others that are sometimes included in the political tree. I suppose I will also offer a very brief contrast with the American system (as in the U.S. system for any Latin American readers who object to the use of "American" when describing the U.S. country). Division of powers is the underlying reasoning as to why we seperate the exercise of ruling a society into different branches. Right or wrong, it comes from the fear of having one human in control of too much: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely", as if a mere human controlling a society of humans is considered absolute power when you consider the vastness of our tiny universe in a potential multiverse (according to some quantum physicists), but no matter, it is the reason we have to divide the political tree into several branches.
Branch #1, the most well known, is the executive. This is the day to day operations of running a country, the decision makers are here. See it like a CEO of a corporation, often hired to deal with the existing rules and applying them for each new situation that arises. The U.S. has this seperated and calls its office the Presidency.
Branch #2, the least well known, is the legislative. This is where the thinking up of rules happen, this is where rules themselves are created. See it like the Board of Directors, who take a more longterm vision to bring the corporation into a brighter future. In the corporate field, they usually decide who the CEO would be. In the U.S., they are the Senators and the Congress members. They discuss if they should modify existing laws, create new ones or eliminate old ones.
Canada blends branch 1 and 2 together. The Prime Minister has the responsibilities of running the day to day operations and is also head of the political party who discusses new laws. The theory is that it is better to have the ones creating the laws to implement them better. A majority in the law creation area guarantees a smooth running of government. A minority in the law creation area guarantees a constant negotiation with other political parties before implementations of laws can be made. The current Canadian elections are to change the current situation of minority rulership which slows down implementation of improving society and convince the voters to have a majority rulership. The Conservatives are the current minority leaders and they hope that their success at running a minority government will convince voters that they can handle the job of majority government. Historically, they have had the longest minority government in Canada (I think), and they have also been the ones to call an election (which is usually determined by others who outvote collectively the minority party in charge). This seems to show that they are capable to receive the trust of the voters to become the next majority law-makers in Canada.
Branch #3, the neutral party, is the judicial. This is the judge, the one who figures out what the rules actually means when there is a dispute of the citizenry who attempts to follow the rules and is somehow unfairly treated by the government. In a corporate setting, it would be the ombudsman who settles between an employee and management or between a customer and the company. The judicial does not create rules, they look at the existing rules and see if they have been misapplied. They try to interpret the spirit of the law against those who may abuse the letter of the law. Canada does not vote for judges, they are selected by the governing party. The judges are not supposed to answer to any political party, even though they are initially chosen by the head of a political party. The situation is more complex than what is described here and for brevity some of my descriptions may be too simplistically naive but I hope to preserve the essence of what the system attempts (whether the practice follows the theory is another blog's discussion which I may address in the future).
Branch #4, unofficial, could be seen as the bureaucracy. This is the hidden grease in the machinery. The bureaucrat exists in all three levels of government. The bureaucrat is never elected and will still be there when the elected official is replaced by someone else. The bureaucrat is technically under the orders of the elected official, but since the elected official is untrained in the bureaucracy that he is overseeing, he must be educated by the bureaucrat as to how things really work. If people complain that it doesn't matter who is in charge things always stay the same, then they probably have felt the negative aspects of the bureaucracy. Who is in charge of a particular Canadian ministry? The Minister himself who has just got the position or the bureaucratic advisor who has been at the same post for the past 20 years and has been promoted up the ranks of that ministry? The signature of the latest order is the Minister's but how many times have you seen the real work done by underlings and that the boss gets the credit and the signature? The bureaucracy is hidden from public scrutiny and outlasts all governments. Can a truly democratic country allow this hidden branch to continue without scrutiny?
Branch #5, unofficial, could be seen as the news media. They are supposed to offer a critical report of the above branches of government. How can we know that they are doing their jobs properly when they are controlled by bosses who have political interests who are sometimes with the current government? The journalist has to satisfy his editor, and the editor will not hire the person who has shown his political colors to be against the editor himself. Have you noticed that sometimes when a journalist asks a really tough sounding question, the elected official dances around the topic and offers no answer at all.... the journalist lets him get away with it? Can democracy be served if the journalist and the politician play act a non-existing rivalry with each other? Can democracy be served if the journalist can not access the same documents accessible to the politician or to the bureaucrat? Can democracy be served when the journalist who is there to demand answers about a politician's behavior is gently pushed aside by the politician's security detail as the politician walks down the hall to his office ignoring the questions?
I wish to focus on each branch in the following posts with a critical eye. We are so often told the positive elements but perhaps we should look at their flaws as well. The above post was more of a contrast and quick glance.
Branch #1, the most well known, is the executive. This is the day to day operations of running a country, the decision makers are here. See it like a CEO of a corporation, often hired to deal with the existing rules and applying them for each new situation that arises. The U.S. has this seperated and calls its office the Presidency.
Branch #2, the least well known, is the legislative. This is where the thinking up of rules happen, this is where rules themselves are created. See it like the Board of Directors, who take a more longterm vision to bring the corporation into a brighter future. In the corporate field, they usually decide who the CEO would be. In the U.S., they are the Senators and the Congress members. They discuss if they should modify existing laws, create new ones or eliminate old ones.
Canada blends branch 1 and 2 together. The Prime Minister has the responsibilities of running the day to day operations and is also head of the political party who discusses new laws. The theory is that it is better to have the ones creating the laws to implement them better. A majority in the law creation area guarantees a smooth running of government. A minority in the law creation area guarantees a constant negotiation with other political parties before implementations of laws can be made. The current Canadian elections are to change the current situation of minority rulership which slows down implementation of improving society and convince the voters to have a majority rulership. The Conservatives are the current minority leaders and they hope that their success at running a minority government will convince voters that they can handle the job of majority government. Historically, they have had the longest minority government in Canada (I think), and they have also been the ones to call an election (which is usually determined by others who outvote collectively the minority party in charge). This seems to show that they are capable to receive the trust of the voters to become the next majority law-makers in Canada.
Branch #3, the neutral party, is the judicial. This is the judge, the one who figures out what the rules actually means when there is a dispute of the citizenry who attempts to follow the rules and is somehow unfairly treated by the government. In a corporate setting, it would be the ombudsman who settles between an employee and management or between a customer and the company. The judicial does not create rules, they look at the existing rules and see if they have been misapplied. They try to interpret the spirit of the law against those who may abuse the letter of the law. Canada does not vote for judges, they are selected by the governing party. The judges are not supposed to answer to any political party, even though they are initially chosen by the head of a political party. The situation is more complex than what is described here and for brevity some of my descriptions may be too simplistically naive but I hope to preserve the essence of what the system attempts (whether the practice follows the theory is another blog's discussion which I may address in the future).
Branch #4, unofficial, could be seen as the bureaucracy. This is the hidden grease in the machinery. The bureaucrat exists in all three levels of government. The bureaucrat is never elected and will still be there when the elected official is replaced by someone else. The bureaucrat is technically under the orders of the elected official, but since the elected official is untrained in the bureaucracy that he is overseeing, he must be educated by the bureaucrat as to how things really work. If people complain that it doesn't matter who is in charge things always stay the same, then they probably have felt the negative aspects of the bureaucracy. Who is in charge of a particular Canadian ministry? The Minister himself who has just got the position or the bureaucratic advisor who has been at the same post for the past 20 years and has been promoted up the ranks of that ministry? The signature of the latest order is the Minister's but how many times have you seen the real work done by underlings and that the boss gets the credit and the signature? The bureaucracy is hidden from public scrutiny and outlasts all governments. Can a truly democratic country allow this hidden branch to continue without scrutiny?
Branch #5, unofficial, could be seen as the news media. They are supposed to offer a critical report of the above branches of government. How can we know that they are doing their jobs properly when they are controlled by bosses who have political interests who are sometimes with the current government? The journalist has to satisfy his editor, and the editor will not hire the person who has shown his political colors to be against the editor himself. Have you noticed that sometimes when a journalist asks a really tough sounding question, the elected official dances around the topic and offers no answer at all.... the journalist lets him get away with it? Can democracy be served if the journalist and the politician play act a non-existing rivalry with each other? Can democracy be served if the journalist can not access the same documents accessible to the politician or to the bureaucrat? Can democracy be served when the journalist who is there to demand answers about a politician's behavior is gently pushed aside by the politician's security detail as the politician walks down the hall to his office ignoring the questions?
I wish to focus on each branch in the following posts with a critical eye. We are so often told the positive elements but perhaps we should look at their flaws as well. The above post was more of a contrast and quick glance.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Bureaucratic Blunders
My second argument for the listeriosis accident pertains to the inflexible bureaucratic rules which stifle human judgment and common sense. Now I don't know how accurate the news reports are about the actual happenings of the food inspectors of the private company or of the government inspectors. Who knew what when and where is often difficult to ascertain in the context of the next news report let alone a full investigation. I also know that the bureaucracy has an internal confidentiality to prevent anyone outside the in-group to know what actually goes on. No one on the inside of the bureaucratic machine will inform the external observer unless the external observer asks very precise questions, and no external observer can ever know what precise questions to ask to get the answers sought. The bureaucrat will not volunteer information because of confidentiality clauses and will only answer the properly filled out requests on the appropriate forms during the appropriate times.
But to get back to the listeriosis issue and the news, I did hear about an interesting development. Apparently, there was appropriate testing done by the private company. The testing was done on the work stations themselves and when the bacteria was found, the entire work station was cleaned up immediately. That's great and efficient on their part, but; and this is where the bureaucratic rules come in to stifle common sense, they never bothered to inspect the food products themselves. After all, aren't the government inspectors responsible for that? "Not my department, my bureaucratic rules say to clean workstation B if bacteria is found on workstation B. Why would I check to see if any of the food has been contaminated? There are no rules written for that!"
I can understand that bureaucratic instructions can cover many routine situations and help to train people to make proper decisions. But we seem to have placed these rules above human ingenuity and human judgment. The rules we create should be there to serve our interests not the other way around. We don't create rules so that we can eliminate our independence and end up being servants of what we created. Assuming that the news reports accurately depicted the situation (and having seen some bureaucratic blunders with my own eyes in the areas I have worked), this is an indication of allowing the bureaucratic regulations to dictate actions that go opposite common sense with the obvious results.
Once a person has been trained to use the bureaucratic rules and that he knows them implicitly, then that person should be encouraged to throw the rules away. Lets take a lesson from military strategy, the goal of military strategy is to achieve an objective with the least amount of damage to oneself. To do this, plans are made that covers every single possible contingency, you are expected to memorize every military precept, every potential contingency and be ready to follow every section of the plan precisely...... then, as soon as battle commences, every great strategist from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz and beyond, all agree on one thing: you throw every plan away after the first few seconds of the battle and use your human judgment to carry on. Otherwise, disaster strikes.
So this accident could have been averted if someone would have just thought for three seconds; that perhaps if the work station was contaminated, then perhaps one should spend a small amount of money to inspect some of the food as well and see if it has been contaminated. Don't expect that the other department would catch it in time, don't rely on the bureaucratic rules to avoid doing the right thing because you hope that every contingency has been covered. Well, as the news reports claim, the inspection of the food products were not carried out by the private company and by the time the government inspectors came to the food itself, the damage had already been done. With a much higher cost to the private company than what he would have had to pay if he would have just thought about it for three seconds and not cut corners. Is this another side-effect of capitalism gone wild?
But to get back to the listeriosis issue and the news, I did hear about an interesting development. Apparently, there was appropriate testing done by the private company. The testing was done on the work stations themselves and when the bacteria was found, the entire work station was cleaned up immediately. That's great and efficient on their part, but; and this is where the bureaucratic rules come in to stifle common sense, they never bothered to inspect the food products themselves. After all, aren't the government inspectors responsible for that? "Not my department, my bureaucratic rules say to clean workstation B if bacteria is found on workstation B. Why would I check to see if any of the food has been contaminated? There are no rules written for that!"
I can understand that bureaucratic instructions can cover many routine situations and help to train people to make proper decisions. But we seem to have placed these rules above human ingenuity and human judgment. The rules we create should be there to serve our interests not the other way around. We don't create rules so that we can eliminate our independence and end up being servants of what we created. Assuming that the news reports accurately depicted the situation (and having seen some bureaucratic blunders with my own eyes in the areas I have worked), this is an indication of allowing the bureaucratic regulations to dictate actions that go opposite common sense with the obvious results.
Once a person has been trained to use the bureaucratic rules and that he knows them implicitly, then that person should be encouraged to throw the rules away. Lets take a lesson from military strategy, the goal of military strategy is to achieve an objective with the least amount of damage to oneself. To do this, plans are made that covers every single possible contingency, you are expected to memorize every military precept, every potential contingency and be ready to follow every section of the plan precisely...... then, as soon as battle commences, every great strategist from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz and beyond, all agree on one thing: you throw every plan away after the first few seconds of the battle and use your human judgment to carry on. Otherwise, disaster strikes.
So this accident could have been averted if someone would have just thought for three seconds; that perhaps if the work station was contaminated, then perhaps one should spend a small amount of money to inspect some of the food as well and see if it has been contaminated. Don't expect that the other department would catch it in time, don't rely on the bureaucratic rules to avoid doing the right thing because you hope that every contingency has been covered. Well, as the news reports claim, the inspection of the food products were not carried out by the private company and by the time the government inspectors came to the food itself, the damage had already been done. With a much higher cost to the private company than what he would have had to pay if he would have just thought about it for three seconds and not cut corners. Is this another side-effect of capitalism gone wild?
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