> Ed, one obvious reason that the system is inefficient is that the enemies
of helping the disadvantaged burden legislation with as much bureaucracy as
they can to slow the assistance.
> ---
> Bill Ward
> President, International Marketing Services
I would suggest that the root cause of bureaucratic overburden is the need
to be accountable. Politicians are supposed to be accountable to the public
and bureaucrats to the politicians. The pervasive fear in a bureaucracy is
of not being able to demonstrate why something was done, who authorized it,
and how it conforms to legislation and planned programming. Elaborate
systems, layer on layer, are devised to ensure that everything that is done
is "tickety boo" (as one senior bureaucrat I worked with would put it). In
any government department, a tremendous amount of energy is used in ensuring
that things are properly authorized and accounted for, probably far more
energy than flows out and does something in society.
Ed Weick
