What Bureaucracies Do

Megan McArdle writes,

Does Congress need to give agencies a freer hand in developing good systems? I’m all for it. Should Congressional Republicans commit to support the president in hardening our government against cyber-attacks and other disasters, rather than simply holding political show hearings? Heck yes. But these things won’t happen unless the president makes fixing government IT a bigger priority — and starts enforcing accountability for every disaster that happens on his watch.

Along similar lines, David Strom, an IT consultant, writes,

If a private industry CIO had this sort of security record, they would never work in IT ever again, unless to become a motivational speaker and tell people what not to do. Instead, because they are the Feds, we just shake our heads and wonder what is going on, and some how give them a free pass to mess something else up again. It really boils my blood.

In my view, bureaucracies are notable for two things.

1. They filter out new ideas.

2. They blur accountability. When you make a reasonable request and are turned down because of “policy,” you have encountered this blurred accountability.

I understand the constructive value of filtering out new ideas. A large organization can only focus on a few major initiatives. Those initiatives had better be good ones. Most new ideas are bad. Think of a Type I error as making a catastrophically bad bet and a Type II error as missing out on a profitable opportunity. Bureaucracies help to curb Type I errors but tend to make Type II errors. And every middle manager who has ever had an idea die in the bureaucracy is convinced, usually incorrectly, that the organization committed a Type II error.

Perhaps there is also a constructive value for blurred accountability. But I cannot think of one.

14 thoughts on “What Bureaucracies Do

  1. In summary: don’t believe anyone over 30. Don’t trust anyone under 30.

    I’ve started asking “oh yeah, which policy?” There usually isn’t one. Or it is drastically mis-represented in order to shift blame- usually because the 30+ woman doesn’t want to do it. While the legislator would publicly likely decry this if they were ever forced to respond publicly, secretly I’m sure they enjoy this role as tacit bad guy.

    • (the main problem with those under 30, of course, is that they have believed everything the over 30s told them about how the world works)

      • A lot of young people (myself included at that age) seem to think they know everything, too. They suffer an excess of self-assuredness and an unrealistic impression of their own skills, abilities, and knowledge. I suppose this is because evolution favors the bold, but it is nonetheless a liability in many situations, too. Like believing taking on 100k in student loan debt to get an MFA is a good idea, because you’re talented enough to be able to forge a remunerative career in interpretive dance.

        • Because people over 30 certainly lead them to believe that including teachers, banks, government, loan guarantors, politicians, colleges, etc. There is a long line of people with blurred responsibility of whether they are to blame for young people holding unrealistic beliefs. If some adult is capable of earning thousands of dollars teaching kids, the only think they can’t teach is humility? Kind of convenient on the blurring responsibility side.

          It is pretty hard to find anyone who simply provides the (whole) truth about college degrees? The truth is basically that it is mostly signaling, major matters, and if you can get one for a good ROI it is worth it- because until we can replace it with something that is less signaling it is the only game in town. Most of what is out there is either team pro or team con with the attendant hand waving and obfuscation.

          Even the meme that young people think they know everything and should listen more to elders could be used as a control construct- all the better if is self-reinforcing. It is a bit of a stretch to expect the young to know exactly which elders they shouldn’t listen to.

          • Seriously. Let me put a fine point on it. If you adjust for signaling, what is the cutoff of positive ROI on the college campus? I think it is somewhere below economics and above psychology. Somewhere in there you go from not needing an advanced degree to it being de rigeur to actually use your education in a job.

            Again, it is the only game in town, so on-net, until we can replace it on average it is a decent deal. But I’m not sure it would be a decent deal if adjusting for all the people who don’t get degrees being pushed down so degree holders can be pushed up. I find it really hard to blame young people for not listening to me and Bryan Caplan and Peter Thiel. Indeed if they were to listen to us, they’d better listen very carefully because we aren’t saying it is a good racket to be on the right side of. Adults run this con. They call it “education.” It is there because kids don’t know stuff. Besides, most adults in position to influence kids are just kids who believed what they were told and grew up not rocking the boat.

          • “…aren’t saying it ISN’T…”

            See why I don’t blame kids for not listening, it’s even hard to get out right.

  2. The bureaucrat’s argument for blurred accountability is always “the ability to give advice freely.”

  3. Or, accountability is directed towards those large initiatives even at the expense of basics as priorities.

  4. The trouble is that if all the dirty laundry were aired, the public wouldn’t want (or be manipulated to want) the same things as a CEO. They wouldn’t absorb more than a tiny fraction of the information – itself unreliable and provided by biased advocated trying to make political hay – and would want a kind of vindictive circus with heroes and villains and scapegoats, all of which has little to do with mitigating a failure or improving performance or results.

    I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it ‘constructive’, but this ‘useful’ value of blurred accountability for the top decision makers tasked with responding to these types of public incidents is to give them a freer hand with that reaction, so that they can do so rationally and behind the scenes, without having to worry about satisfying the public demand for wasteful and counterproductive posturing.

  5. The OPM data breach is an interesting conflict between the tendency of public employees to defend their group and a general human tendency toward self-preservation.

    This is the scenario in which I would most expect self-interest to win out over group affiliiation, but so far the group affiliation seems to be winning.

    That does not bode well for accountability in other scenarios.

  6. Defying all logic, they are capable of both errors. TSA frisks grandmothers but lets 95% of contraband through. There are plenty of other examples.

    • Right. The hidden logic in that example is known as security theater. It is probably similar to the peacocking congressmen in their hearings. The actual intention has little to do with rhetoric except by accident. It probably has a lot to do with third party payment. It is harder to market to paying customers than to voters. It is harder to get voters to pay attention- and evendors if they do they only have one alternative which is usually worse. There will be a lot of sturm and drang for the benefit of voters because the hidden logic is dependence. I haven’t heard anyone ask why they need to keep this information, only that we are hostage to their ability to safeguard it.

  7. I’m not ready to defend blurred accountability, but I do think that “policy” can be productive. This is clearest with the legal system: We expect judges to enforce the law and to uphold precedents. The benefit is predictability. Sure, judges could improve outcomes by ignoring bad laws or accounting for special circumstances, but this would also encourage gaming the systems.

    More mundane, refusing personal checks or requiring a receipt to return an item fall in this category. I think we generally want to encourage clear, universal policies like these even though necessarily crude. Yes, the clerk is absolved of responsibility, but this is to our benefit.

    A better distinction might be diluted responsibility — What matters is that responsibility reside *somewhere*. This is consistent with “policy”, but still points out a real problem with some bureaucracies: They simply let everyone off the hook.

  8. Blurred accountability can be good when it is to protect the grunts from “customer” abuse. It can also be good for implementing good policies that might raise the hackles of a small but loud minority.
    More often though, it’s just a way to blow people off.

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