I'm old enough to remember bureaucracy before computers were a big part of the process. The rules were simple, to the point of cruelty at times, but simple.<p>After computers, the rules became far more complex and it seemed no clerk I dealt with actually understood them. Their solution was to lie - to select and misinterpret a few of the actual rules to create a fantasy rule system that made their interactions simple; but also utterly false. Very frustrating, and so far as I can tell, that's how things still are. The police are maybe the worst 'cause they are hard pressed and forced to cut corners (while managing a lot of rules); but it's everywhere.
Absolutely. I submit a lot of FOIA requests and one of the biggest limiting factors in access to the records I need comes from people new to the job who haven't been given full training on how to get records. It very much feels like as a FOIA requester, we're training them ourselves.
Bureaucracy normally has some design goals:<p>- accountability. We need to know who did what, so we need to store a bunch of information about access and authorization. We want to know who is responsible for stuff, so some gatekeeping is necessary.<p>- fairness. It shouldn't matter who approaches the org, they need to be treated according to the merits of their case and not their status.<p>- throughput. We have a bureaucracy because a bunch of people need to be served. Read between the lines and we also mean cheaply.<p>- latency. They need to be served soon, otherwise what's the point?<p>- longevity. We don't want the system collapsing just because one or two civil servants leave. It needs to not be fragile.<p>- user friendly. People come to the desk, they want a driver's license, they don't want to do a bunch of stuff with forms.<p>As Bender said, gimme your biggest, strongest, cheapest drink.
I wonder if this calculation ignores a bit the effects of "meta knowledge". I.e., many of the "new" people may be new to this particular process, but may already have expert skills in the general domain of buerocratic processes - and therefore may be able to adapt much more quickly than a "real" newbie, i.e. a person that works in s buerocracy for the first time.<p>I imagine this similar to how software developers may be new to a particular project or codebase but may still bring with them general domain knowledge which lets them understand the project requirements or the intricacies of the codebase relatively quickly.
Bureaucratic processes are the repeatable builds of government decision making. If you want the same results from every run, you have to dehumanize the process
IMVHO doing things demand or to know them up front or to carefully design them and correct the design as long as you advance, because no matter how well you design something up front, it will change, perhaps substantially in some parts.<p>At a certain point things seems to work and became habits, a newcomer might understand them, might not, might spot illogical/inefficient aspects that are assumed as normal due to the initial evolutionary process and ANY confrontation is such stages typically generate frictions and uncertain feelings where many choose to contour with extra rigidity.<p>Said that, play network analysis that way seems a bit a nonsense to me. We try to simply things, reduce them to something we already know but... We actually know companies/works paradigms and policies MUCH more than network theory in general.
I have a problem with the name bureaucratic. It fails to capture the essence of the problem. The problem isn't the involvement of "desk" related items (i.e. paperwork), but an unequal distribution of power in the process.