A quote: >No one wants to be in the video clip as a stone-faced bureaucrat with no good answers, being yelled at by a righteous—or self-righteous—politician fi

A quote: >No one wants to be in the video clip as a stone-faced bureaucrat with no good answers, being yelled at by a righteous—or self-righteous—politician fighting the good fight on behalf of the aggrieved public. In front of the cameras, you can’t say things like “it doesn’t work because we were forced to use an ESB.” You would look like you were trying to throw someone else under the bus, and the legislators wouldn’t understand what you were talking about anyway. Your job is simply to endure the hearing, produce as few viral sound bites as possible, and not incriminate others. >As painful and sometimes humiliating as these hearings are, if you’re a career civil servant, it is the second system of accountability that matters more to you. The legislature can’t fire or officially reprimand you, no matter how bad a job they think you did (although they can put political pressure on the administration to do so). They can’t make you ineligible for promotions and raises. On the other hand, violations of policy, process, and procedure—real or perceived—can do all of that, even if there is no hearing.