4 ms·

I think a lot of the objections here aren't really bureaucracy in terms of government employees doing things. A lot of what people mean when they complain abo

I think a lot of the objections here aren't really bureaucracy in terms of government employees doing things. A lot of what people mean when they complain about "government bureaucracy" is really that it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should take 5 people 6 weeks. So discussions on this tend to get confusing.

jen20 1y ago
> it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should take 5 people 6 weeks Sounds just like "enterprise" IT to me, tbh.
- aerostable_slug 1y ago
  Leadership can reform enterprise IT, sometimes including staffing cuts while also improving productivity. I have personally seen this happen. It can actually get better. This is why some people are optimistic about recent efforts at doing the same in government bureaucracy. It's possible to trend upwards.
  - jen20 1y ago
    I’ve seen that happen in government too: GDS. As a rule it does not though.
  - gopher_space 1y ago
    Leadership needs to be seen as both competent and trustworthy by employees to pull this off. Otherwise it’s the death spiral.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    Sure, it's possible, but unlikely. And nobody ever notices or appreciates the efficient and effective goverment agencies. Honestly the main problem is the fed gov has terrible pr.
analog31 1y ago
Regular people (including me) think the same thing about why software projects take so long. In fact I consider engineering to be a form of bureaucracy. And I've had long conversations about it with friends who are developers, but it's still hard for an outsider to fully grasp why it's so hard. In turn, they can't understand why my job can't be replaced by AI.
- hakfoo 1y ago
  Maybe there's an equivalent of Knoll's Law for non-media concepts. Everything I know how to do is complicated and people don't understand why it's complicated. Everything else is obviously excess bureaucracy and could be done with a LLM running on a ZX80.
matthewdgreen 1y ago
The reason bureaucracies seem efficient is that they must be able to (1) complete the mission reliably over long periods of time, in the face of (2) staff churn and loss, without (3) collapsing the first time a critical mass of experts leaves the org. This means you have to sacrifice systems that rely on the enthusiasm of "10x experts" in favor of systems that can reliably recruit talent (at GS salaries.) And this is before you get to the mountains of political crap placed on an org by elected leaders. It is incredibly challenging to create orgs that reliably stay on-mission over many years.
- fallingknife 1y ago
  Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it). As for the terrible salaries and mountains of political crap, that's the real issue here. But these are changeable and shouldn't just be accepted as inevitable as is so often done by defenders of government bureaucracy.
  - drabbiticus 1y ago
    > Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it). Do they? The first two results on Google for "government vs private efficiency" are https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publications/GCPSE_Efficiency.pdf https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publicati... and https://www.epsu.org/article/public-and-private-sector-efficiency https://www.epsu.org/article/public-and-private-sector-effic..., which both suggest that it is a myth that companies are inherently more efficient than government. It's also worth mentioning that governments and companies inherently must operate differently. Governments are not set up to recoup investment; in fact, proponents of small government (as opposed to no government) generally recognize that the role of government is to assist in preventing "tragedy of the commons" by funding initiatives and programs that fundamentally do not make sense for a single market player to address. I.e. government helps when there isn't a good path for a single market player to see a good/reliable economic and market-competitive return from their investment.
    - 1y ago

jen20 1y ago

> it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should take 5 people 6 weeks Sounds just like "enterprise" IT to me, tbh.

aerostable_slug 1y ago
Leadership can reform enterprise IT, sometimes including staffing cuts while also improving productivity. I have personally seen this happen. It can actually get better. This is why some people are optimistic about recent efforts at doing the same in government bureaucracy. It's possible to trend upwards.
- jen20 1y ago
  I’ve seen that happen in government too: GDS. As a rule it does not though.
- gopher_space 1y ago
  Leadership needs to be seen as both competent and trustworthy by employees to pull this off. Otherwise it’s the death spiral.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  Sure, it's possible, but unlikely. And nobody ever notices or appreciates the efficient and effective goverment agencies. Honestly the main problem is the fed gov has terrible pr.

analog31 1y ago

Regular people (including me) think the same thing about why software projects take so long. In fact I consider engineering to be a form of bureaucracy. And I've had long conversations about it with friends who are developers, but it's still hard for an outsider to fully grasp why it's so hard. In turn, they can't understand why my job can't be replaced by AI.

hakfoo 1y ago
Maybe there's an equivalent of Knoll's Law for non-media concepts. Everything I know how to do is complicated and people don't understand why it's complicated. Everything else is obviously excess bureaucracy and could be done with a LLM running on a ZX80.

matthewdgreen 1y ago

The reason bureaucracies seem efficient is that they must be able to (1) complete the mission reliably over long periods of time, in the face of (2) staff churn and loss, without (3) collapsing the first time a critical mass of experts leaves the org. This means you have to sacrifice systems that rely on the enthusiasm of "10x experts" in favor of systems that can reliably recruit talent (at GS salaries.) And this is before you get to the mountains of political crap placed on an org by elected leaders. It is incredibly challenging to create orgs that reliably stay on-mission over many years.

fallingknife 1y ago
Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it). As for the terrible salaries and mountains of political crap, that's the real issue here. But these are changeable and shouldn't just be accepted as inevitable as is so often done by defenders of government bureaucracy.
- drabbiticus 1y ago
  > Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it). Do they? The first two results on Google for "government vs private efficiency" are https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publications/GCPSE_Efficiency.pdf https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publicati... and https://www.epsu.org/article/public-and-private-sector-efficiency https://www.epsu.org/article/public-and-private-sector-effic..., which both suggest that it is a myth that companies are inherently more efficient than government. It's also worth mentioning that governments and companies inherently must operate differently. Governments are not set up to recoup investment; in fact, proponents of small government (as opposed to no government) generally recognize that the role of government is to assist in preventing "tragedy of the commons" by funding initiatives and programs that fundamentally do not make sense for a single market player to address. I.e. government helps when there isn't a good path for a single market player to see a good/reliable economic and market-competitive return from their investment.
  - 1y ago