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The Bureaucracy. Recent headlines: Feds took welfare families’ child support HUD not enforcing disabled law. The Bureaucracy.
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The Bureaucracy • Recent headlines: • Feds took welfare families’ child support • HUD not enforcing disabled law
The Bureaucracy • Have you ever written a computer program? Followed instructions on building a model or setting up a multi-media system? All are like laws in that the application may be different than the original intent.
The Bureaucracy • Powers from the President & Congress • Original departments • State, Treasury, War • Public service, • Patronage or Spoils system in 19th century • Assassination of President Garfield • Civil Service reform with Pendleton Act in 1883
The Bureaucracy • Woodrow Wilson (1887) and bureaucratic reform • Efficient; division of labor • Professional training, expertise • Top-down management; hierarchy • Bottom-up accountability • Max Weber and bureaucracy • Modern form of control; standard rules • Neutral competence or red tape
The Bureaucracy • Growth of government with expanded public mission and size of population • Role of Science & Technology • Response to Business Excess & Failure • Belief in Progress • Expanding the American dream • Entrepreneurial government
The Bureaucracy • Executive Office of the President • Cabinet departments • Independent agencies (e.g. ICC, FCC) • Government corporations (e.g. USPS) • Advisory committees (e.g. Interior and Klamath River Basin) • Congress and the Judiciary
How Bureaucracy Works • Authority mostly from Congress • Congressional intent • Delegation of details; often ambiguous • Administrative discretion • Report to President & OMB • Executive orders (Affirmative Action) • OMB and regulatory oversight • Congressional oversight & budget • Court orders (e.g. ADA & Supreme Court) • Responsiveness to the public • Too many masters?
Agency Actions • Rulemaking, like Congress • Federal Register and student aid • Due process considerations • Adjudication, like the courts • Interior and water rights • NHTSA and Firestone tires • Town meetings with citizens • Modesto and local response to terrorism
Efforts at Bureaucratic Reform • Civil Service Reform--1880s • Budgetary / Management Reform -- 1920s • Continuous reform since President Eisenhower • budget (ppbs, zbb, etc.) • personnel (TQM, Reinventing govt.) • Congress approves reorganization
Personal Observations • Reform as business, Congress, courts • Bureaucracy and representation • Efficiency vs. effectiveness • An efficient DOD? • Implementation -- or the relationship between thought and action • Bureaucracy as partisan football? scapegoat?