Larry J. Singer While the press and national politicians are focusing on political philosophy and partisan competition, there is a more fundamental and radical change underway in the structure of government and the focus of government programs
Bureaucracy used to be a good word. During the last major restructuring of government, in the early years of this century, bureaucracy was adopted as a structural response to concerns about the patronage system of government
The political drivers for this change were to address issues of access and fairness in government procurement, government employment and enforcement of government regulations. The American culture would not tolerate the continued appearance of graft and favoritism in the public sector
Bureaucracy focuses on providing rigorously structured processes and comprehensive rules which are enforced by hierarchic organizational structures. Bureaucracy became a widely accepted way to assure fairness and accountability in government
But there were even more fundamental reasons for this restructuring than the apparent political ones. American business, which at the time was beginning to develop large corporate structures, had already turned to bureaucracy at the time of the government reformation. American business was motivated by a desire to not only assure accountability to corporate leadership, but to deal with the increasing complexity of industrial processes. Like government, corporations could no longer count on proximity and familiarity to assure communication of goals and policies, much less enforcement of norms in their organizations. In addition, manufacturing and other processes required greater knowledge by front-line workers
Disintegrated Specialists To deal with the issues of complexity, both government and business turned to segmentation of processes and narrower areas of specialization for both workers and managers. With segmentation, specialists focused on only a portion of any process. This specialization implied deeper but narrower knowledge by workers. Bureaucracy provided a structure to coordinate disintegrated specialists, by assuring that through the use of comprehensive rules and rigorously structured processes, hierarchical organizations could be held collectively responsible for product development and service delivery. Organizational communication was facilitated by these same bureaucratic structures
With bureaucracy, neither government nor business would have to depend on individual responsibility, but rather could depend on organizational structure for command and control
In the 1990s Americans consider bureaucracy a bad word. American bureaucracy has concentrated on process and rules to the exclusion of a focus on results and outcomes. American culture will no longer tolerate ineffectiveness nor low quality products and services. Americans are angry and insisting that individual political leaders be held responsible for the failures of public programs. Many politicians are responding to this intolerance by making public pronouncements about the evils of big government. But the real fundamental change being implemented is the gradual dismantling of the bureaucratic federalist system in favor of a more distributed republican system for delivery of services and products
(I use the term republican not in a partisan sense, but rather in the Hamiltonian context.) Distributed "Cooperacy" Through federal budgeting and funding vehicles like block grants and radical budget cutting, state and local governments are being empowered to develop their own more localized programs while dismantling bureaucracy's hierarchical and centralized structure in favor of a more cooperative distributed one. Through deregulation the bureaucratic propensity for rules is giving way to a greater dependence on the common sense of individuals and society at large. Through reinvention and reengineering initiatives, rigorously structured processes are being broken down in favor of more responsive and flexible processes. Bureaucracy is being replaced with a new principle; distributed "cooperacy" ( I had to coin a new term)
Downsizing, empowerment of teams, reengineering, and TQM are among the tools of both the public and the private sectors. But underlying all of these initiatives the real enabler for this radical reformation to cooperacy is information technology
The original drivers of bureaucracy - accountability, communications requirements, and specialization to deal with knowledge deficiencies - can be much more efficiently addressed with modern information technology than through organizational structures. Rules-based systems make experts out of generalists. E-mail and other telecommunications technology enable efficient dissemination of directions, visions and instructions. Anything that is automated can be measured and accounted for
Government leaders at the highest levels are beginning to realize that innovative information systems are the key to improved program outcomes
They also are realizing that government IT leadership and organizations are currently unable to deliver the kind of applications required in this new cooperacy. To help fill the void there is a new class of public sector chief information officers being recruited
The urgency for IT modernization in the states is driven by the rapidity of the transfer of program responsibilities from the federal level to the state level, especially in labor, welfare and environmental programs. The dismantling of the bureaucracies at the state level is also driving substantial application development activity in the administrative systems of government, such as procurement, revenue collection and personnel systems
The focus on effectiveness is driving business process reengineering and subsequent information systems development in programs traditionally managed at the state level, including court systems, highway and transportation systems, and driver and vehicle registration systems. There are many billions of dollars in funds allocated by states for these systems over the next three years, expressly to build these new information systems
It's an exciting time to work in IT in government. It is a time of change
If you can tolerate change you will find now to be a great ride!
