Looking closely to the federal and local governments, some federal departments and city departments provide quality services to the extent that people trust them more than the critics can understand. Surprisingly, some Americans trust certain federal departments than the federal government while at local government level, some people admire certain city programs than they like the city administration. According to Goodsell (2015), Ann Arbor-based company provided that in 2010 people showed that they trusted the federal government for its quality service delivery in some of its departments even though it declined afterward. At local government level. When measuring the federal government’s productivity, The Federal Productivity Index …show more content…
But the recent study of 2004-2005 found the opposite. They discovered that bus systems operated by municipal and county work more efficiently because managers can handle the incompatible pressures from different stakeholders (Goodsell, 2015). To some extent, government can save money through contracting out some of it functions to the private companies. Moreover, there is also an assumption that bureaucracy is growing larger day-by-day which weakens personal liberty. The size of growth fluctuates, but the number is increasing at both state and local governments and decreasing at the federal government.
Strengths of bureaucracy
More trained personnel than contract workers. It has more money to subsidize certain services when private companies that operated bus systems went out of business. Moreover, most changes are initiated by the bureaucrats not elected officials (Goodsell, 2015). Most celebrated innovations were facilitated by bureaucrats. These are signs of their strengths.
Weakness of bureaucracy
Some government programs are poorly designed programs and it takes government some time to rectify the system like the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) due to processing time which spiked at some stage.
True or false stories about critics
It is untrue that all bureaucrats are arrogant to their clients and want to control them. This is dispelled by the interviews that Goodsell
There is a plethora of criticisms about the effectiveness of the Bureaucracy. Even during the 19th century, as Wilson writes, the Post Office “was an organization marred by inefficiency and corruption”. With an appointment standard such as the “spoils system”, where individuals or groups are granted high level positions based on political favors alone, corruption is almost a certainty. The political aspect of the Bureaucracy was prevalent in the military for over 100 years, as Wilson states “the size and deployment of the military establishment in this country was governed entirely by decisions made by political leaders on political grounds”. Political favors and factors plague our government, including the Bureaucracy. A by-product of these political favors and corruptions are stagnancy and mediocrity. An example of this, as
In his book, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies do and why they do it, James Q. Wilson’s main objective is to better define the behavior of governmental bureaucracy, believing traditional organizational and economic theory does not adequately explain their actions. Wilson believes that government agencies are doomed to be perceived as inefficient entities by the public. He gives examples of commonly held perceptions of bureaucracies and reveals how these are mostly misconceptions. He points to the environment of bureaucracy, where rules and procedures, dictate goals, along with context, constraints, values, and norms.
Bureaucracy exists to organize states and keep them working as efficiently as possible. Max Weber claims that bureaucracies are the most efficient form of organization due to control, hierarchy, and predictability. Bureaucracies are created to give authority and power over others, specialize in certain tasks, and restrict individuals through regulations and laws. However, as Kettl makes it clear that this organization is not easy to maintain. According to Kettl, it is important to for citizens and the government to have a relationship with each other (2017, 3). In bureaucracies, there is not much room for a healthy relationship between citizens and the government because the two can be constantly in disagreement about issues – there may
What I read about reducing the cost of the national bureaucracy was Under the Hood: The Cost of Bureaucracy by Allison Gofman. The major points of her article are that there are many different agencies, departments, and groups of people who deal with the same things throughout the government. With having many different groups of people dealing with the same issues, there isn't one federal bureaucracy. Instead, its a bunch of different groups with their own interests and own opinions on one topic. The article also states that "public bureaucracies are not designed for efficiency" and I can see why. The bureaucracies just want to have power and influence over decisions that their agency gets to make at later dates.
A reason bureaucracy works, due to the separation between politics and administration. Laws and policies are made by elected officials, who are held accountable to the voters, the role of bureaucracy is to implement those policies. An example of bureaucracy working, would be the Department of Defense that controls the Departments of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force and other agencies that fall under their responsibility. Their responsibility includes all facets that deal with military personnel regulations, laws, equipment, operations, pay and placement of troops to name a few. The bureaucracy handles the necessary implementation of the policies handed down by executive office.
Goodsell’s book “The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic” is composed on the contrary. Goodsell makes several arguments in favor of the fundamental soundness of American bureaucracy. His thoughts are derived from a core belief: the quality of public service in the United States is vastly underrated (p. xi). His polemic is such that the flaws and the faults of bureaucracy in America are far fewer on a proportionate basis than is generally thought. The argument of this book is that a wide gap exists between bureaucracy’s repopulation and its record. Despite endless ranting to the contrary, American bureaucracy does work – in fact, quite well (p. 4). According to Goodsell criticisms of government bureaucracy are based more on myth than reality. Goodsell argues that government agencies actually play a valuable and indispensable role in making our society a better place to live. For instance Goodsell examines studies that show what he argues is evidence of public satisfaction with bureaucracy. His arguments are based on such statistics as “most” citizens believing that police do not accept bribes (p. 27) or that “only” a quarter of welfare recipients waited a half hour or more for service (p. 35). In addressing direct performance evaluation, Goodsell shows that public bureaucracy has witnessed overall growth in productivity from 1967 through 1990. He acknowledges, however, that this cannot be fairly compared to private industry’s experience over the
There are many different similarities and differences between the four levels of law enforcement. The four different levels are Federal, State, County, and Municipal/City. I will be talking about the level of Federal and Municipal/City. A federal law enforcement agency is an organizational unit, or subunit, of the federal government with the principle functions of prevention, detection, and investigation of crime and the apprehension of alleged offenders (www.bjs.gov).
Kernaghan, K. 2000. The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Services Values. Interational Review of Administrative Sciences 66. 2000, pp. 92-93.
The word “bureaucracy” has a negative connotation to many people. The fact is that our current system of government would not be able to survive without bureaucracies. The bureaucracy has become the “fourth branch” of the government, it has quasi-legislative and judicial powers and in it’s own field its authority is rarely challenged. The presence of these large, inefficient structures is necessary if the American people want to continue receiving the benefits that they expect.
One of the many arguments is that most, if not all public sector service(s) service is monopolistic. Often time, there is one source of supply for a government service. For example, residents of a city have one fire department, one police department, and one system of public education. Even though each of those entities, many of them have different branches, they are all fall under
All organizations strive to streamline operations, which in turn should lead to saving money. Fighting the wasting of resources should be a top priority for any government entity and particularly for supervisors, managers, and executives. In the public sector this is particularly true because the citizens in effect supply the resources wasted. The public trust should not be abused by careless or needless spending. However, because of the bureaucratic nature of any government agency, some waste cannot readily be avoided. The laws and regulations that have been duly enacted to secure justified expenditures in and of themselves can cause waste.
According to Ingraham (2006), using efficiency as a measure of performance is important to both civil service systems and merit (490). However, the relationship between performance and merit in civil service is complex. Ingraham (2006) states that both neutrality and competence are the basis
What is local government and how does something much smaller than the bigger picture have an more immense impact on individual’s lives? Local government is the administration, of a district, state, or county, in which the citizen elects the officials corresponding to their particular area. Local government is essential throughout America. It entitles people the right to have a say in what is going on in their community, on a governmental stance. Local government, moreover, establishes and enforce local laws. Local government, furthermore, is responsible for establishing and delivering a range of quality to their community. Local government sets the direction in which they want to see their region going in. Local government uses a long-term plan in which they set: financial plans, council plans, municipal strategic statement, and other strategic tactics. With the use of the tactics, they determine how they want their region to progress. People should be concerned about their local government because it allows them to have a say in what happens in their community, and it makes local laws which directly affect the people in their region.
From contemporary organizational design perspective, the key elements for a company are work efficiency, the rationality of the organizational structure and the final profit margin of output. According to Lowi (1964), from a purely technical point of view, bureaucratic organizations can achieve maximum efficiency. Otherwise, from instrumental point of view, this organization is the most reasonable means of social
There is the need to stress improving organizational and processing procedures. This can be done by the use of technology such as e-gov and management information systems. Also, computer and software applications can make a difference in large education systems, unemployment compensation, retraining, welfare-to-work, and monitoring capital construction programs. The importance to maintain and improve productivity of our government programs. It is very important that we improve productivity of government programs. In this economy we need to be able to cut costs wherever possible, this enables us to do so. It also would limit the amount of involvement and confusion it would bring if we don't improve them. The efficiency as we improve will also be developed.