The more I read and think about it, the more I believe that the administrative explosion during recent decennia was mainly driven by two factors: a) Control. Apart from everything the State these days wants to know about us - from the number of women on the boards of companies, to the composition of school classes as regards gender and neuropsychiatric problems -, we have also become alive to more forms of corruption than we used to (ranging from public contracts being allotted to friends of the official, to family trips undertaken with the employers car), and are meticulous about accountability. Having an eye on all this requires information, and information often needs to be gathered by people who fundamentally are supposed to do other things. More information is gathered and conveyed than ever before, and all this gathering and conveying requires time and effort. b) The IT revolution. Administrative tasks that used to be performed by secretaries - co-ordinating meetings, reminding of items in the calendar, etc. - are now performed by the people meeting and having those calendars with the help of their computers. The general accessability of computer programmes means that we have taken administrative tasks out of the able hands of administrators, and put them into the hands of clumsy amateurs (professors, teachers, doctors). The concurrent entry of computers, and exit of administrative staff, has made everyones administrative burden increase. If we are serious about reducing the administrative burden, therefore, I believe we need both to relinquish control, and to re-introduce administrators. The latter means a higher pay roll, but more focus on core tasks: maybe tasks are even performed better, and some people in core operations therefore redundant, if we have more able administrators? The former is harder, as it means relinquishing control. We will need to trust people to do their job fairly and reliably. If they dont, we will again find it difficult to make them account for their errors. Also, we will again have stratifications between people enjoying trust, and therefore authority, and people not enjoying such trust. My liberal heart detests the power invested in some few people that such a re-introduction of trust would mean: it would have social consequences I cannot fully endorse. But my intellectual mind is worried about the future of public and private administration, if the current increase of administrative tasks continues unchecked.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 13:44:31 +0000