Response pol-07
Jambo
Responsepol-07.docxResponse one-pol-07
Bureaucratic governance in the governance of a country is largely assumed to cut across policy making and implementation. While this is the basis of bureaucratic functions, the role that bureaucracy plays in governance is of greater significance. In the context of the mechanism within which bureaucracy operates, the guiding rules on state operations and citizen engagement are assessed. Basically, bureaucracies have rules of how citizens’ requests are delivered and attended to. In third world countries however, it is more than evident that bureaucracy is responsible for huge economic growth. This kind of success results from the structural organization of bureaucracies that enables effective implementation of policies and keen observance of the rules of a bureaucracy. This is the ultimate mechanism through which bureaucracies add value to governance (Atkinson & Coleman, 2012).
First of all, bureaucracies are small sections of governance, they are not as big as the cabinets. Bureaucratic agencies in themselves are independent but answerable to the president’s office for all the operations. These agencies are justified by the Congress acts and are entirely meant to disintegrate government functions. As part of the executive branch, government parties regulate the agencies. As an example, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a ground breaking body in matters internal security. Far from dealing with crime investigations, the CIA helps in law enforcement, it executes diplomatic intelligence, defense actions. It also tackles infrastructural development (Atkinson & Coleman, 2012). This body acts under the defense arm of the government and operates within the limits of this arm. The heads of the CIA are appointed by the President himself meaning that they report to him and execute the office’s commands. This way, the CIA is run with the intent of actualizing the ambitions set for national defense.
Unlike the large cabinets of the government, the CIA and other bureaucratic agencies have specific tasks that are strategically broken down. The CIA is mandated to use intelligence to collect information of national interest. There are rules and guidelines on how this is done so as to accommodate for the privacy of the citizens. The CIA in Australia for instance operates so dynamically to help in dealing with emerging security challenges. This agency integrates a whole-some approach to the issues of security. The inclusion of society, the government and private bodies in implementation of pertinent policies ensures higher levels of security within the nation. It is easy for the bureau to coordinate distinct cultures, traverse business practices and break prejudices so as to perform. The more complicates tasks undertakes by the bureaucratic agencies is paid off by higher performance in assuring state security.
The government constantly revises the laws guiding the defense strategies just to keep up with the defense issues that arise. This implies that the government is actually on the same level with the agency. Both complimenting each other in the achievement of state security. The operations of the CIA and other bureaucratic agencies therefore stem from the government objectives. The policy making process is monitored by the government to ensure all is in accordance with the needs of the citizenry and for the sake of realization of the cabinet goals. In essence, bureaucratic agencies add significant value to governance (Markusen, 2003). The focus on specific objectives enables better focus on issues giving their specifics the attention they deserve. In addition to this, the ability to merge efforts from various groups also draws the support needed for the government to serve its people.
References
Atkinson, M. M., & Coleman, W. D. (2012). Policy networks, policy communities and the problems of governance. Governance, 5(2), 154-180.
Markusen, A. R. (2003). The case against privatizing national security. Governance, 16(4), 471-501.
Response two-pol-07
The Department of Education is one federal agency that plays a vital role in the bureaucratic governance of our nation's schools. It is an organization that is currently vital and vibrant, and it is representative of what works with bureaucracies.
Even though the federal role in education is limited, the complexity and size of the American Education system, over 66.2 million students, is such that it requires a civil service organization to oversee its mission and its workings (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2016). The Department of Education provides the hierarchical structure needed to provide accountability to the state departments of education so that across our nation there is both equity and equality in the education of our young people. It provides the manpower to give the support "necessary to implement and enforce federal law" (Grulke 2018). ESSA, the 2015 "bipartisan measure that reauthorizes the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the nation’s national education law and longstanding commitment to equal opportunity for all students," is just one provision that the Department of Education will help to oversee to ensure success for students and schools ("Laws & Guidance”).
Another benefit of the bureaucratic governance of the Department of Education is seen in its substantive rationality (Thompson 2005). It represents positive values and ethics. The mission of the DOE is "to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access" ("About ED”). It does this by establishing policies for distributing federal aid for education with a $68 billion dollar budget, collecting data on America's schools, and focusing national attention on education, and prohibiting discrimination (Ibid). All of these missions show the socially embedded character of this agency.
The particular bureaucracy of the Department of Education is also a benefit to the 3.6 million educational employees of our nation us (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2016). It provides workplace organization models and structure for our nation's schools that holds to conventional employment rules and career hierarchies. This is one advantage of a bureaucracy when it come to their formal emphasis on employees' education and work expertise. These qualities are central for employment and promotion and "reduce the risk of personal preferences and prejudices in recruitment, rewards, and promotion"(Thompson 2005).
Finally, the bureaucracy of the Department of Education helps to provide valuable resources to our nation with variety information about grants, to financial aid, to research and statistics, to policy and guidance, to programs and policies ("About ED"). It also "collects data and oversees research on America's schools and disseminates this information to Congress, educators and the general public" (ibid). Its centralized location of information and its structure is functional.
In short, the Department of Education is a valuable bureaucracy that it is a working mechanism for governance.
"About ED.” U.S. Department of Education, http://www.ed.gov.
Grulke, Eric, “Week 7: Bureaucracy: Open Systems Model." American Military University, https://edge.apus.edu/portal/site/366584/tool/ac046166-37b2-492d-8e6e-b208146732e9
"Laws & Guidance." U.S. Department of Education, http://www.ed.gov.
Thompson, Paul and Mats Alvesson (2005). "Bureaucracy at Work." The Values of Bureaucracy. Paul Du Gay ed. chapter 4. http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?url=http://library.books24x7.com/toc.aspx?bookid=12879
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2016). Digest of Education Statistics, 2015 (NCES 2016-014), Chapter 1 and 2.
Response three -pol-07
Heskett in his treatise on “How Much Bureaucracy is a Good Thing in Government and Business?” quoted Hare and Wittenberg: “(Bureaucracies) are far too often about themselves and expanding their power and influence of the people who head them.”[2] Those were my sentiments exactly. Quoting others, he goes on to say that bureaucracies result in think groups who disagree about how to get something done or what results that they are looking for. Then that goes up the ladder to someone who is a paper pusher and then the final decision goes to someone who was not in the loop and is clueless about any of the “roundtable discussions” (my words).[3]
One thing that Heskett points out is that voters like to hear the new administration say that they are going to change the way the last administration did things. Then the other thing voters like to hear is that the new administration is going to shrink the size of government and eliminate some departments. When politicians talk about shrinking the size of government and balancing the budget, voters will vote for the most likely candidate to get that done. Heskett posits that is shy Donald Trump was elected. Further, Heskett points to history which shows us that when business men get elected, they are used to getting things done and don’t have the quagmire of bureaucracy in their business dealings. So when they are faced with each bureaucratic quagmire, they cannot understand all of the layers of bureaucracy and why they are necessary. Example of these impediments would enormous amounts of meetings discussing the same thing, “delays, decision screens, and minority vetoes.”
In our reading for this week, under the heading of “Defending and Attacking Bureaucracy,”[4] there are two schools of thought. One is that bureaucracies are the greatest things since sliced bread and the opposing view, they are the worst thing that can happen to an organization. Which is it? du Gay’s research comes from old and outdated information. Let me delineate the authors and years he is using to do his research: Merton (1949), Blau (1955), Pugh et al (1969), Mintzberg (1961), Burns and Stalker (1961), and Heydebrand (1989) to name a few. In his “Concluding Comments,”[5] for Chapter 4, du Gay says that to gain appreciation for bureaucracies, more research is necessary.
Let me answer that with the Veterans Administration Health Care system. That is a bureaucracy that is an example of how not to run a health care system, that is a bureaucracy that does not work, and that he government should not be in the business of health care. Here is some information from the Washington Post:
“Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses… This is the world of Building 18… The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide. Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs… They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork…Even the stuff they've fixed has only been patched… many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them… The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands -- most of them off-post -- to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases. The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should… Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors.”[6]
Before President Trump, you could not fire anyone. There was no accountability and as you can see, veterans were not getting the care they needed, had to wait months to get an appointment to see a doctor, or even get the medicine they needed. Meanwhile, Walter Reed Hospital, as an example, was crumbling. Doctors were earning $175,000 a year (How do I know that? I took a call when I was working in a student loan consolidation company and I had to obtain the prospect’s current income) and there were roach and rat infestations. That is bureaucracy in all its glory that has run amok.
This is an interesting topic to consider given the current status of bureaucracies under the Trump Administration. It is easy to see that whatever the current President’s agenda or opinion is on a topic can translate into more or less funding for those specific bureaucracies. For an example, President Trump’s opinion on climate change is reflected in the fact that his budget proposal slashes the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by nearly 23%(). Now I do not wish to debate the merits of climate change, all I am saying is President Trump does not value the EPA’s mission as others did and so he cutting that particular regulatory bureaucracy by nearly a quarter of its funding, resulting in less programs and responsibilities; or the ability to successfully carry out their responsibilities. In contrast, President Trump values the military and the United States Department of Defense arguably the most. In last week’s budget proposal, President Trump is asking for a nearly 74 billion dollar raise to the Department of Defense’s budget (); bringing the total to almost 700 billion dollars. Again, I do not wish to debate whether or not this is a good or bad thing, just to show how that bureaucracy is alive and well.
As covered in our weekly lesson, bureaucracies are a very important and powerful tool at the disposal of the President. The President appoints individuals (confirmed by Senate) to lead the numerous Cabinet positions, appoints chairpersons for the regulatory boards (confirmed by the Senate), appoints people to lead the “Government Corporations, and chooses who serves in the White House (). This is a lot of power to have at one’s disposal. Due to the nature of each Bureaucracy’s responsibilities, the rules and regulations they pass and adopt carry the weight of law (). These “laws” can be changed with the swift stroke of a pen, but none the less, they have meaning and can effectively assist in carry out the President’s agenda. Just to further show how bureaucracies are still heavily valued and play an important role in Washington, nearly 98% of all Federal Government employees work within the Executive Branch (). Again, looking at the Department of Defense’s budget proposal, the money increase is attached to some goals and tasks to be completed. As our lesson pointed out, measuring the accomplishments of each bureaucracy can be very difficult at times and lead to the negative connotations we have all heard been given to bureaucracies. This vagueness and ambiguity can be used by the President to either exploit the bureaucracy and show why they is budget cuts or the President can exploit how the bureaucracy has had great success using “hard to get statistics”. This is why bureaucracies are still big players in politics. They are still the main “vehicles” in which the President uses at their sole discretion to carry out their agenda. While Congress and the Courts still have oversight, it can be very difficult to “police” all of the bureaucracies in existence; remember, those other two branches only have 2% of all the Federal Government employees to oversee the 98%....
References
Dennis, Brady. "Trump budget seeks 23 percent cut at EPA, eliminating dozens of programs."
Washington Post. February 12, 2018. Accessed February 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/02/12/trump-budget-seeks-23-percent-cut-at-epa-would-eliminate-dozens-of-programs/?utm_term=.775f294ac5d3.
Grulke, Eric, “Week 7: Bureaucracy: Open Systems Model”, American Military
University, accessed February 13, 2018, https://edge.apus.edu/portal/site/366584/tool/ac046166-37b2-492d-8e6e-b208146732e9
Stone, Mike. "Trump proposes bigger budget for Pentagon, nuclear arsenal." Reuters. February
12, 2018. Accessed February 13, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget- defense/trump-proposes-bigger-budget-for-pentagon-nuclear-arsenal-idUSKBN1FW1YL.
Trish
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary online, https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=bureaucracy&submit.x=37&submit.y=30 , (accessed February 11, 2018).
Gay, Paul du. "Chapter 4 - Bureaucracy at Work: Misunderstandings and Mixed Blessings," The Values of Bureaucracy. Oxford University Press. (2005): npn, Books24x7, http://common.books24x7.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/toc.aspx?bookid=12879, (accessed February 11, 2018).
Heskett, James L., “How Much Bureaucracy is a Good Thing in Government Business?” Harvard Business School, Business Research for Business Leaders, (January 4, 2017), https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-much-bureaucracy-is-a-good-thing-in-government-and-business, (accessed February 12, 2018).
Priest, Dana and Hull, Anne, “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top Medical Facility,” Washington Post, February 18, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172_5.html , (accessed February 14, 2018).
Shane, III, Leo , “VA Backs Trump’s State of the Union Comments About Accountability Law’s Impact”, Army Times, (January 30, 2018), https://www.armytimes.com/news/2018/01/31/trump-exaggerates-va-accountability-laws-impact-in-state-of-the-union-address/ , (accessed February 14, 2018).
