Why Can’t Government Actually DO Anything? (Because it’s Government Stupid.)

Or: If it’s in the nature of the beast, and it’s a problem, then starve the beast.

==

Let’s start with a little vignette from my own personal experience at a government agency that shall remain nameless. If you don’t have time to read any further, I’ll give you the summary right now as a game of charades.

Two Words. First word – “Cluster.”

The task was to deploy a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Intranet application with maybe a few hundred users, from a test platform into production. The presentation layer was garden variety .Net forms. The data layer was SQL Server. The business logic – and I mean every single business rule – was entirely contained in SQL stored procedures. Literally only two target servers – web server and database server. The database server took in a couple of data feeds from external systems; all totally read-only and asynchronously connected. I’ll now translate for the non-IT-geek……

….Dirt Simple.

If they had given me administrative access to the two servers, I could have completed the task myself in an hour without breaking a sweat. A competent administrator who actually knew what they were doing could have done it in 20 minutes, including the obligatory cigarette break. Here’s how it actually went down.

I was presented with a three-track approval process. The first track was an incredibly dense documentation exercise for headquarters' “change control” organization.  The other two tracks involved two distinct automated help desk ticket processes – one for each target server – even though neither update could work without the other one. You know, because everybody knows you need a completely separate organization for every damn server.

I was given a “handler” to guide me through the maze of the headquarters red tape. His preferred mode of operation was to constantly ping me on Instant Messenger (IM) with new questions and requirements for what was obviously a still evolving “change control process” at this so-called “headquarters.” This process lasted a week or so, including at least four face-to-face meetings. Throughout this process I mostly just fed this guy what he wanted, knowing full well it had next to zero nutritional value. (Any value to speak of was purely CYA in nature.) At the end of all this he gave me his thumbs up, and pronounced my two draft help desk tickets ready to move forward.

Was he ever wrong.

Each of the help desk tickets would require no less than five more levels of approval. Each one added its own unique requirements for new documentation. Mostly it was more documentation with next to zero nutritional value (except for CYA). But, of course, my team is also required to attach precisely detailed installation instructions for servers they’ve never seen, and will never be granted access to, and which are controlled by groups barely willing to take our phone calls. Literally hundreds – perhaps even more than a thousand (I am not insane enough to try to count) – emails, phones, and Instant Messages flew around the digital network. On one of the tickets, the person actually assigned to do the work was approval level one with four left to go.

After maybe two weeks of this bureaucratic nightmare, the big day arrives. A conference call line is opened, consisting of the two people actually doing the work and about a dozen or so other interested parties. The two people doing the work are inexperienced and lack basic skills. The one person on the call with the experience and knowledge actually needed is not allowed access to the target servers.

It works - despite the “change control” process’s best efforts to guarantee failure. The next day a government executive sends out an email congratulating the team on great team work.

==

If you are not muttering “WTF?” to yourself by now – read it again, stupid.

Is it any wonder the Minerals Management Service (MMS) had no contingency plans in place when the Deep Water Horizon rig blew up? Is it any wonder Secretary of Interior Salazar was caught flat-footed? Not to me. MMS is one of no less than eight – count ‘em, eight – operationally independent bureaus falling under the Department of Interior (DOI). Each one has an organizational identity all its’ own. And a congressional budget all its’ own. DOI cannot be managed by anyone, period.

Is it any wonder the Department of Energy (DOE) was formed approximately 35 years ago with the mission to make us independent of foreign oil - and yet we are only more dependent on it now? Not to me. In those three and half decades, DOE has been mostly devoted to subsidizing so-called “renewable” energies that still supply a pathetic percentage of overall demand.

I’m not smart enough to articulate the root cause in this space. But I have seen the symptoms up close and personal. Government employees tend to behave like the worst caricatures of unionized labor. No interest in outcomes, no interest in productivity. Totally interested in protecting their “position” and benefits. Never thinking about how current activities can be improved and performed more efficiently. Definitely never seeking new, innovative, activities that connect to a higher purpose of mission. Because there would only be personal risk in this.

This attitude results in the simplest of activities being Balkanized into absurdly small pieces of turf, that must be protected and justified by absurdly opaque and dense ribbons of red tape designed to confuse the outside observer into seeing heroic complexity in the simplest of tasks.

Gulf Oil Spill Contingency Plan? I’ll bet there’s a document for that. An impossibly dense, confusing, and unrealistic document that cannot possibly be executed and has never been read through, much less actually exercised.

Libertarians and Conservatives are often mischaracterized (sometimes intentionally libeled) as calling for no government involvement in anything. No, that position is more accurately labeled Anarchist. Libertarians and Conservatives espouse limited government to provide a few things that are necessary to secure the liberties of the citizenry and provide for every citizen’s pursuit of happiness. You know, stuff that is good and necessary, but which no sane person would seek to do for profit. Like raise an army to provide for the national defense, or build an interstate highway system to provide for individual mobility (Reflect for a moment on what it is that makes “Easy Rider” the quintessentially American movie).

Somehow, our Founding Fathers must have understood all of this. The genius of the governing framework they devised is in how it inherently limits the powers of government. We know that because they said so.

Here’s a small sampling of quotes.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington


Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Thomas Jefferson


There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams


I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison


Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

Gouverneur Morris


Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

Alexander Hamilton


Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers don’t seem to have envisioned the need to specifically limit the size of government. I think it went without saying for them. But, in our day, over the past 3-4 generations, we have seen the leviathan grow in size and reach to the point where it seems able to deem new powers by fiat.

That’s why, while thinking about what would make good constitutional amendments in my spare time, I have come around to believing the most useful amendments today would be ones to specifically limit the size of government. For example, capping the federal budget at some reasonable percentage of GDP sounds good - the better to control the insatiable appetite of the beast.

I’ll need to work out the Amendments discussion in my head for a future post. If any of you professional politicians out there would like to get the ball rolling on the Constitutional Convention, I might be motivated to pick up the pace on that one.