A Dozen Reasons Government Bureaucracies Fail

I have railed against government bureaucracies for forty years.  On a visceral level, it is because they make me do things I do not want to do and they take my money and spend much of it foolishly. So, are my gripes entirely idiosyncratic — a function of my being a cheap, ornery cuss with a pronounced anti-authoritarian bent — or is there something more generic about bureaucracies that actually make them prone to failure?   What I believe notwithstanding, I think the government bureaucracies have certain characteristics which are generally universal and usually debilitating to their mission, regardless of what that mission might be.  Here are a dozen:

1. The first problem with bureaucracy is actually an admirable quality.  At least in theory and usually in practice, they treat everyone the same.  We are all citizens and all equal in eyes of the law, and so by extension, in the eyes of the bureaucrats. The problem is that our situations are not all equal.  This variability can be handled by private individuals through negotiation and bargaining. If I am under pressure to get something done, I can offer extra payment to a service provider to bump me up in line.  Classes of service can be formal or de facto; in either case, the process then offers greater efficiency and satisfaction, usually to the benefit of all. 
2. Regulators have little discretion. This helps to prevent abuse of authority and better assures equal treatment.  Another reason would be that adverse legal consequences might result from discretionary decisions open to question after the fact. Also, limited discretion is insurance against incompetence; poor judgment exercised by just a small number of employees can be catastrophic.  For all these reasons, even in a situation where a rule makes no sense as applied, the regulator still has no power to ignore or modify the rule.  Two private parties, similarly situated, at least have the opportunity to come to a mutually beneficial agreement and thereby save time and money to their mutual benefit.
3. Time is of no real importance.  Any task assigned to a bureaucracy takes as long as it takes and everything downstream must wait.  Bureaucrats are vastly more concerned with process than product.  Process takes time.   
4. Challenging bureaucratic decisions is often so time-consuming, expensive and complex that all effective recourse to a bad decision is precluded.  This even applies to otherwise good decisions which could be beneficially tweaked.  It can actually make more sense to do something stupid rather than seek expensive and time-consuming recourse.  
5. Competence is not assured.  While most bureaucrats are likely adequately or even well-trained to perform their duties, many are not and yet they often remain in their positions with the consequences ranging from minor annoyances to utter havoc.  They continue because practically no one ever gets fired from public service.  No bottom line facilitates this. 
6. Government bureaucracies are monopolies.  Imagine how much easier it would be to get a building permit if one could pick up one’s plans and take them elsewhere, say to a more friendly abutting city or, better yet, maybe a private certified, licensed, bonded firm which would compete for you plan-review business with efficiency, economy and timeliness.   
7. Government usually has goals which are vague at best. To evaluate performance, it applies imprecise measures of success or failure, or none at all.  Bureaucrats most often do what they do day in and day out, year in and year out; there is no internal reason to reevaluate and commonly no one assigned to do so.  
8. Most bureaucracies are not corrupt but there is always the temptation and it is given into with some regularity.   Morality and legality aside, $1000 to avoid $5,000 solution to a problem makes sense, and so it happens. (In some places more than others.  Illinois, for example, can’t seem to keep a two successive governors out of jail.)  
9. Without a bottom line, there is no force mandating constant adjustment to the process.  No one looks for better or cheaper ways to do things.  Often to the contrary, for CYA and make-work reasons, processes are deliberately made more complicated.   Doing things better hardly seems a priority.  For the bureaucrat, sticking one’s head up is often the surest path to institutional limbo.  The innovator is driven out and the classic bureaucrat ends up running the show.  
10. There is no consequence for failure.   Mediocre or bad decisions are simply absorbed into the system.  When a bureaucracy fails, it is almost always attributed to insufficient funding.  This modus operandi is almost an incentive to actually try to fail.  
11. Government bureaucracies are ultimately answerable to elected officials.  In theory, these officials are answerable to the voters.  However, elected officials often owe the position to support from employee unions. These officials usually know very little about the details of what their bureaucracies do (and they know that the voters know even less).  In short, the bureaucrats are usually focused, full-time, well-paid and know the intricacies of the system.  Their bosses are usually unfocused, part-time, nominally paid and ignorant of the critical details. 
12. Bureaucracies rarely look back to reconsider their decisions.   They have no motivation to do so.  Assume, for example, that ten of forty handicapped parking spaces at a Costco are never used.  Costco has a year’s worth of video to show this.  These spaces, right at the front door, are very valuable to the store.  Who do they go to?  Who can look at the regulation anew?  The requirement may be based on a reasonable ratio between floor area and the number of reserved spaces required. Nevertheless, it may make no sense in this specific instance.  Maybe this Costco is located where the populace is healthier and younger. Literally no one has the authority to reconsider. The waste goes on indefinitely because long ago and far away, some guy somewhere came up with an inflexible, one-size-fits-all standard. 

In the end, all bureaucracies suffer from limitations which undermine what they do.  When the smooth functioning of the bureaucracy is their day-to-day goal, the broader mission becomes secondary.