Save the Bureaucrats (While Reinventing Them)

Abstract

This article argues that each and every federal agency serves one customer — the American public— and that agencies learn about that customer from the top down, through the political process and the laws and regulations emulating from that process. For this reason, the bureaucracy is an essential ingredient in the management of federal agencies. The National Performance Review's assertion that bureaucrats are unnecessary and get in the way of line managers and employees misses the mark. Bureaucrats are at the very core of government. Properly conceived, they are the public's customer representatives, working to make sure agencies are managed in accordance with the public interest. Reinventing the bureaucracy may be a good idea, but eliminating it or weakening could be a terrible idea, making agencies even less responsive to the public's needs. Some key suggestions for how the bureaucracy can be improved are offered including: constantly improve the bureaucracy's rules, flatten the organizational structure, build partnerships with others outside the bureaucracy, use expert systems, and reengineer rule-based processes. Professionals in the federal bureaucracy — including human resource management professionals — are currently being challenged to demonstrate why they are needed. This article provides a clear, logical argument supporting the importance of the bureaucracy.