<story><title>Culture eats policy</title><url>https://www.niskanencenter.org/culture-eats-policy/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bruce511</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m reminded of the adage that to really get things done, you need a small qualified team, and everyone else to get out of their way. (See the original Appke Mac team as an example.)&lt;p&gt;Big projects are hard. They&amp;#x27;re expensive. With large budgets comes lots of oversight, endless second guessing, and a zillion rules, perfected over years, to ensure money is not wasted or stolen.&lt;p&gt;I once pitched an off-the-shelf program to a corporate, which would have cost 10k to roll out company wide. But the procurement process demanded a proper evaluation first, which eould cost about 5 times that. Better that than letting someone later claim that 10k was wasted.&lt;p&gt;Large business wastes just as much money as govt, but when a business makes a mistake they just stop talking about it. In govt it ends up on CSPAN. When it&amp;#x27;s not your money, it&amp;#x27;s easy to spend. Reputation (and blame doging) is far more valuable than cash.&lt;p&gt;Which brings us back to well resourced, small teams, of competent people.</text></comment>
<story><title>Culture eats policy</title><url>https://www.niskanencenter.org/culture-eats-policy/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Symmetry</author><text>A quote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;No one wants to be in the video clip as a stone-faced bureaucrat with no good answers, being yelled at by a righteous—or self-righteous—politician fighting the good fight on behalf of the aggrieved public. In front of the cameras, you can’t say things like “it doesn’t work because we were forced to use an ESB.” You would look like you were trying to throw someone else under the bus, and the legislators wouldn’t understand what you were talking about anyway. Your job is simply to endure the hearing, produce as few viral sound bites as possible, and not incriminate others.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;As painful and sometimes humiliating as these hearings are, if you’re a career civil servant, it is the second system of accountability that matters more to you. The legislature can’t fire or officially reprimand you, no matter how bad a job they think you did (although they can put political pressure on the administration to do so). They can’t make you ineligible for promotions and raises. On the other hand, violations of policy, process, and procedure—real or perceived—can do all of that, even if there is no hearing.</text></comment>