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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (18006)	7/11/2001 6:44:16 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

That's a valuable perspective that I don't come across very often. Probably because the issues I deal with are usually fairly "hot button" issues where somebody thinks their ox is being gored (otherwise a lawyer wouldn't be involved). I can see your point about the traditional bureaucratic jobs, and in the Washington swamp. I mean city. And actually, given reports on program efficacy, if you're talking about the office the acronym of which is on the tip of my tongue but not my fingers--I want to say GPO but that's wrong--I have had a lot of respect for their reports in the past. But I think in the areas I mostly deal with -- local planning and child areas -- you're more likely to get people who go into those fields for ideological reasons than just to have a job. In the first place, planners have to have planning degrees, so they have to have committed serious time and study buying into the concept that planning is good, and generally into the concept that more planning is better, and that they are the right people to tell other people what they can and can't do on their land. I'm talking about the professionals here, not the clerks and paper pushers, who I agree probably just want a stable job with good benefits. And in the child field, you are dealing with people who have degrees in social work or counseling, so once again have taken time to study a field in which the assumption is that you are qualified to tell other people what's good for them and how they should do a better job of running their lives. So I think maybe we're just approaching this thing from our two very different experiences in/with government. I'm certainly coloring my view of government generally by my experience with the government people I deal with on a regular basis. And from what you say, I'm overgeneralizing and assuming motives for people that they really don't have. You're right, generally people who are just assessing a program wouldn't normally come with a bias as to whether that program was good or bad. But IME that when a DSHS worker goes to a house where there is a report of child abuse, very often they go with the basic assumption that the report is probably true and that the starting assumption is that they are going to find the person guilty until they can prove they aren't, and that the social worker is the good guy and the parent, stepparent, or whoever is assumed to be a problem to be dealt with by this government worker who knows better. Just very different experiences with the diverse vastness called government.

To: Lane3 who wrote (18006)	7/11/2001 8:26:48 PM
From: thames_sider	Respond to of 82486

Well said. I worked in both a public education department and a nationalised industry before my current job... in both, barring specifics, I could have been working for any company. IT is IT: if you work on (say) an HR system, or a website e-commerce solution, it doesn't really matter much who you're employing or what you're selling. Still - in the public sector the pay and benefits were worse - and there was at least an aspiration that you were doing something worthwhile to benefit others... Our Civil Service is theoretically apolitical, BTW: the seniors are not political appointees, but must work up through the ranks. This may lessen political bias, but I'm not sure it makes for greater efficiency or effectiveness! I didn't notice that in any job there was much 'institutional' bias, except inasmuch as you are trying to carry out the policies and plans made by a few remote, high-level 'managers': and at that level, 50% growth y/y is every bit is unrealistic as 95% school attendance at 15, but benefits fewer people.