BUREAUCRACY - both Public Servive and Corporate

This is the longest and most difficult of the topic-areas I have picked so I've made it the first.

An old definition .... “BUREAUCRACY [Hybrid word imit. fm. Aristocracy] A system in which government is carried on by irresponsible departmental officials”.

Not bad. The important part of that definition is IRRESPONSIBLE – to which we can add Malicious, Wastefiul, Soul-destroying, Corrupt .... no doubt you have your own adjectives. Nowadays, a definition of Bureaucracy has to cover both the Public Service [including the Defence Force and the Judiciary] and the Private Corporations.

Let's face it. For all our whinging about 'bureaucrats', Australians love bureaucracy. It's a hangover from the convict days; it's become part of our national tradition.. Never mind what Communist regimes were like, we can outdo them in bureaucracy – faster, more colourfully, with more purposeless changes, with greater destruction and waste..

It is the single biggest problem we have. It stifles innovation; it creates misery; it wastes a huge amount of money; it rewards inefficiency .... and it makes the Australia 2020 Summit and this blog necessary.

Now, down to business ........

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a.. What can we do to stop clones hiring clones? How can we make Public Service recruitment and promotion more impartial? How can we make recruitmant to Corporations more open? How can we break the cycle of infestation?

b.. How do we reward diligent, honest, decent public servants and corporate officials. The ones who have the interests of both their own organization and the general public at heart ........ without also rewarding the yes-men, the bullies, the layabouts, the back-stabbers, the bribe-takers, the vicious sociopaths, the drunks-and-druggies, the pompous fools and the crooks?

c.. How do we punish absolute stupidity and criminality without making everyone in the organization too scared to be innovative or to deviate an inch from the supposed norm?

d.. Current performance evaluations seem to have made things worse rather than better – what can we do to make sure performance is monitored so as to warn of dangerous trends and destructive decisions without the monitoring being tangled up with trivia and with minor differences in individual work-style? .

e.. During my professional working life, far too often I got to hear appalling stories of bureaucratic idiocy and abuse of authority that was the direct cause of death, ruin, illness, family break-up and worse [and, by the way,like many others, I've survived bureaucratic spite and stupidity myself]. How can we make “Bureaucracy” a felony like robbery or murder?

f.. How do we train children now to assert themselves and their interests in the face of the bureaucratic abuse of power whilst training them too to be calm and polite and very observant when confronted by such nastiness?

g.. Governments and corporations do need to collect and analyse some data about individuals in order to function well and to meet our needs but .... How do we set real and vital limits about what data is collected - by whom, for what purpose and for the ultimate benefit or harm to whom?

h.. Once something goes onto a government or corporate record about an individual it is impossible to alter. No matter how inaccurate, how monsterously untrue, no matter how erroneous or spiteful or ridiculous, no matter how gross the omission of relevant additional information .... once it is there, it is there .... and nothing in the wide world can ever change it. Forget litigation – that's only for the waelthy with time and money to burn; forget “Freedom of Information” - that's a sick joke and it has often been called “Freedom from Information. [I found out indirectly that some records on me probably contained disgustingly wrong information about me – but I can never correct it]. These records, with their errors and their facts, have direct and great impact on our lives.

How do we get free and uncomplicated access to all government and corporate records about ourselves and either correct them or add our own comments pointing out any lies, errors, misunderstandings, foolishness, ignorance and omissions in those records?

i.. How do we preserve continuity and organizational memory in the Public service and in the Corporations? Sorry but having it all down on paper or on hard-drives just isn't enough .... as quite a few Royal Commissions. inquests and major trials have made so painully obvious..

j.. How do we give Ombudsman real teeth and change the corporate "watch-puppies" into real watchdogs?

k.. How can we get at least some input by ordinary Australians into policy-making? The three-yearly election circus with its dancing-and-singing "mandates" is a rip-roaring failure .... and many policy disasters would have been avoided and thousands of million of tax dollars rescued if the general public had been aware of what ratbaggery and sheer lunacy was going into this policy or that. If some proposed policies had been run past a couple of kids in their school playground then the policies would have never got off the ground. Nobody their right mind would want a referendum on everything or policy-making by popularity contests - but the other extreme, the one we have now, excessive secrecy, is sending us into the abyss.

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What do you think and what are your suggestions?