A celebration of bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Whether in government, business, or non-profits, meetings, reports, meetings, conferences, reports, and meetings constitute daily life in a large organization.
As usual, we are deeply disturbed. This month we are deeply disturbed by the dire situation of bureaucrats in North Korea. A blog covering North Korea reports that bureaucrats are not receiving their food rations: “After food distribution being halted, many low-ranking officials stopped showing up for work. Instead, they started picking on people. They … Continue reading COB-23: feeding bureaucracy
This coming week in the U.S. is Public Service Recognition Week. Everyone should celebrate this important week. To help you, the Public Employees Roundtable at the Council for Excellence in Government has created a 24-page “How to Celebrate Handbook.” From the “Did You Know?” section of the Handbook: The National Institutes of Health began in … Continue reading Public Service Recognition Week, 2008
In an article entitled “C’mon and Be a Bureaucrat,” a U.S. national weekly magazine discussed the importance of recruiting new U.S. government bureaucrats. The article noted: When an interest group wants to torpedo a government initiative, it simply invokes the “bureaucrat” as an emblem of ineptitude. “We saw a slight change during the ‘West Wing’ … Continue reading COB-22: recruiting new bureaucrats
This month at the Carnival of the Bureaucrats we review founding documents of bureaucracy. Perhaps the most important historical moment in bureaucracy was the drafting of a document whose first paragraph includes this exalted statement: “When in the course of bureaucratic events it becomes necessary for an organization to sacrifice some of its members, a … Continue reading COB-21: sacrificing people for the organization