Book Project
“Bulletproof Bureaucracy:
Perverse organizational behaviors, snarled policies, and gridlocked projects”
I write about why it is so hard for government to get things done.
A few years ago, I went to work for a foreign government.
I moved to Bogotá, Colombia to serve as an advisor to the Secretary of Mobility under Mayor Enrique Peñalosa.
My job was to build infrastructure to improve urban transportation...
I managed 10 projects meant to transform public transportation into a speedy, dignified way of getting around the city.
…and coordinate city agencies to get projects done.
On some projects, I orchestrated the work of 18+ agencies to solve “wicked problems” of urban planning.
While I led projects, I observed patterns of perverse behaviors within public agencies.
I had hoped to write an unusual success story of extraordinary cooperation across bureaucratic siloes, in pursuit of transportation infrastructure.
I found a bureaucracy more intent on bullet-proofing itself than on improving the lives of citizens.
The reasons for these behaviors…
…are the results of popular international development policies,
advocated by development banks, Western governments, and scholars:
Anti-corruption.
Anti-corruption agencies distort the incentives of political appointees and career civil servants by criminalizing administrative law. Their infamous Type 2 errors (prosecution of innocent individuals) paralyze projects.
Public sector contracting.
Outsourcing over 60% of the public sector to contract workers and excluding civil servants from all but the menial tasks of government fuels constant infighting, quashes organizational learning, and reinforces endemic clientelism.
Voice & participation.
New avenues for public voice on projects constrain implementation and transfer power to whomever shouts the loudest. The responding bureaucratic masquerade of “participation” undermines the legitimacy of administrative agencies.
Performance evaluation.
Policies informed by the “New Public Management” reduce governing to goal-setting and box-checking. Failure to meet quantitative goals may have criminal implications, but failure to resolve problems raised by citizens or other executive agencies is comparatively inconsequential.
These popular international development policies and the routine organizational behaviors they provoke stymie project delivery.
Follow my writing journey.
“Bulletproof Bureaucracy”
The material on this Website is a work of non-fiction. All events are true to the best of the author’s records. Names and identifying features have been changed to protect the identity of certain parties. The material on this Website does not constitute legal evidence.