By Sandra Naranjo Bautista
Time-wasting bureaucracy is one of the most common frustrations. For both citizens that deserve high-quality and efficient services, and for civil servants that want to get things done. In this article, I share a simple three-step process to help you get through all the bureaucracy and start implementing.
Is bureaucracy a paradox?
For some, public administration is like a paradox. The meaning of the word itself shows this conflict. If you look in the dictionary the same word is used to refer to the ‘system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives’, a.k.a. the civil service, and for ‘excessively complicated administrative procedure’.
Does that mean the civil service and red tape are synonyms? Of course not! At least it shouldn’t be. The public administration can be efficient, effective and of the highest quality. Am I too optimistic to think that change is possible? I don’t think so. Government can, and should, do better.
Let’s start with a change of mindset about bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is here to stay. The heart of government is the civil service. What doesn’t have to stay is the usual hurdles of bureaucracy, the excessive time it can take to make things happen. While sometimes we, as civil servants, criticize the system, we are the system. And we can make it better, even if it’s one of us at a time.
Three-steps to navigate bureaucracy
The only way to learn to navigate the bureaucracy is to understand it, and only then improve it. This is the three-step process I’ve used to overcome useless procedures, solve problems and implement projects successfully.
1. Understand the system
Before trying to ‘fix the system’ make sure to comprehend it first. One common mistake people make is to try to improve something that they don’t even understand well. How things work the way they do and, more importantly, why. As I’ve said before, the broken system is a myth. You just need to identify the purpose it’s serving.
Take the time to map the processes. What’s the workflow of the issue you are trying to address. Think of the people that are involved, the interaction between agents, who are the authorizers, what’s the current sequence of events. Then find out what are the resources needed in each step. What’s the time each step takes, why.
Since I’m a visual person I’d have it all clearly (and not so clearly sometimes) identified in a diagram.
2. Learn to navigate it
Once you have it all mapped out, now it’s time to go through the current system, as the user and as someone in the backend. In other words, try to make sure you follow every step as if you were doing that particular procedure in real life from both perspectives.
For the backend, for example, what I’ve done before is to meet with the person doing that particular part of the process (within the ministry) and sit with them as they do it, be there when they do the click in the system.
What I’ve learned is that if I only asked someone to tell me how they do it, I would miss valuable information. When you have a repetitive task to do, you sometimes omit the details of how it works because it’s a habit for you. As the old saying goes, the devil is on the details. You want to make sure you have all of them.
3. Make it better
Now that you’ve mapped everything, gone through the process yourself -all of it-, it’s time to make it better. Start by being clear in what you need. Not necessarily what you want the system to do, but the results you want to achieve. Then go backwards. To achieve those results, what needs to happen. There are three ways to go about this.
You can start making small changes to the current system. If this were a phone, this would be version 1.2 of the software. Depending on what it is you are trying to improve, this can be as simple as talking with person X instead of person Y in a specific department where things are authorized. It could be making small changes to automate certain parts of the process. It could be eliminating something that’s duplicated. The list goes on, but essentially, it’s only changing what you have. These are the ones that can be implemented easily and at a very low cost, if at all.
You can create a new version of the current system. Going back to the phone example, this would be version 2.0. In this process, you add new functionality to the existing system. For example, you go from doing something written to doing it by email to save time. Or you hire more people to do it faster, you involve more or fewer people in the workflow.
The final and more radical change is to upgrade the system. In our phone analogy, this is where you buy a new phone, with new technology. Here, you change the system. The beauty of doing it after steps 1 and 2, is that you have identified what you have, and, if you were doing it yourself, you’ll find out that in the process you’ve also identified what you need. Which you listed at the start of this step. With that clear, it’ll be easier to identify how would a new system look like.
A fight against red tape, one day at a time
Red tape is everyone’s fight because it affects the very essence of the public sector’s purpose, to improve people’s lives. Time and energy wasted in paperwork and administrative procedures shouldn’t be tolerated. And we have to make it better. Even if it’s one process at a time. The worst-case scenario is we give up, and then one thing is certain, things won’t change.
So next time you find something that doesn’t work, ask yourself, how can I make it better? Dream big and start small.
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash
