The Economist discusses the status and dynamics of public service, making the point that it's hard to get people hired and that new hires want exciting, challenging jobs.
This reminded me of one of my pet ideas (oh no, not again!): term limits for bureaucrats.
[Note that a bureaucrat is an administrator -- not an academic or researcher.]
That means limiting one's total government service (at all levels -- city, state, national) to 20 years.
Here are the (intended) consequences of this policy:
- Employees would know that they would have to work in the private sector at some point. This knowledge would encourage them to maintain and build skills.
- Higher turn-over and an absence of "time servers" would force bureaucracies to simplify and clarify so that new employees could understand how things work. Customers (citizens) would benefit from this.
- Private sector ideas and culture would reach the public sector -- and vice versa! Such cross-pollination would aid mutual comprehension and reduce antagonism.
- Employees on each side of the line would have a better (working) idea of comparative advantage, which would make it easier to reduce both government and market failure.
Bottom Line: We learn from every job we do, and we can improve the quality of our bureaucracy by requiring that employees do more than one job.
25 comments:
So, after a 4 yr PhD, 4 yr post-doc, 6 yr (say) associate professor period, one would have 6 years as a full professor before one would have to quit? Not sure how those incentives would work :)
A successful version of this idea seems to need to be more nuanced.
Putting professors on the streets just as they got tenured might not be the best thing for the professors. Or the streets!
It is similar for doctors, many scientists, and politicians. There is a long training time needed to do the job well. For many weapons designers it takes 15 years after completing a Ph.D. to learn enough to be competent at your job. For politicians, if the limits of the terms are chosen wrong, you end up giving the power to the lobbyists who do not have term limits.
What might work better, although I do not know how to accomplish it, would be if government workers had to work for 18 months in the private sector, not at a government contractor, before they were considered qualified for a government job. Then once the person had a government job they could be fired for not moving quickly on the needs of the people. Basically, they could not keep their job by just being a bureaucrat and pushing papers from one side of their desk to another.
Achieve these transformations in government, David, and we will all follow you anywhere. ;-)
@Morten -- hahhaha -- no, I am not talking about academics. I am talking about bureaucrats. Although this WOULD apply to bureaucrats at universities :)
Why? Academics COMPETE with each other and move jobs based on competitive hires. We can leave "tenure, good or bad" for another day :)
@Eric -- I am also NOT talking about government researchers @ labs. I am talking about bureaucrats, i.e., whose "administrative work is a full-time occupation."
Oh, you mean the 'peons.' They may not like you for that characterization.
How do you write different rules for scientists, professors, and bureaucrats? What if a professor becomes an administrator/bureaucrat?
On the whole, I totally agree with you. The only problem I see that could arise is the learning curve (assuming there is any efficiency at all now). For instance, budget processes with governments actually do require legislators to understand how departments are run. If you kick someone out after 6 or so years, you'd basically have to start at square one with the next legislator in the next budget cycle. There are, of course, benefits to this. But there are costs.
Another thought.
Most bureaucrats are hired to do a particular job. Usually that job consists of moving paper or money from one side of the desk to another following particular rules. This person gets promoted for following these rules. They do not have the power to change the rules.
So, getting this person to disobey the rules--by working more for the constituents--will get the person fired and replaced by a rule follower. Nothing will actually change.
Thoughts?
It seems to me that this would encourage corruption. If a bureaucrat knows that after 20 years he's going to have to start over in a labor market that's none too kind to older folks, wouldn't that give him a strong incentive to grant favors to potential employers during his public service in the hopes of getting a job from them when he is later forced out? Which is easier, building skills or accumulating owed favors?
Surely there would be an issue with cyclical bureaucrat shortages. If bureaucrats are all leaving the civil service at the conclusion of fixed terms, then you're going to need a constant intake of new bureaucrats and a high retention rate to make sure you keep all those positions filled. Or at least a recruitment rate > attrition rate of older recruits + fixed-term leavers.
(As opposed to the status quo, where fixed-term leavers are replaced by retirees, presumably a smaller number of people).
And, to echo a comment above, the incentive structure would be a little twisted if a bureaucrat with 18 years service knew that regardless of what he or she did in those last two years, they had to leave / they'd be going anyway. Why not leave now and go make it in the private sector? Those two years would surely strike the worker as 'unproductive'. Unless fulfilling 20 years of service got you a pension or similar.
Term limits do like a good idea for high-level / 'executive' bureaucrats. But if someone wants to work their whole life at the reception desk of the unemployment office etc., hey, who are we to say no?
@Eric -- you ssid peons, not me.
@Melanie -- the learning curve should NOT take 6 years; that is does only indicates things are too complicated.
@Eric -- that guy's boss is also subject to the 20 yr limit, AND it's good for your CV to show that you worked to improve things
@JM -- skills. Nobody is going to hire deadwood. It's easier to pay-as-you go (i.e., bribes today...)
@Nick -- in steady state, employment would be the same; it may even shrink (a good thing). 20 years WOULD get you a pension, BUT I'd be happy if the bureaucrat left early to get better opportunities. As for the 40 yr office clerk, I have run into a few of them. Their indifference (and poor work) leads me to prefer that they be replaced by a young gun.
I understand the problem you are worrying about, but term limits is a lousy solution. First of all, the best and brightest would regonize that this was a career path that sucked, and they would avoid it at all costs. The less talented would jump at it and use their time to solicit and collect bribes at every opportunity because they would know their time was limited.
@JWT -- as if the best and brightest go into bureaucracy now? They do not, b/c of all the deadwood, and the perception that it's a dead career path. As for the lame taking bribes, what's to keep them from doing it now?
@all -- you are disappointing me with arguments that fail to take career and interpersonal dynamics into account. If anything, my idea makes MORE sense (and now I understand why it's not been tried...)
OK, big guy.
On career and interpersonal dynamics,
if for almost every bureaucrat, their career is only stable if they preserve the status quo and the people who have the most to gain by preserving the status are those who have been in the bureaucracy the longest, who will make the changes that you want?
Every potential change agent is motivated and incentivized, at many levels, to work against change.
Your turn.
@Eric -- "people who have the most to gain by preserving the status are those who have been in the bureaucracy the longest" -- I disagree. Under current conditions, they do not want to rock to boat, to do more work; if they need to get another job, then they have to show that they did something as a seriour servant, which implies change/success.
Your turn.
But they do not want to get another job, especially one in the private sector. They want to keep doing what they are doing until they retire.
Above the senior civil servants are political employees who come and go like Mayflies.
So, I reject your assumption that senior civil servants are incentivized to 'get things accomplished' to be able to get another job. I claim that they are incentivized to keep following the rules that they have been following for years.
Do you have data?
@Eric -- that's my point -- they need to be FORCED to get another job, in a competitive market.
What kinda data do you want? The number of public "servants" who NEVER work in the private sector?
How about unionization data? Unions are known for preventing hard work (a good thing in the 1900s, but not now -- ask GM), and the only place unionization is NOT falling is in the public sector.
A. Who is going to force them? I do not see anyone doing the forcing.
B. What private company would want to hire a person who did not want to work? So who would force the hiring--government bureaucrats?
So, while you and I agree with the prinicipal, I do not see a viable plan to enact the principle.
Do you have such a plan?
If bureaucracies hire the unambitious to do jobs that are not for the ambitious, then how do you get the unambitious to become ambitious or get the necessary jobs to reward ambition. It seems that there are lots of necessary jobs where ambition is not what is needed and lots of people who are not ambitious.
Please fill in details of what you desire and the economic and personnel consequences of what you desire-micro and macroeconomic.
Thanks.
@Eric -- term limits would force them. to retire. after 20 years.
NO FIRMS hire people that do not want to be hired (do not apply).
Are we talking about two different topics?
So you get bureaucrats who retire at 40, right? These people have no skills that would make them salable elsewhere. You have said that they cannot be bureaucrats somewhere else.
This scenarios would yield millions of young retirees every year. What does society do with these people? They are not ambitious. The initial selection was against ambition so the ambitious ones are already working in companies. Do they spread bureaucratic lethargy to companies?
I think that there is one person who can get potential bureaucrats to understand the private sector and potential private sector employees to understand bureaucratic jobs.
That person would one who is teaching an undergraduate course in economics and who could get his or her students to understand bureaucracy before they graduate. That person could make this understanding part of their course work and part of special projects. After a while, that person could get the breadth of learning about bureaucracy and private sector into the distribution requirements of incoming CAL students.
That person is you. Are you up to the task?
"They are not ambitious." -- you've put your finger on the problem, and your solution appears to be...to keep them employed.
Go with that.
As for "that person is you," I disagree. Life is a much better teacher than me.
1) The first problem is political appointees. For example, George Bush fired an extremely competent FEMA manager (James Lee Witt) and appointed the multi-untalented Michael Brown to the job. Poor Mike couldn't tell one end of an Arabian horse from the other. New Orleans, et al, was the upshot.
The Surgeon General's job is another example of really good people being forced out for political reasons. So is the FDA, and the Center for Disease Control is another. The Department of Interior has had some really bizarre political appointees.
But on the other hand, should not the party in power have the ability/power to enforce its own views on the government through its appointees?
2) The other problem is the inability to transfer government skills to private industry jobs. I made this point before. Why would anyone want to spend 20 years acquiring skills only to be forced out of their jobs, no matter how well he/she had performed, into a world that had no use for those skills? And the answer is NO ONE and that is the basic problem of your idea. If your notion was put into place, the entire government would soon be filled with people who absolutely could not get a job anywhere else. Government jobs, not politics, would be the last (first?) refuge of scoundrels.
@JWT --
1) Political hacks would still happen; they would be limited to 20 yrs total.
2) You say "the entire government would soon be filled with people who absolutely could not get a job anywhere else." as if this is NOT true now. In my system, they would have to get a job elsewhere (and, more important, would be coming from a job elsewhere). You're helping my point. Thanks!
1) Political hacks are now limited to four years in practice. You would do more to improve government functioning if you could keep career people who are really good at their jobs than anything you are proposing.
2) There are all kinds of talented people working in the government and doing a great job. I repeat, painting all government employees with the same incompetency brush is arrogant. You are still missing the point.
Nobody with any sense at all would ever take a job with the government under your conditions. Get real. This is not a theory, it is real world life. If I wouldn't take a job under those conditions, neither would anybody smarter than I am, and that includes almost everybody.
@JWT --
1) As you said before, good people get kicked out by hacks, so the 20-yr limit is NOT going to make that worse.
2) If they are good, the 20 yr limit will not matter (they will get jobs elsewhere). If they suck (now), they will have to sharpen up to get a new job AND will be kicked out anyway.
Expectations matter. So do incentives.
Try again.
What happens in the last few years at work and prior to "retirement?"
Looking at our current term limits at state government (which is a limit to my freedom of speech and assembly, but I digress), I see HUGE distortions from this non-market, command-and-control requirement.
One example: A conservative Democrat looking at being termed-out, but with a chance at a statewide office (like AG, for example), will vote very differently the last couple of years from the previous eight, because s/he wants to garner support from different groups.
What would a bureaucrat do when looking at a contrived end to her/his career? Public-private partnerships, anyone?
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