tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/bureaucracy-16168/articlesBureaucracy – The Conversation2023-12-07T00:48:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189972023-12-07T00:48:01Z2023-12-07T00:48:01ZCreative bureaucracy is possible. Here are 3 things cities do to foster innovative local government<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562898/original/file-20231201-21-oisok5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3247%2C2155&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/social-development-concept-city-people-1662934000">metamorworks/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Heavyweight international players from <a href="https://www.oecd.org/publications/enhancing-innovation-capacity-in-city-government-f10c96e5-en.htm">the OECD</a> to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.org/government-innovation/">Bloomberg Philanthropies</a> and <a href="https://councilonurbaninitiatives.com/about">the United Nations</a> have in recent years prescribed “innovation” as a solution for the many challenges city governments face.</p>
<p>Innovation is a notoriously slippery term. For city government it generally involves deliberately questioning how things are done, leading to new and hopefully better ways of working. Innovation is meant to help resolve the world’s thorniest public policy challenges — from housing affordability to the climate crisis — but also to make cities more liveable through more effective, responsive and efficient city government.</p>
<p>But what do these innovations involve? Who do they involve? How do they work? Indeed, do they work? And what are the implications for city government? </p>
<p>Our research team has investigated these questions in conversation with practitioners from around the world. We present these conversations in a new <a href="https://cityroadpod.org/2023/11/20/innovating-cities-series/">podcast mini-series</a> (<a href="https://www.uow.edu.au/the-arts-social-sciences-humanities/research/access/podcasts-videos/innovating-cities/">transcripts are here</a>).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-we-need-to-talk-about-who-governs-our-city-states-119884">Australia, we need to talk about who governs our city-states</a>
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<h2>3 keys to successful innovation</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/DP200100176">research</a> identified three dimensions as critical for city government innovation: </p>
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<li>new institutions that are “licensed to innovate”</li>
<li>approaches based in <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-283789701/101-urban-governance-design-thinking">design thinking</a></li>
<li>nurturing more creative bureaucracies.</li>
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<p>First, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-283789701/97-innovating-city-governance-innovation-units">urban innovation units</a> have become a poster child for innovative city government. Examples include the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (<a href="https://www.boston.gov/departments/new-urban-mechanics">MONUM</a>) and <a href="https://www.fondazioneinnovazioneurbana.it/en/civic-imagination">Bologna’s Office of Civic Imagination</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">How Boston fixes a pothole: an example of involving residents in innovative solutions to local problems.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These units are usually modestly sized teams within city government. They are licensed to experiment with new processes, new services or new ways of developing urban policy. </p>
<p>These units generally aim to unsettle “business as usual” and work across habitual divisions of labour between departments and functions. They tend to draw in new partners, whether in the private, community or philanthropic sector. The emphasis is on collaborating to get things done, rather than following well-established rules and routines to deliver public services.</p>
<p>Such approaches challenge city government norms. They work with an explicit tolerance of failure and learning until a version of a policy, or a way of delivering a service, begins to work better. As one of our interviewees said:</p>
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<p>Our return on investment here is [… ]so much greater if we fail and then change ‘fail’ to ‘learn’. </p>
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<p>There’s an emphasis on building trust between the various partners, within and beyond government. As another interviewee said:</p>
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<p>Trust and social networks turn out to be the greatest lubricant for innovation.</p>
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<p>Creating a narrative about what innovative approaches can achieve is also important. “Showcasing the wins” demands new storytelling resources and skills for city staff. </p>
<p>There is no predictable template that transfers smoothly across all locations. These units need to navigate unique local circumstances, conflicting priorities and political sticking points that crop up in different ways in different places. </p>
<p>The bigger question, then, is how effectively can the wider “warts and all” lessons from these units be scaled up across the full scope of city government functions?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-the-signs-point-to-our-big-cities-need-for-democratic-metro-scale-governance-92417">All the signs point to our big cities' need for democratic, metro-scale governance</a>
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<h2>Design thinking that goes beyond ‘usual suspects’</h2>
<p>While we may not traditionally associate city government with design, our participants often described their work in terms such as human-centred design, co-design, co-creation and prototyping. </p>
<p>Experimental and iterative practices underpinned their work: that is, testing a policy or service-design idea, seeing what works and what doesn’t, tweaking and testing again, and so on. Learning from the process is a priority.</p>
<p>And that learning was derived from input from more than “the usual suspects”. At its best, design thinking is unashamedly focused on people, whether they work in city departments or are citizens impacted by the problem in focus. </p>
<p>This type of thinking, one participant said, is </p>
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<p>about new ways of including and engaging people in program design and policy design […] folks who I think traditionally are either not involved in the design process or haven’t been engaged in a way that feels really authentic.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-49-small-communities-innovating-as-well-as-the-big-cities-84426">Here's 49 small communities innovating as well as the big cities</a>
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<h2>Developing a creative bureaucracy</h2>
<p>Our research revealed practitioners commonly understand innovation in city government as being about creative problem-solving. This is some way from the stereotype of the rule-bound city government bureaucrat. </p>
<p>In response to perceptions that city governments aren’t adaptable, effective or open enough, we see efforts to unleash the creativity of their workers to solve problems. Berlin even has an annual <a href="https://creativebureaucracy.org/">Creative Bureaucracy Festival</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Berlin’s Creative Bureaucracy Festival highlights the value of innovation in government.</span></figcaption>
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<p>We found evidence of a wider shift towards a creative problem-solving mindset. One interviewee described her job as:</p>
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<p>always just solving problems and putting yourself in the shoes of whoever you are dealing with […] They have a problem and our obligation is to solve it, by whatever means necessary.</p>
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<p>The desire for adaptive, responsive, open city government is changing recruitment priorities. Our interviewees told us about seeking staff with qualities like empathy, persuasion, charisma, agility and a history of enabling teams to create solutions. Recruiting for so-called soft skills, not the hard skills of domain-specific expertise, is part of an effort to change the culture and bureaucratic capacities of city government. </p>
<p>As the saying goes, personnel is policy. Who city government employs largely dictates what it can do.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-ways-governments-drive-innovation-and-how-they-can-help-post-pandemic-resilience-186910">6 ways governments drive innovation – and how they can help post-pandemic resilience</a>
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<h2>Beware ‘innovation washing’</h2>
<p>Much remains to be learned about the long-term implications of city governments working in “innovation mode”. Clear-eyed evaluation is needed to avoid “innovation washing”: the notion that innovation is always a good thing and always delivers improvement. </p>
<p>Our research has found city government innovation most often concerns changes to the everyday business of running the city. This includes more efficient processes, new ways to gather ideas from the community, new collaborations that allow resource sharing. </p>
<p>These innovations may not be a silver bullet for intractable urban problems or save the planet, but they matter for everyday life in the city.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pauline McGuirk receives funding from the Australian Research Council, DP200100176 Innovating Urban Governance: Practices for Enhanced Urban Futures, the study on which this article is based.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Goh receives funding from the Australian Research Council, DP200100176.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Dowling receives funding from the Australian Research Council, DP200100176.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophia Maalsen receives funding from the Australian Research Council, DP200100176.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council, DP200100176.</span></em></p>A study of cities around the world that are developing innovative solutions to their problems has identified three key elements of success.Pauline McGuirk, Senior Professor of Urban Geography, University of WollongongLaura Goh, Postdoctoral Research Associate, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of SydneyRobyn Dowling, Professor and Associate Dean Research, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of SydneySophia Maalsen, ARC DECRA Fellow and Lecturer in Urbanism, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of SydneyTom Baker, Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176642023-11-27T19:18:08Z2023-11-27T19:18:08ZPolls say Trump has a strong chance of winning again in 2024. So how might his second term reshape the US government?<p>Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, a zealous <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/j-d-vance-explains-his-conversion-to-trump-and-maga.html">convert</a> to Donald Trump’s cause, once offered an <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">expansive vision</a> of how Trump should rule in a second term: “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/25/biden-polls-worse-trump-00128536">Polls a year out</a> from the 2024 election suggest Trump has a good chance of winning it. If he does, he and his allies want to be ready to run the country in ways <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/power-shifts-trumps-team-remains-unprepared-govern-msna946076">they were not</a> in 2016. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term">For more than a year</a>, groups supporting Trump have been publicising plans to <a href="https://www.project2025.org/personnel/">fill government roles</a> with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/us/politics/trump-2025-lawyers.html">proven Trump loyalists</a> if he wins a second term.</p>
<p>Trump believes his first term was undermined by “<a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/npr-misinformation-123020">deep state</a>” bureaucrats, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/trump-lawyers-white-house-russia/571036/">weak</a>” lawyers and even “<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/donald-trump-republicans-war-woke-generals-mark-milley/">woke generals</a>”. Some of his opponents argue that government officials indeed acted as “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/10/26/1131590735/did-the-so-called-deep-state-protect-the-country-from-trump">guardrails</a>” during Trump’s administration, saving the country from his worst instincts.</p>
<p>There seems to be a near consensus among Trump’s friends and foes that his <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-radical-left-veterans-day_n_65513838e4b0373d70b2a4b6">authoritarian</a> <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47">second term plans</a> would require <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election">more cooperative government officials</a> than he had last time around. </p>
<p>But how much could Trump genuinely reshape the United States government?</p>
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<h2>Theory of bureaucratic politics</h2>
<p>In 1971, political scientist Graham Allison wrote <a href="https://www.cia.gov/static/85da2484cf3ba013e22daa28905ae4cf/Review-Essence-of-Decision.pdf">Essence of Decision</a>, an analysis of the Kennedy administration’s actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Allison argued that foreign policy decisions of the United States government could not be understood simply as rational responses to external situations. Decisions are political outcomes resulting from complicated “games” played between different actors within the government. </p>
<p>Even in foreign policy, a domain where the US president <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-foreign-policy-powers-congress-and-president">has a lot of power</a> compared to other areas of policy, the president needs help making decisions. Those decisions reflect bargaining between cabinet secretaries, military figures, diplomats and advisers, all of whom have their <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/bureaucratic-politics-approach">own interests and viewpoints</a>. </p>
<p>One of the book’s earliest reviewers, the realist international relations scholar Stephen Krasner, was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1147761">unimpressed</a> by this analysis. He believed it would be popular with high-level policy-makers because it obscured their responsibility for the decisions they made. In the end, Krasner argued, there is a single decision-maker in US foreign policy, and that is the president. Games may be played among the president’s staff and bureaucrats, but they are games whose rules are written by the president and whose players are chosen by the president.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-author-bruce-wolpe-on-the-shocking-consequences-for-australia-of-a-trump-24-win-209138">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Author Bruce Wolpe on the "shocking" consequences for Australia of a Trump 24 win</a>
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<p>Allison’s theory would resonate with those who imagine a “<a href="https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/how-the-deep-state-came-to-america-a-history/">deep state</a>” establishment thwarting the president’s agenda. Trump is not the first president to rail against entrenched opposition in his own administration, especially in foreign policy. Barack Obama’s staff complained of “<a href="https://www.duckofminerva.com/2020/03/deconstructing-teh-blob.html">The Blob</a>”, a militaristic establishment that included <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/08/white-house-downplays-robert-gates-memoir">Obama’s secretary of defense</a>. Other Democratic presidents also used blob-like metaphors. Allison noted that John F. Kennedy described the State Department as “a bowl of jelly”, while Franklin D. Roosevelt <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-i-were-secretary-the-us-navy-just-one-day-19116">said</a> that trying to change anything in the Navy was “like punching a feather bed”.</p>
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<p>But we should remember Krasner’s warnings that presidents and their allies would use bureaucratic opposition as an excuse for the shortcomings of systems they controlled. Trump was frustrated at times by appointees who <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/441240-mattis-ignored-orders-from-trump-white-house-on-north-korea-iran-report/">ignored his orders</a> or <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-has-months-been-urging-administration-reinstate-child-separation-policy-n992021">refused to carry them out</a> because they were illegal. </p>
<p>But such people usually <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/jim-mattis-defense-secretary-retires-trump">didn’t last long</a> in the administration after <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/kirstjen-nielsen-leaving-position-homeland-security-secretary-trump-says-n991881">colliding with Trump</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s administration <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/">set records for turnover</a> among White House staff and Cabinet positions, and had a very high vacancy rate for <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/vacancies-acting-officials-and-the-waning-role-of-the-u-s-senate/">Senate-confirmed appointments</a>. By the end of his presidency, nearly anyone who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/10/trump-fires-john-bolton-national-security-adviser">disagreed</a> with him was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/09/933105262/trump-terminates-secretary-of-defense-mark-esper">gone</a>, and his <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/16/trump-cabinet-turnover-1416134">Cabinet</a> was filled with acting secretaries. This, he said, gave him “<a href="https://fortune.com/2019/11/27/trump-acting-heads-cabinet-presidency/">more flexibility</a>”.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/behind-the-chaos-office-that-vets-trump-appointees-plagued-by-inexperience/2018/03/30/cde31a1a-28a3-11e8-ab19-06a445a08c94_story.html">inexperience</a> and <a href="https://www.kqed.org/science/1971269/trump-administration-incompetence-helped-save-environmental-regulations">incompetence</a> of Trump’s people were bigger problems for Trump in the end than disloyalty and opposition. Selecting high officials for their loyalty alone could be a recipe for another four years of domination without control.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-has-changed-america-by-making-everything-about-politics-and-politics-all-about-himself-146839">Trump has changed America by making everything about politics, and politics all about himself</a>
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<h2>Smashing the administrative state</h2>
<p>Trump’s allies have ambitions beyond enforcing loyalty to Trump, who can only serve one more term. His former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon called early in Trump’s first term for the “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/30/politics/trump-bannon-administrative-state/index.html">deconstruction of the administrative state</a>”. This may sound new and radical, but it <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162211069723">broadly aligns</a> with the aims of conservative policy ever since <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/franklin-delano-roosevelt-and-the-new-deal/">Roosevelt’s New Deal</a>.</p>
<p>Congress delegates many of the powers of government to dozens of independent regulatory agencies such as the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/">Environmental Protection Agency</a>, the <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/">Consumer Finance Protection Bureau</a> and the <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/">National Labor Relations Board</a>. These bodies are given the power to do things like setting and enforcing clean air standards, investigating and publishing consumer complaints over financial services, and conducting elections on union representation. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/employment-law/u-s-chamber-challenges-nlrb-general-counsels-attempt-to-limit-employer-free-speech">legitimacy</a> of these agencies has long been <a href="https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/supreme-court-was-right-block-the-epas-unconstitutional-power-grab">attacked by conservatives</a>, who believe they bypass legislatures to advance liberal policy goals. Lawyers in the Reagan and Bush administrations developed <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1114&context=jcl">the theory of the “unitary executive”</a>, which asserted the right of the President to fire uncooperative civil servants and questioned the <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/9/23/23864355/supreme-court-cfpb-unconstitutional-consumer-financial-fifth-circuit-great-depression">constitutionality</a> of independent government agencies. </p>
<p>Towards the end of his presidency, Trump signed an executive order to create <a href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-creating-schedule-f-excepted-service/">Schedule F</a>, which would reclassify tens of thousands of career civil servants as political appointees, stripping them of their employment protection. Biden rescinded the order a few days into his presidency, but Trump’s allies <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/conservatives-aim-to-restructure-u-s-government-and-replace-it-with-trumps-vision">now see it as the key</a> to finally taking control of the administrative state.</p>
<p>Their <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/19/project-2025-trump-reagan-00115811">stated aim</a> is to remove public servants likely to obstruct Trump’s agenda and replace them with people committed to it. This would theoretically increase the president’s power. </p>
<p>However, the long term effect of flooding the civil service with thousands of political appointees <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/donald-trump-schedule-f-civil-service-authoritarian.html">hostile to government</a> would be to reduce the capacity of all government, regardless of the president. The quality of government services would degrade, and public faith in government would further erode. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aei.org/op-eds/trumps-schedule-f-gambit-is-dangerous/">Not all conservatives like this plan</a>. Some warn it would return America to the “spoils system” that existed before the neutral civil service, where public sector jobs were rewards to be doled out to political supporters. But the conservative ascendancy now belongs to those who can best align their ideologies with Trump’s grievances. </p>
<h2>Control is still an illusion</h2>
<p>The activist conservative think-tank <a href="https://www.heritage.org/">Heritage Foundation</a> <a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-left-right-fear-our-plan-gut-the-federal-bureaucracy">boasts</a> that “the left is right to fear our plan to gut the federal bureaucracy”. The mass firing of political enemies fits well with Trump’s focus on “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4311194-trump-signals-revenge-in-second-term/">retribution</a>”. But Heritage and <a href="https://live-project2025.pantheonsite.io/about/advisory-board/">other organisations</a> are selling an illusion that is likely to leave Trump or any other president frustrated.</p>
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<p>It’s easy to blame scheming bureaucrats and administration “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-army-general-mark-milley-was-not-arrested-treason-2023-09-28/">traitors</a>” for the failures of Trump’s first term. The reality is that all recent presidents have faced the same intractable problem: it is increasingly difficult to get any <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/31/16055960/why-obamacare-repeal-failed">major legislation</a> through a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/">polarised Congress</a>. It is the failure to legislate that forces presidents to rely on <a href="https://www.publicnotice.co/p/executive-orders-emergency-rulemaking-explained">inherently flimsy</a> executive orders.</p>
<p>Trump also had the problem that much of what he wanted to was <a href="https://time.com/6188491/john-eastman-jan-6-testimony-trump/">illegal</a>. While his allies are now searching for administration lawyers who “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/us/politics/trump-2025-lawyers.html">are willing to use theories that more establishment lawyers would reject</a>”, Trump would also need the cooperation of judges to implement plans such as “<a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-vows-to-ban-immigrants-who-dont-like-our-religion/">strong ideological screening</a>” of immigrants. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/01/13/how-trump-compares-with-other-recent-presidents-in-appointing-federal-judges/">hundreds of judges</a> that Trump appointed to federal courts, including three Supreme Court justices, have certainly made it easier to pursue a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/07/supreme-court-cases-abortion-guns-religion">conservative political agenda</a>. But they <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/11/supreme-court-rejects-texas-led-effort-to-overturn-bidens-victory-444638">wouldn’t help Trump</a> when it came to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/20/politics/trump-persistent-2020-election/index.html">the issue he cared about most</a>: <a href="https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections">overturning the results of the 2020 election</a>. </p>
<p>Trump may find that the lifetime appointments from his first term have created a new conservative legal establishment that can help his allies but is at odds with his personal ambitions. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Enough:_Donald_Trump_and_the_Pursuit_of_Success">Various</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Much_and_Never_Enough">biographers</a> of Trump have suggested he will never be satisfied with any level of power or prestige. He is unlikely to get what he wants out of a second term in the White House. But plenty of others will see it as a great opportunity to settle longstanding scores.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump has indicated that, in a second stint as president, he would punish his enemies and reward his champions.David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2093202023-09-07T01:27:14Z2023-09-07T01:27:14ZRed tape can strangle your key asset as an employee: your motivation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540106/original/file-20230731-198058-tnsu2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C473%2C7337%2C3746&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are you spending more and more time at work doing paperwork and filling in forms rather than the thing you were trained and hired for? Does this busy work often seem to resist rational purpose or questioning? Does it kill your productivity, initiative, motivation and, frankly, your self-worth and sanity?</p>
<p>If any of this sounds familiar, you are experiencing a classic dilemma of the 21st-century workplace. The unique and irreplaceable human qualities for which workers are increasingly hired tend to clash badly with the rules designed to reign in their worst excesses. </p>
<p>This insight is part of recent research that applies behavioural science to bureaucracy. But more than that, the research also suggests how to design rules for employees in a way that suits human psychology.</p>
<p>Although stories of creeping bureaucracy abound in many industries, evidence – and our own experience – suggests nowhere has the problem of red tape exploded as much as it has in universities. </p>
<p>Staff complain the time they have for teaching and research is being eaten up by filling in forms and writing reports of questionable value. But this gripe goes beyond the inefficiency of bureaucratic excess. Some rules demotivate because they are interpreted as patronising.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reform-australian-universities-by-cutting-their-bureaucracies-12781">Reform Australian universities by cutting their bureaucracies</a>
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<h2>Red tape in the academy</h2>
<p>Academic bureaucracy is proliferating. At Yale University, for example, the number of managerial and professional staff has risen <a href="https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-part-of-its-leadership-to-lead-yales-administration-increases-by-nearly-50-percent">three times faster</a> than the number of undergraduates since 2003. In Australia, leading research universities say the cost of complying with “unnecessary, redundant and duplicative regulation” has <a href="https://go8.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Go8-Reducing-the-regulatory-overload.pdf">doubled since 2013</a>.</p>
<p>Factors contributing to this, as identified by a 2022 <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1094648/independent-review-research-bureaucracy-final-report.pdf">UK government inquiry</a>, include external demands for assurance that research is being done according to funding terms and conditions; risk-averse cultures leading to unnecessary hierarchies of approval; and growth in organisational size leading to more layers of management.</p>
<p>But while universities may be the most chronic examples, red tape is increasing in most workplaces. In the United States, the number of managers, supervisors and support staff has grown at more than twice the rate of other jobs <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/07/more-of-us-are-working-in-big-bureaucratic-organizations-than-ever-before">since the 1980s</a> – and the shift to hybrid and remote work is likely to compound this trend, as managers institute procedures to keep workers accountable.</p>
<p>As management experts Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini wrote in their 2020 book <a href="https://www.humanocracy.com/">Humanocracy</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>bureaucracy has been growing, not shrinking – a fact that is correlated, we believe, with the worrying slowdown in global productivity growth, a phenomenon that bodes for living standards and economic opportunity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How did it come to this? And how can organisations with bloated bureaucracies go about cutting their red tape? </p>
<h2>The perils of scientific management</h2>
<p>While all organisations need processes to run, increasing bureaucracy has led to a proliferation of what economic anthropologist David Graeber pithily termed “<a href="https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/">bullshit jobs</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This helps explain why productivity is slowing and worker engagement <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/468233/employee-engagement-needs-rebound-2023.aspx">is declining</a>, with so many <a href="https://www.randstad.co.uk/about-us/industry-insight/great-resignation/">dissatisfied with their jobs</a>. </p>
<p>One problem is many managers are trained in “<a href="https://thebusinessprofessor.com/en_US/management-leadership-organizational-behavior/what-is-scientific-management-theory">scientific management</a>,” which aims to improve efficiency by encouraging individuals not to problem-solve but to focus instead on performing simple, repetitive tasks as effectively as possible. </p>
<p>But people aren’t cogs in machines. Rather, they relate to their organisations on a personal level. Bureaucracy undermines that relationship. </p>
<p>Unnecessary bureaucracy signals to workers that they are not to be trusted. This suggests an uncaring and low-quality relationship, to which the natural human response is to want to quit the relationship – either overtly, by resigning, or quietly, by simply making less effort.</p>
<h2>Beating the bureaucratic urge</h2>
<p>The good news is there are ways to turn the tide of red tape. </p>
<p>“Defenders of the status quo will tell you that bureaucracy is the inevitable correlate of complexity,” write Hamel and Zanini, “but our evidence suggests otherwise.”</p>
<p>We know many examples of good practice from our own experience. Some universities have <a href="https://hive.com/blog/lean-team/">lean teams</a> tasked with cutting red tape. In others, senior managers regularly visit the proverbial campfires. Some vice-chancellors retain teaching duties to stay in touch with changing demands. Leaders can glean much about the impact their middle managers’ rules have by engaging with the rank and file.</p>
<p>Canadian tech firm Shopify has created a meeting calculator to quantify the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/shopify-meeting-cost-calculator/index.html">true cost of meetings</a>. It also eliminated all reoccurring meetings with three or more people. As a result, the average Shopify employee now spends <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shopify-cfo-explains-meeting-cost-105829140.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANCOUaEMrT3DoUWmWuRsYXUSb0_wSsn4Ld3U5wYdBXVHS8HvTjQ1934NqOfpTsLOzc1rWrxGppwB99QlAJWhyEoKPP0feGAQWoxz4mzqYCpTsdYCpsu6oYBihVkvxKLpl3evpzj9ZjuZDQkQEUEWgQPvVtQTNNQUwTXGmTesbxMi">14% less time meetings</a> compared with this time last year. It serves as a reminder that time is money and there may be other ways to get things done. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-red-tape-and-why-is-it-a-problem-for-small-firms-6601">What is red tape and why is it a problem for small firms?</a>
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<p>For any manager who is nervous about the prospect of giving workers more autonomy and fewer forms to fill in, here are some <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Work-Rules-Laszlo-Bock/dp/1455554790">words of reassurance</a> from Google’s former human resources chief, Lazlo Bock:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Give people slightly more trust, freedom, and authority than you are comfortable giving them. If you’re not nervous, you haven’t given them enough. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PR-08-2018-0319/full/html">Research suggests</a> managers who trust their employees elicit higher engagement and performance, and less burnout among their staff.</p>
<p>As Christian Hunt, former head of behavioural science at investment bank UBS, <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Humanizing+Rules:+Bringing+Behavioural+Science+to+Ethics+and+Compliance-p-9781394177400">explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we hire people because they’re smart, then it’s probably not a good idea to treat them in a manner that suggests we think the opposite.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Management jobs are proliferating much faster than other roles. But behavioural research shows the extra box-ticking can leave employees feeling stressed, patronised and demotivated.Meg Elkins, Senior Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing and Behavioural Business Lab Member, RMIT UniversityAnanta Neelim, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of TasmaniaRobert Hoffmann, Professor of Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1997312023-03-06T13:35:14Z2023-03-06T13:35:14ZWhy Meta’s embrace of a ‘flat’ management structure may not lead to the innovation and efficiency Mark Zuckerberg seeks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513403/original/file-20230303-28-d3gxfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=227%2C191%2C3005%2C1852&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who's the boss? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/all-together-royalty-free-image/172413137?phrase=paper%20cutouts%20people">timsa/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Big Tech, under pressure from dwindling profits and falling <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2023/01/19/why-were-tech-stocks-down-in-2022-and-how-long-will-the-slump-last/?sh=fc815f37f160">stock prices</a>, is seeking some of that old startup magic.</p>
<p>Meta, the parent of Facebook, recently became the latest of the <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/middle-managers-tech-layoffs-efficiency-zuckerberg-facebook-google/">industry’s dominant players</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/technology/meta-layoffs.html">lay off thousands of employees</a>, particularly middle managers, in an effort to return to a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2018/10/23/the-nature-of-leadership-in-a-flat-organization/?sh=72c5f6605fe1">flatter, more nimble organization</a> – a structure more typical when a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/06/17/how-flat-businesses-can-still-scale-despite-their-structure/?sh=250e81bb4d1c">company is very young or very small</a>.</p>
<p>Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-ceo-musk-says-company-is-flattening-management-structure-inreorganization-1526308678">Elon Musk</a> and other business leaders in betting that eliminating layers of management will boost profits. But is flatter better? Will getting rid of managers improve organizational efficiency and the bottom line?</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=hAchnpgAAAAJ">someone who has studied</a> and taught organization theory as well as leadership and organizational behavior for nearly a decade, I think it’s not that simple. </p>
<h2>Resilient bureaucracies</h2>
<p>Since the 1800s, management scholars have sought to understand how organizational structure influences productivity. Most early scholars focused on bureaucratic models that promised managerial authority, rational decision-making and <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2019.0059">efficiency, impartiality and fairness</a> toward employees.</p>
<p>These centralized bureaucratic structures still reign supreme today. Most of us have likely worked in such organizations, with a boss at the top and clearly defined layers of management below. Rigid, written rules and policies dictate how work is done.</p>
<p>Research shows that some hierarchy correlates with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3333">commercial success</a> – even in startups – because adding just one level of management helps prevent directionless exploration of ideas and damaging conflicts among staff. Bureaucracies, in their pure form, are viewed as the <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2019.0059">most efficient</a> way to organize complex companies; they are reliable and predictable.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198288787.001.0001">adept at solving routine problems</a>, such as coordinating work and executing plans, hierarchies do less well adapting to rapid changes, such as increased competition, shifting consumer tastes or new government regulations.</p>
<p>Bureaucratic hierarchies can stifle the development of employees and limit entrepreneurial initiative. They are slow and inept at tackling complex problems beyond the routine.</p>
<p>Moreover, they are thought to be very costly. Management scholars Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated in 2016 that waste, rigidity and resistance to change in bureaucratic structures <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/09/excess-management-is-costing-the-us-3-trillion-per-year#:%7E:text=Yet%20there's%20compelling%20evidence%20that,or%20about%2017%25%20of%20GDP.">cost the U.S. economy US$3 trillion in lost output</a> a year. That is the equivalent of about 17% of all goods and services produced by the U.S. economy at the time of the study.</p>
<p>Even with the mounting criticisms, bureaucratic structures have shown resilience over time. “The formal managerial hierarchy in modern organizations is as persistent as are calls for its replacement,” Harvard scholars <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2017.10.002">Michael Lee and Amy Edmondson wrote</a> in 2017.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="billboard showing an infinity loop in blue on a white background sits next to a road as a person walks past with trees in distance" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513301/original/file-20230302-28-3ya8ir.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Flatness is a matter of perspective.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MetaLayoffs/932925e2a79e4fc78d79ce7dc85ecf18/photo?Query=zuckerberg&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2479&currentItemNo=10">AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fascinatingly flat</h2>
<p>Flat structures, on the other hand, aim to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2017.10.002">decentralize authority</a> by reducing or eliminating hierarchy. The structure is harnessed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2017.10.002">flexibility and agility</a> rather than efficiency, which is why flat organizations adapt better to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198288787.001.0001">dynamic and changing environments</a>.</p>
<p>Flat structures vary. Online retailer Zappos, for example, <a href="https://www.zapposinsights.com/about/holacracy">adopted one of the most extreme versions</a> of the flat structure – known as holacracy – when it eliminated all managers in 2014. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108884891.010">Computer game company Valve</a> has a president but no formal managerial structure, leaving employees free to work on projects they choose.</p>
<p>Other companies, such as Gore Tex maker <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/aee67fe0-ac63-11e9-b3e2-4fdf846f48f5">W. L. Gore & Associates</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0105">film-streaming service Netflix</a>, have instituted structures that empower employees with wide-reaching autonomy but still allow for some degree of management.</p>
<p>In general, flat structures rely on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2018/10/23/the-nature-of-leadership-in-a-flat-organization/?sh=72c5f6605fe1">constant communication</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-019-0062-9">decentralized decision-making</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-022-00109-7">self-motivation</a> of employees. As a result, flat structures are <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2200927119">associated with innovation</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3333">creativity</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-022-00109-7">speed</a>, resilience and improved employee morale.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-019-0062-9">promises of going flat</a> are understandably enticing, but flat organizations are <a href="https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/8-reasons-flat-organizations-dont-work-according-to-a-turnaround-ceo.html">tricky to get right</a>.</p>
<p>The list of companies succeeding with flat structures is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3333">noticeably short</a>. Besides the companies mentioned above, the list typically includes social media marketing organization Buffer, online publisher Medium and tomato processing and packing company Morning Star Tomatoes.</p>
<p>Other organizations that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3333">attempted flatter structures</a> have encountered conflicts between staff, ambiguity around job roles and the emergence of unofficial hierarchies – which undermines the whole point of going flat. They eventually reverted back to hierarchical structures.</p>
<p>“While people may lament the proliferation of red tape,” management scholars <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2019.0059">Pedro Monteiro and Paul Adler explain</a>, “in the next breath, many complain that ‘there ought to be a rule.’”</p>
<p>Even Zappos, often cited as the case study for flat organizations, <a href="https://qz.com/work/1776841/zappos-has-quietly-backed-away-from-holacracy">has slowly added</a> back managers in recent years.</p>
<h2>Right tool</h2>
<p>In many ways, flat organizations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-022-00109-7">require even stronger management</a> than hierarchical ones. </p>
<p>When managers are removed, the span of control for those remaining increases. Corporate leaders must delegate – and track – tasks across greater numbers of employees and constantly communicate with workers.</p>
<p>Careful planning is needed to determine how work is organized, information shared, conflicts resolved and employees compensated, hired and reviewed. It is not surprising that as <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/06/how-to-successfully-scale-a-flat-organization">companies grow</a>, the complexity of bigger organizations poses barriers to flat models.</p>
<p>In the end, organizational structure is a tool. History shows that business and economic conditions determine which type of structure works for an organization at any given time.</p>
<p>All organizations navigate the trade-off between <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/07/beyond-the-holacracy-hype">stability and flexibility</a>. While a hospital system facing extensive regulations and patient safety protocols may require a stable and consistent hierarchy, an online game developer in a competitive environment may need an organizational structure that’s more nimble so it can adapt to changes quickly.</p>
<p>Business and economic conditions <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/research/future-of-big-tech">are changing for Big Tech</a>, as digital advertising declines, new competitors surface and emerging technologies demand risky investments. Meta’s corporate flattening is one response.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/01/metas-year-of-efficiency-everything-wall-street-needed-to-hear.html">Zuckerberg noted</a> when explaining recent changes, “Our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency,’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization.”</p>
<p>But context matters. So does planning. All the evidence I’ve seen indicates that embracing flatness by cutting middle management will not, by itself, do much to make a company more efficient.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amber Stephenson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Meta is among companies in recent years that have embraced becoming a ‘flatter’ organization – with fewer managers – to become more nimble and innovative.Amber Stephenson, Associate Professor of Management and Director of Healthcare Management Programs, Clarkson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1898702022-09-07T20:07:17Z2022-09-07T20:07:17ZThe end of jargon: will New Zealand’s plain language law finally make bureaucrats talk like normal people?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483140/original/file-20220907-13-mlo6ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">GettyImages</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Which sentence is easier to understand? “He was conveyed to his place of residence in an intoxicated condition.” Or, “He was carried home drunk.” Most people choose the latter, for obvious reasons. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-guide-to-plain-english-9780198844617?cc=at&lang=en&#">century-old example</a> is a useful illustration of how “plain language” can be used to communicate more clearly, from everyday interactions right through to government documents.</p>
<p>The new <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2021/0070/latest/d362751e2.html?search=qs_act%40bill%40regulation%40deemedreg_plain+language_resel_25_h&p=1&sr=1">Plain Language Bill</a> now before parliament aims to make this more than just an ideal. Comprehensible information from government organisations, it argues, is a basic democratic right.</p>
<h2>The push for simplicity</h2>
<p>Plain language movements originated in the 1970s in several countries, including the UK, US and Canada. And there’s some indication the very first mention of plain language dates back as far as the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s. </p>
<p>However old, these movements strove for clear, straightforward and accessible language in official documents. This is not merely a “nice-to-have”. In some cases it can save your life – pandemic instructions from the Ministry of Health, for example. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/language-puts-ordinary-people-at-a-disadvantage-in-the-criminal-justice-system-79934">Language puts ordinary people at a disadvantage in the criminal justice system</a>
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<p>And there is also an element of linguistic equality to it: minority, migrant and marginalised communities have more difficulty understanding complex and jargon-laden documents, which tip the scales even further against them.</p>
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<img alt="Older woman reading documents at home" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483122/original/file-20220907-22-1s7x6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Plain language is a justice issue, allowing non-native English speakers to better understand official documents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/photo/senior-lady-at-home-working-with-documents-royalty-free-image/1054911598?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>What is plain language?</h2>
<p>There is no single definition of plain language, but both the UK and US commonly use the one proposed by the <a href="https://plainlanguagenetwork.org">International Plain Language Working Group</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A communication is in plain language if its wording, structure, and design are so clear that the intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In practice, it is easier to recognise a text written in plain language than one that is not. But it also depends on who is reading it. What may be plain language for some, will not be for others. </p>
<p>That said, basic tenets of plain language texts in English include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>using concise sentences (15-20 words max)</p></li>
<li><p>positive (not negative) clauses </p></li>
<li><p>active, not passive voice (“if you break the law” not “if the law is broken”) </p></li>
<li><p>verbs rather than complex nouns (“identify” not “identification”) </p></li>
<li><p>common words <a href="https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/accessibility/quick-reference-guides/checklist-for-plain-language.html">rather than jargon</a>. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Although the principles of plain language are not new, mandating them through New Zealand legislation is. </p>
<h2>The Plain Language Bill</h2>
<p>Aotearoa New Zealand’s Plain Language Bill aims to: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>improve the effectiveness and accountability of public service agencies and Crown agents, and to improve the accessibility of certain documents that they make available to the public, by providing for those documents to use language that is (a) appropriate to the intended audience; and (b) clear, concise, and well organised. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The bill before parliament does not explicitly define plain language beyond this description. We’ll have to wait for the details. </p>
<p>If the bill is passed into law, the Public Service Commissioner will have to produce material to help agencies comply with plain language requirements. </p>
<p>Only after seeing this guidance material will we know what effect reforms might have on government documents. So, MPs will essentially be voting without knowing what the bill will actually require agencies to do in practice. </p>
<h2>The devil in the details</h2>
<p>There are some other important things to note about what the bill does and doesn’t do. </p>
<p>It aims to improve accessibility of documents for people with disabilities. It does not affect the use of te reo Māori in government agency documents, nor does it propose to compel agencies to translate documents into languages other than English. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1565494715616841734"}"></div></p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, the bill does not include any enforcement mechanisms, although agencies and agents will be required to report their progress. </p>
<p>The bill is procedural in nature: it creates no enforceable rights or obligations. Members of the public will not be able to seek any form of remedy if they continue to find documents difficult to understand. </p>
<h2>International experience</h2>
<p>Given that New Zealand’s bill is closely modelled on the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-111publ274">Plain Writing Act 2010</a> in the US, it is useful to consider the law’s impact there. </p>
<p>After it was passed, plain language advocates in the US were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2013/11/19/plain-writing-in-government-agencies-plainly-speaking-arent-there-yet/">initially unimpressed</a> by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/advocates-of-the-plain-writing-act-prod-federal-agencies-to-keep-it-simple/2012/04/08/gIQAlTCe4S_story.html">its impact</a>. But the <a href="https://centerforplainlanguage.org/about/history/">Center for Plain Language</a>, a non-governmental organisation that publishes report cards on writing quality in government agency documents, noted significant improvements between 2013 and 2021. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/research-shows-most-online-consumer-contracts-are-incomprehensible-but-still-legally-binding-110793">Research shows most online consumer contracts are incomprehensible, but still legally binding</a>
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<p><a href="https://centerforplainlanguage.org/reports/federal-report-card/2013-report-card/">In 2013</a>, half of the 20 agencies reviewed either failed or required improvement to meet plain writing requirements, while in 2021 <a href="https://centerforplainlanguage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-FRC-one-pager.signed.jpg">every agency passed</a>. </p>
<h2>Will it work?</h2>
<p>Will this bill work to make government documents more accessible for New Zealanders? The short answer is, we don’t know yet. But the US experience suggests some progress is likely. </p>
<p>One thing the New Zealand bill is already doing, however, is increasing awareness of the need for clear communication. Some MPs have <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/129751653/labours-plain-language-bill-passes-second-reading">voiced concern</a> about the cost of the reforms, the lack of enforceability, and even that the new law will increase bureaucracy. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1565114897721344000"}"></div></p>
<p>However, important insights can be gained from regular reporting. There are also potential financial benefits from reducing the volume of followup communication with government agencies. </p>
<p>Overall, there is a clear social benefit in improving official communication. And instead of being conveyed to their place of residence in a state of intoxication, perhaps drunks will just be carried home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andreea S. Calude received funding from The Royal Society Marsden Grant (2018-2020). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite a lack of enforceable remedies, international experience suggests the proposed new ‘plain language’ law should improve official communications.Andreea S. Calude, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of WaikatoSam Campbell, Law Lecturer, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1757772022-01-31T13:00:29Z2022-01-31T13:00:29ZThe IRS already has all your income tax data – so why do Americans still have to file their taxes?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442821/original/file-20220126-21-1uhwjxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C45%2C4296%2C2798&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The government could toss the 1040 in the trash. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/crumpled-tax-forms-royalty-free-image/173618522?adppopup=true">Kameleon007iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Doing taxes in the U.S. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/filing-taxes-america-system-how-other-countries-do-better-2021-8">is notoriously complicated</a> and <a href="https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/i/pay-to-do-your-taxes">costly</a>. And it gets even worse <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/irs-expects-backlogs-and-delays-heres-when-to-file-taxes.html">when there are delays</a> and backlogs, making it especially hard to reach the Internal Revenue Service for assistance.</p>
<p>But to me this raises an important question: Why should taxpayers have to navigate the tedious, costly tax filing system at all?</p>
<h2>The case for a ‘simple return’</h2>
<p>In 1985, President Ronald Reagan promised a “<a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-nation-tax-reform-may-1985">return-free</a>” tax system in which half of all Americans would never fill out a tax return again. Under the framework, taxpayers with simple returns would automatically receive a refund or a letter detailing any tax owed. Taxpayers with more complicated returns would use the system in place today.</p>
<p>In 2006, Austan Goolsbee, who later went on to serve as President Barack Obama’s chief economist, suggested a “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-simple-return-reducing-americas-tax-burden-through-return-free-filing/">simple return</a>,” in which taxpayers would receive already completed tax forms for their review or correction. Goolsbee estimated his system would save taxpayers more than <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-simple-return-reducing-americas-tax-burden-through-return-free-filing/">US$2 billion a year in tax preparation fees</a>. </p>
<p>Though never implemented, the two proposals illustrate what we all know: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/dreading-taxes-countries-show-us-theres-another-way">No one enjoys filling out tax forms</a>. </p>
<p>So why do we have to?</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://law-vbe.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/bio/beverly-moran">expert on the U.S. tax system</a>, I see America’s costly and time-consuming tax reporting system as a consequence of its relationship with the commercial tax preparation industry, which lobbies Congress to maintain the status quo. </p>
<h2>A costly and time-consuming system</h2>
<p>Return-free filing is not difficult. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-other-countries-use-return-free-filing">At least 30 countries permit return-free filing</a>, including Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Furthermore, 95% of American taxpayers receive at least one of more than <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/a-guide-to-information-returns">30 types of information returns</a> that let the government know their exact income. These information returns give the government everything it needs to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-shouldnt-be-responsible-for-filing-tax-returns--the-government-should/2017/03/30/e91d8cd8-0979-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html">fill out most taxpayers’ returns</a>.</p>
<p>The U.S. system <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/the-10-second-tax-return/475899/">is 10 times more expensive</a> than tax systems in 36 other countries with robust economies. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-tax-returns-dont-need-be-painful/586369/">But those costs vanish in a return-free system, as would the</a> 2.6 billion hours Americans spend on tax preparation each year.</p>
<p>Maybe you’re wondering whether Congress is just behind the times, unaware that it can release us from tax preparation? Not true.</p>
<h2>Commercial tax preparation</h2>
<p>About two decades ago, Congress directed the IRS to provide low-income taxpayers with free tax preparation. The agency responded in 2002 with “<a href="https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free">Free File</a>,” a public-private partnership between the government and the tax-preparation industry. As part of the deal, the IRS agreed not to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-free-file-for-taxes-isnt-so-popular-1422633546">compete with the private sector</a> in the free tax preparation market. </p>
<p>In 2007, the House of Representatives rejected legislation to provide <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr3457/text">free government tax preparation</a> for all taxpayers. And in 2019, Congress tried to <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-scraps-provision-to-restrict-irs-from-competing-with-turbotax">legally bar the IRS</a> from ever providing free online tax preparation services. </p>
<p>Only a <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-scraps-provision-to-restrict-irs-from-competing-with-turbotax">public outcry turned the tide</a>.</p>
<p>The public part of Free File consists of the IRS herding taxpayers to commercial tax -preparation websites. The private part consists of those commercial entities <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes">diverting taxpayers</a> toward costly alternatives. </p>
<p>According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which oversees IRS activities, private partners use computer code to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/1/21045779/irs-turbotax-free-file-h-r-block-tax-preparation-new-rules">hide the free websites</a> and take unsuspecting taxpayers to paid sites. </p>
<p>Should a taxpayer discover a free preparation alternative, the private preparers <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/202040009_oa_highlights.html">impose various restrictions</a> such as income or the use of various forms as an excuse to kick taxpayers back to paid preparation. </p>
<p>Consequently, of the more than 100 million taxpayers eligible for free help, 35% end up paying for tax preparation and <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/202040009fr.pdf">60% never even visit the free websites</a>. Instead of 70% of Americans receiving free tax preparation, commercial <a href="https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/07/18/tax-filing-congress-irs-000683/">companies whittled that percentage down to 3%</a>. </p>
<h2>Tax savings and evasion</h2>
<p>Perhaps you are guessing that there are valid policy justifications for avoiding government and empowering the private sector. Judge those arguments yourself.</p>
<p>One argument from commercial tax preparers is that taxpayers will <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-block-spend-millions-lobbying-us-keep-doing-n736386">miss out on valuable tax savings</a> if they rely on free government preparation.</p>
<p>In fact, the government software would reflect the same laws used by the paid preparers with the same access to tax saving deductions or credits. Further, tax preparers like H&R Block promise to pay <a href="https://www.hrblock.com/guarantees/">all taxes and interest resulting from a failed audit</a>. As a result, these services have every incentive to take conservative, pro-government tax positions.</p>
<p>A second argument is that government-prepared tax returns encourage tax evasion. </p>
<p>In a no-return system, the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/04/17/why-doesnt-the-irs-do-your-taxes-for-you/?sh=8e43a542fb63">government reveals its knowledge of the taxpayer’s income</a> before the taxpayer files. Thus, the argument goes, the taxpayer knows if the government has missed something and has reason to let the mistake stand.</p>
<p>But taxpayers already know what information forms the government has because they receive duplicates of those forms. The incentive to lie does not increase because the taxpayer avoids weeks of tax preparation.</p>
<h2>Bolstering the anti-taxers</h2>
<p>Finally, there is the anti-tax argument for onerous tax preparation: Keep tax preparation unpleasant to fuel anti-tax sentiment. </p>
<p>In the past, Republicans argued against high taxes. But after decades of tax cuts, Americans are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-tax-returns-dont-need-be-painful/586369/">no longer swayed by that argument</a>.</p>
<p>Exasperating tax preparation, according to this argument, helps keep the anti-tax fever high. And that <a href="https://slate.com/business/2012/04/grover-norquist-and-h-r-block-the-unholy-alliance-of-tax-prep-firms-and-conservative-activists-to-make-your-taxes-even-more-complicated.html">fuels public hate for government</a> and the tax system.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the anti-tax contingent’s desire to force Americans to spend time and money on tax preparation dovetails with the tax preparation industry’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/personaltech/turbotax-or-irs-as-tax-preparer-intuit-has-a-favorite.html">desire to collect billions</a> of dollars in fees. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free">Tax preparation companies lobby Congress</a> to keep tax preparation costly and complicated. Indeed, Intuit, maker of TurboTax, the tax preparation software, has listed government tax preparation as a <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2017/10/12/tax-preparation-government-free">threat to its business model</a>. ProPublica reported in 2019 on the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free">company’s 20-year fight</a> to prevent the government from making tax filing simple and free for most citizens.</p>
<p>One example of that complexity is the <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/can-you-take-earned-income-tax-credit">earned income tax credit</a>, a government program for low-income people. The credit is so complicated that <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/do-all-people-eligible-eitc-participate">20% of the people who are eligible never file</a>, thus missing out on thousands of dollars in savings.</p>
<p>If the government prepared everyone’s tax returns, I believe more of that 20% would receive government support.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, H&R Block <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/blog/senate-bill-would-boost-burdens-costs-to-claim-working-family-tax-credits">reportedly</a> <a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/how-lobbying-by-tax-preparer-helps-keep-tax-day-complicated/">lobbied lawmakers</a> to make the credit more complicated, thereby <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9195129/h-r-block">driving more taxpayers to paid preparation services</a>.</p>
<p>I believe only public outcry can change the system. </p>
<p><em>This article was corrected to clarify how tax preparation companies have lobbied Congress and to clarify the timing of Austan Goolsbee’s service as chief economist to President Obama. It is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cant-the-irs-just-send-americans-a-refund-or-a-bill-156733">article originally published</a> on March 22, 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beverly Moran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A tax expert explains why the US continues to use such a complex and costly income tax system.Beverly Moran, Professor Emerita of Law, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1657772021-08-06T14:50:27Z2021-08-06T14:50:27ZBeyond the cabinet reshuffle – what will it take to renew South Africa’s public sector?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415010/original/file-20210806-13508-1yvd1gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has reshuffled his cabinet amid growing accusations of of graft, and an outbreak of violence unprecedented in 25 years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Rodger Bosch/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/full-text-ramaphosas-cabinet-reshuffle-whos-in-whos-out-20210805">has linked his cabinet reshuffle</a> to a larger purpose. As he put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are unwavering in our determination to build a capable state, one which is ably led and which effectively serves the needs of the people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Realising this vision will <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-way-forward-abandon-old-ideas-embrace-bold-experimentation-165539">take a transformation in the way</a> in which South Africans conceive of how to achieve public purposes – one that prioritises people and problem-solving over a preoccupation with plans and systems.</p>
<p>South Africans of many ideological hues have in their minds an image of the public sector as a well-oiled, top-down machine – always effective in delivering on clear goals set by planners and political leaders. “Get the plans right.” “Co-ordinate effectively.” “Fix the systems.” </p>
<p>These become the mantras of reform. But continuing pursuit of these dicta will not get the country where it needs to go.</p>
<p>For one thing, the image of a well-oiled machine presumes an omniscience which no organisation anywhere, public or private, actually has. For another, systems reform is a painstaking process; its gains are measured in years, with gains in the quality of service provision coming only after the upstream improvements are in place. Time is running out.</p>
<p>Most fundamentally, the preoccupation with plans and systems ignores a reality that increasingly has become recognised the world over – that, in shaping feasible ways forward, context matters. Even in places where bureaucratic “insulation” seems to prevail, public administrative systems are embedded in politics. </p>
<p>In some settings, background political, economic and social conditions support top-down bureaucratic machines. Such conditions are very far from South Africa’s current realities.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-way-forward-abandon-old-ideas-embrace-bold-experimentation-165539">South Africa's way forward: abandon old ideas, embrace bold experimentation</a>
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<p>But South Africa’s current public sector challenges are anything but unique. Indeed, counter-intuitive as it might sound to many South Africans, its public sector works somewhat better than those of most other middle-income countries, and those of almost all low-income countries. Yet many countries, even in the midst of messiness, have managed to achieve gains.</p>
<p>How? </p>
<p>By focusing on problems and on people.</p>
<h2>Problems and people</h2>
<p>A focus on concrete problems provides a way to cut through endless preoccupation with empty initiatives – endless plans for reform, endless upstream processes of consultation. Processes that are performative rather than practical, too general to lead anywhere. Instead, <a href="https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/building-state-capability-evidence-analysis-action">gains in public capacity can come via a different path</a> – through learning-by-doing, focusing in an action-oriented way on very specific challenges, and on evoking energy to address them by the responsible departments (or individual state-owned enterprises).</p>
<p>Action to address concrete problems needs to come, of course, from South Africa’s public officials. How to evoke their sense of agency?</p>
<p>Engaging with South Africa’s public officials, one quickly discovers that even the best of them are deeply disillusioned by their experiences. Yet many continue to have a deep reservoir of commitment to service. Evoking commitment is a classic challenge confronting managers everywhere. As <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801442926/state-building/#bookTabs=1">Francis Fukuyama puts it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All good managers (private and public) know that it is ultimately the informal norms and group identities that will most strongly motivate the workers in an organisation to do their best … They thus spend much more time on cultivating the right ‘organisational culture’ than on fixing the formal lines of authority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Looking beyond the public sector, what of South Africa’s citizens more broadly?</p>
<p>A focus on people also involves transforming the relationship between the public sector and civil society (including the private sector). For reasons both good and bad, public officials generally engage with civil society cautiously. The good reason is that such relationships can all too easily fester corruptly in the shadows. The bad reason is a more generalised wariness – fuelled by a combination of arrogance, fear and inertia – to step outside the comfort zone of tightly managed bureaucratic processes.</p>
<p>The benefits of a transformed relationship can be large. It can be the basis for new, cross-cutting alliances between public sector reformers and reformers within civil society, across national, provincial and local levels. Investment in such alliances can help developmentally oriented stakeholders to overcome resistance to change, including by pushing back against predation.</p>
<p>To renew a relationship, all parties need to change their behaviour. What new behaviours does civil society need to learn?</p>
<h2>Civil society and transparency</h2>
<p>Shaped by its history, South Africa’s civil society organisations generally focus on holding government to account. This is a constricted vision of the role of civil society in a democracy. Indeed, it sometimes can have the unintended consequence of fuelling cynicism and despair, thereby deepening dysfunction. The <a href="https://www.thegpsa.org/about/collaborative-social-accountability">Global Partnership for Social Accountability</a> highlights how less confrontational approaches can add value:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have learned that focusing only on scrutinising and verifying government actions can have limited value in our problem solving. When they engage to focus on the problem at hand, civil society, citizens and public sector actors are better able to deliver solutions collaboratively – especially when they prioritise learning. When social accountability mechanisms are isolated from public sector processes they are not as effective as collaborative governance. Collective action requires efforts that build bridges.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Transparency remains key. Transparency in how civil society engages with officials in the public sector can reduce the risk that more collaborative governance becomes a vehicle for corrupt collusion. Transparency vis-à-vis outcomes can signal to citizens that public resources are not being wasted but are helping to improve results. The combination of participation and transparency can help enhance social solidarity and legitimacy of the public domain.</p>
<p>As Ramaphosa put it in his cabinet reshuffle speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The task of rebuilding our economy and our society requires urgency and focus. It requires cooperation among all sectors of society and the active involvement of all South Africans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or, as per Hugh Masekela’s classic song (quoted by Ramaphosa in his <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-2018-state-nation-address-16-feb-2018-0000">first state of the nation address to parliament as president</a> in early 2018, “Thuma Mina”. Send me.</p>
<p><em>This article builds on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-way-forward-abandon-old-ideas-embrace-bold-experimentation-165539">piece that appeared</a> in The Conversation’s ‘foundation’ series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Levy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s public sector works somewhat better than those of most other middle-income countries. Yet, unlike them, it has not managed to achieve gains in the midst of messiness.Brian Levy, Professor of the Practice of International Development, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1642292021-07-14T15:01:37Z2021-07-14T15:01:37ZCanada’s new governor general, Mary Simon, is poised to engage in her most challenging diplomatic mission yet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411083/original/file-20210713-13-x8api2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C0%2C4144%2C2775&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary Simon is an Inuk leader and former Canadian diplomat. She has been named as Canada's next governor general — the first Indigenous person to serve in the role. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For months, Canada has been searching for a new governor general. While a historic appointment, the federal government was always going to ask a lot from <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/the-decibel/article-after-the-julie-payette-scandal-the-search-for-a-new-governor-general/">Julie Payette’s successor</a>. </p>
<p>Justin Trudeau’s government needed someone who could reflect <a href="https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/07/06/mary-simon-is-the-governor-general-justin-trudeau-should-have-appointed-last-time.html">its maturity</a> on matters of state — a recognition that perhaps, in Payette, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-a-very-trudeau-mistake-created-this-governor-general-fiasco/">it failed</a>. The government also needed someone who could provide moral leadership as commander-in-chief to an armed forces <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-crisis-of-confidence-in-the-canadian-armed-forces/">amid an</a> <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/news/canadian-armed-forces-justice-system/">identity crisis</a> and someone who could speak credibly and publicly about <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-canada-committed-genocide-against-indigenous-peoples-explained-by-the-lawyer-central-to-the-determination-162582">Canada’s ongoing genocide against Indigenous Peoples</a>. </p>
<p>Additionally, the person selected needed to bring diplomatic and managerial authority <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/failure-to-launch-inside-julie-payettes-turbulent-first-year-as-governor-general">that was reportedly</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/governor-general-julie-payette-hr-issues-past-employers-1.5732109">lacking these past few years</a> at <a href="https://www.gg.ca/en/visit-us/rideau-hall">Rideau Hall</a>, the governor general’s official residence. </p>
<p>By all counts, Mary Simon is an excellent choice.</p>
<h2>Problems within the hierarchy</h2>
<p>Not that her task ahead is easy: Simon has the unenviable job of breathing fresh life into the governor general’s office, which <a href="https://dev1.hilltimes.com/2021/06/23/payette-resigns-after-report-found-toxic-work-environment-at-rideau-hall/279936/">was maligned</a> during Payette’s tenure. </p>
<p>But for all the damage inflicted upon it, other more striking problems exist lower down the hierarchy. A peak behind the curtain at Rideau Hall <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-rideau-hall-employee-speaks-up-racism-claims-1.5923995">reveals it is struggling</a> to join a broader reckoning over systemic racism in Canada and how that manifests within the office itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd wearing orange marches down the street, a sign reads 'no pride in genocide'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411087/original/file-20210713-23-zqsftu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People march to Parliament Hill from Gatineau at a #CancelCanadaDay protest in response to the discovery of unmarked Indigenous graves at residential schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s unclear whether the new bureaucratic appointments to manage the office that supports the governor general are any more adept than <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-rideau-hall-employee-speaks-up-racism-claims-1.5923995">their predecessors at addressing societal questions of class and race</a>. These are questions we should expect any governor general and the office to answer. </p>
<p>Last year, as politicians across Canada struggled to navigate the widespread fury over George Floyd’s murder in the United States, many took issue with the fact there is systemic racism in this country, and former governor general Michaëlle Jean <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/michaelle-jean-systemic-racism-1.5614538">took them to task</a>. </p>
<p>As a settler researcher who studies the Crown and its representatives (like the governor general) in the context of reconciliation, I would expect Simon to be equally unequivocal. </p>
<h2>Conforming to neutrality?</h2>
<p>The easiest way to undermine the symbolic significance of her appointment would be to insist she conform to the position’s <a href="https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2021/will-the-gg-search-scrutinize-the-underlying-whiteness-of-the-role/">informal rules of whiteness</a> or versions of its coded language of “apolitical” and “neutrality.”</p>
<p>She will need competent staff who can support her resistance to these internal and external pressures. To expect Simon’s neutrality on the question of the Crown’s dishonourable relations with Indigenous nations and people would be emblematic of Canada’s hugely <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/still-stuck-canada-knows-path-to-reconciliation-but-not-how-to-walk-it/">unsatisfactory approach to reconciliation</a>. </p>
<p>Canada’s poor record on reconciliation has provoked criticisms of having an Indigenous representative of the Crown, citing its potential to be a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-july-7-2021-1.6092818/amid-celebration-some-suspect-mary-simon-s-gg-appointment-is-an-election-style-effort-first-nations-writer-1.6093481">tokenistic gesture</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/indigenous-governor-general-1.4216592">unlikely to bring transformational change</a>.</p>
<h2>First Indigenous governor general</h2>
<p>As someone who negotiated her community’s <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/james-bay-and-northern-quebec-agreement">quasi entry</a> into Canadian Confederation — and then quite literally <a href="https://twitter.com/Vanessa_A_Watts/status/1412437798242684929">sat around the table</a> as the country’s modern constitution was written — Simon has a particular vision of Canada, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT8j0_F1YLQ">her place in it</a> and that of her people. </p>
<p>The emphasis placed on the significance of Simon’s appointment as the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-gg-mary-simon-1.6091376">first Inuk governor general</a> illustrates the glorious purpose with which she has been burdened. </p>
<p>Not because it will give the federal government cause to stop its <a href="https://theconversation.com/honour-those-found-at-residential-schools-by-respecting-the-human-rights-of-first-nations-children-today-163643">legal actions against Indigenous youth</a> or finally put an end <a href="https://theconversation.com/tip-of-the-iceberg-the-true-state-of-drinking-water-advisories-in-first-nations-156190">to boil-water advisories</a> or even abandon <a href="https://www.afn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/18-01-22-Dismantling-the-Doctrine-of-Discovery-EN.pdf">the principle of terra nullius</a> — a prerequisite to reconciliation according to both the <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal-heritage/royal-commission-aboriginal-peoples/Pages/final-report.aspx">Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples</a> and the <a href="http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Volume_6_Reconciliation_English_Web.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>. </p>
<p>Her appointment reinforces the notion that the definition of who, and what, Canada is, is not yet settled. While Canada may have found a new governor general, Simon may find herself in search of a Canada.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man and a woman, both wearing masks, walk down a hallway" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411084/original/file-20210713-25-1fcfsn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon walk down the hallway at the Canadian Museum of History.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The office of the governor general is political</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45/clip/15823735">The mixed</a> and, perhaps more tellingly, <a href="https://t.co/Oevxx8rMJD?amp=1">muted responses</a> from Indigenous people are a good reminder to settlers of the <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100013785/1529102490303">multiculturalism of Indigenous Peoples in Canada</a> and the diversity of the relationships among their nations and the Crown. </p>
<p>To some, Canada is the ideal of the space in which territories and sovereignties can be shared among Indigenous nations and the settler state — despite its heinous crimes against Indigenous Peoples.</p>
<p>For others, Canada is not a country to which they belong or want to belong; they are already members of sovereign nations in this territory. The governor general therefore represents a terrible treaty partner wrapped in a settler colonialist project that has continually sought to destroy their governance structures, legal systems, cultural practices, livelihoods and lives. <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-an-indigenous-governor-general-wouldnt-mean-reconciliation-it-would/">No Indigenous governor general</a> will change that.</p>
<p>Perhaps the greater significance of Simon’s appointment is the reminder that the office of governor general is political. </p>
<p>Its daily functions may be largely ceremonial, and it may not engage in partisan politics, but the office of governor general is by no means politically neutral. How can it be? The Crown is the source of <a href="https://policymagazine.ca/heavy-burdens-of-office-for-the-new-gg/">power and legitimacy</a> for all branches of state in Canada. </p>
<h2>What Canada does Simon represent as GG?</h2>
<p>Reconciliation asks us what we are prepared to give up, as a partner in this deep, broken relationship, to make it right. </p>
<p>Judging from the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8009636/mary-simon-governor-general-french/">reactions to Simon’s linguistic capacities</a> — she is bilingual but speaks Inuktitut, not French — it appears the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/bilingualism">Canadian definition of bilingualism</a> won’t be conceded in the pursuit of reconciliation. </p>
<p>It’s not clear whether we’re prepared to entertain (except <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-job-of-canadas-governor-general-is-merely-symbolic-except-when-its/">perhaps jokingly</a>) extending the <a href="https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2011CanLIIDocs289#!fragment//BQCwhgziBcwMYgK4DsDWszIQewE4BUBTADwBdoByCgSgBpltTCIBFRQ3AT0otokLC4EbDtyp8BQkAGU8pAELcASgFEAMioBqAQQByAYRW1SYAEbRS2ONWpA">governor general’s discretionary powers</a> to limit the executive or legislature’s ability to violate treaties. </p>
<p>Would we accept a governor general removing a prime minister for treaty violations the way we would expect them to remove a prime minister for refusing to hold elections? Why not? </p>
<p>It may be challenging for Canadians to wrap our heads around the concept of peoples living in this territory, with inherent rights (through their own treaties) to water and land that we do not possess, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-pre-election-poll-results-1.5193065">not wanting to be part of this country</a> — and even seemingly undermining it by <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/1492-land-back-lane">blocking major economic</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/coastal-gaslink-pipeline-bc-wet-suwet-en-pandemic-1.5898219">industrial projects</a>. </p>
<p>This may be a good opportunity to practise the <a href="https://outline.com/J3sPtC">listening, reflecting and learning</a> that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/how-are-you-marking-canada-day-what-does-canada-mean-to-you-1.6081664/amid-calls-to-cancel-canada-day-historian-says-opposition-to-the-holiday-has-a-long-history-1.6081921">we all said we would do this past July 1</a>. </p>
<p>I do not know how Simon will resolve these tensions, but we will soon have a governor general whose <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/who-is-mary-simon-canada-s-first-indigenous-governor-general-1.5498435">entire career has been in service of nation-building</a>. The esteem that people engaged in reconciliation work hold for her gives me reason to be cautiously optimistic that she will be successful in her most challenging diplomatic mission yet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Tay-Burroughs's research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Leonard and Kathleen O'Brien Humanitarian Trust through the O'Brien Foundation.</span></em></p>Being Canada’s next governor general will be Mary Simon’s most challenging diplomatic mission yet.Robert Tay-Burroughs, PhD Student, Interdisciplinary Studies, University of New BrunswickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1430612020-07-27T13:05:54Z2020-07-27T13:05:54ZHow coronavirus caused a baby birth certificate backlog<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349210/original/file-20200723-35-k263qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C8%2C5734%2C3819&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Delivered, not signed or sealed. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-newborn-baby-boy-laying-crib-707974390">Tomsickova Tatyana/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>England and Wales are currently full of babies that, in the eyes of the state, do not exist. That’s due to a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53365503">huge backlog in birth registrations</a>, after councils around the country halted the process during lockdown. Birth certificates are only now beginning to be reissued. </p>
<p>Without a birth certificate, parents have been unable to apply for a passport for their children, open a savings account, or, crucially, get access to childcare. Part of the problem is that, in England and Wales, it’s a <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/1-2/20">legal requirement</a> for births to be registered in person. Parents must travel to a registration office within their local district to do so. </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/register-birth">face-to-face meeting</a>, they must provide details such as the place and date of birth and the name of the child and sign a register in the presence of a registrar. Only then can parents purchase a birth <a href="https://www.gov.uk/register-birth/birth-certificates">certificate</a>.</p>
<p>For those parents who are married or in a civil partnership, either parent can <a href="https://www.gov.uk/register-birth/who-can-register-a-birth">register the birth</a> on their own. For those who are unmarried, both parents must attend and sign the register together or bring a <a href="https://www.rbmsociety.com/article/S2405-6618(17)30018-7/fulltext">form signed</a> by the other parent. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A newborn baby is examined by a doctor" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349216/original/file-20200723-31-pjfyfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Babies should usually be registered within 42 days.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pediatric-doctor-exams-newborn-baby-girl-281847146">WeHaveEverything/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In normal times, registration must be done within 42 days of a baby’s birth. After this point, parents will receive a letter telling them to make an appointment. If the birth remains unregistered after 12 months, parents can be fined up to £200. If the parents still refuse, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/23/man-refused-to-register-sons-birth-high-court">local authority</a> can intervene as an “institutional parent” to register the birth.</p>
<h2>The history of birth registrations</h2>
<p>The modern system of civil registration has its roots in the <a href="https://www.rbmsociety.com/article/S2405-6618(17)30028-X/fulltext">documentation of</a> Christian rites of passage in the Tudor age. In September 1538, Henry XVIII’s right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell, <a href="http://www.henryviiithereign.co.uk/1538-second-injunctions.html">ordered</a> local parishes to keep a record of baptisms, weddings and burials. Every church had to keep one register. </p>
<p>Each Sunday, the vicar listed the week’s rituals, noting the date and year of the baptism, marriage or funeral ceremony and the names of those involved. This would be done in the presence of two church wardens who would witness the process and sign the register.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A painting of Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349217/original/file-20200723-17-uernmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas Cromwell came up with first system for registering births in England and Wales.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although it was the Christian “soul” that was recorded in this process, the parish registers were still legal documents. As <a href="https://www.angliaresearch.co.uk/articles/the-history-behind-your-birth-certificate/">Cromwell explained</a>, the records provided proof of age, family and local connections, and could be used to settle legal disputes <a href="https://www.rbmsociety.com/article/S2405-6618(17)30018-7/fulltext">relating to</a> property and inheritance. This system continued for <a href="http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/13/9780197265314_prelim.pdf">centuries</a>.</p>
<p>By the 19th century, parish records were in poor condition, and the country’s growing non-Anglican population was excluded from the church-based system. The government of Earl Grey’s <a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/records/birth.shtml">1834 Poor Law Act</a>, which reformed poverty programmes in England and Wales, paved the way for a new system of civil registration.</p>
<p>Under the act, the nation was divided into registration districts. Registrars were appointed, and a central archive was set up at Somerset House, London, known as the General Register Office. </p>
<h2>Why face-to-face registration matters</h2>
<p>With the bureaucratic issues cased by coronavirus, it’s worth asking whether it’s time to update this centuries-old process. When the governent announced lockdown, it passed an <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/7/contents/enacted">emergency law</a> to change the registration of deaths and still-births, scrapping face-to-face meetings for these procedures. Relatives and hospital staff can now give details over the phone, without a signature being required. </p>
<p>Could this also be done for birth registration? Similar procedures are in place across <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publications/teaching-legal-docs/birth-certificates/">North America</a>, where birth data is sent to the state by parents, doctors, midwives and hospitals via paper or online forms, and a birth certificate is sent back via the post. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/birth-adoption/births/birth-registration">British Columbia</a>, Canada, parents are able to apply for other state benefits when they register a birth online. If the UK government wanted to simplify registration for England and Wales, this seems a useful approach. </p>
<p>Yet my <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038026120915705">ongoing research</a> on registration of life events shows that face-to-face meetings are a very important part of the birth registration process for parents. It would be a shame if this crisis meant we lost this dimension entirely. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Kent" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349215/original/file-20200723-15-xqvulu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kent’s Beaney House shows parents they are part of a community.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaney_House_of_Art_and_Knowledge_2015.JPG">Geni</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my city of Canterbury, birth registration takes place at the <a href="https://canterburymuseums.co.uk/beaney/">Beaney House of Art & Knowledge</a> – a museum, gallery, library, café, tourist information desk, community exhibition space and cultural hub in east Kent. Here, parents register births alongside tourists, visitors and local residents. The Beaney shows that the requirements of the law can be carried out in everyday community spaces – the importance of which should not be readily forgotten. </p>
<p>The birth certificate is a “<a href="https://www.unicef.org/protection/files/UNICEF_Birth_Registration_Handbook.pdf">passport to protection</a>”, in the words of UNICEF, which proves that a baby has legal status. It is crucial that all newborns receive a certificate as soon as possible, pandemic or no pandemic. But we should think carefully before removing face-to-face registration appointments entirely. </p>
<p>The law provides a space in which the bureaucratic act of registration can take on a deeper meaning. Places like the Beaney show parents that there are local services available them as their child grows up. And they tell the child not only that they simply “exist”, but that they are also part of a community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As local councils deal with a ‘bureaucratic backlog’, should births be registered by telephone, post, or online?Jessica Smith, PhD candidate, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1353212020-04-30T02:06:41Z2020-04-30T02:06:41ZSailing through a perfect storm of COVID-19 with universal basic income for Indonesia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329950/original/file-20200423-47810-n5urqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A consumer pays for her purchase with 1000 rupiah at a market in Lenek Village, East Lombok District, Indonesia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flickr.com/photos/asiandevelopmentbank/8426103372/in/photolist-dQzYYm-BVgjD3-PaXUbJ-8Uqiq7-97kiPD-VMZ4Z9-6tNrL4-N5C19e-8Uqu3G-dQzZ25-8UqtYC-6tSeGb-97psaW-8oPCn8-64Wwyb-64SdJK-64SfjK-64WwPW-64Sfqz-9g3Uqn-2ggbhbu-eSLmGY-8X5Qx8-9g41JF-7fQDj9-28k6zSv-NcjJYS-aLZDFX-4MaULf-n3K7dQ-4FYKn9-5CaHtw-pvZgb9-GhMu1q-4P5BLE-6Cw8Rh-e6huaJ-MDsUL3-97psaQ-97psaL-bCzWqY-dQzYWm-VMZ6fq-99bbFe-e5uTz1-7FATnF-8UnpYg-7FATnD-8qBHGT-PdGMXM">asiandevelopmentbank/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the world hits a perfect storm of COVID-19, governments worldwide are encountering the most challenging and noble tasks in their history: <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/04/02/covid-19-presents-stark-choices-between-life-death-and-the-economy">to save their people and the economy</a>. </p>
<p>While preventive measures such as physical distancing and staying at home are imperative to minimise the spread of the virus, the media and public remind us <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/03/28/containment-efforts-reveal-glaring-economic-inequality.html">such measures present privileged class bias</a>. </p>
<p>Those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are struggling to comply with such measures for a palpable reason: they must find ways to make ends meet. They need the cash to survive daily, and they need it now. </p>
<p>Developed countries have resources and welfare architecture in place to ease their citizens’ hardships in this crisis. Monetary, fiscal, and welfare interventions have been launched on an unprecedented scale because this pandemic <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-greater-great-depression-by-nouriel-roubini-2020-03?">might be worse than the Great Depression</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, lower and middle-income countries are hit harder, but have fewer resources and fragmented welfare systems, leaving them unable to undertake the scale of interventions we have seen in developed countries. Their financial markets have also been impacted by the global financial system’s shocks in this pandemic era.</p>
<p>One solution to tackle this condition in a country like Indonesia is by adopting universal basic income.</p>
<p>English lawyer and philosopher Thomas More <a href="https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126618.html">coined ‘basic income’ as a utopian idea</a> in 1516. The core idea centers on the notion that governments unconditionally pay a <em><a href="https://basicincome.org/">basic income</a></em> to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0032329213483106">every member of a society on an individual entitlement basis without means testing and without a work requirement</a>.</p>
<p>In our opinion, universal basic income can be adopted by Indonesia, a country that has been <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2019/04/15/indonesia-into-upper-middle-income-group.html">approaching the status of an upper-middle-income economy</a>.</p>
<p>Yet Indonesia is struggling during this time of the pandemic. The country’s bureaucracy, as well as its poor financial management, have prevented Indonesia from helping people in need during this difficult time. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331620/original/file-20200430-42935-oy3str.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flickr.com/photos/un_photo/8637648765/in/photolist-eahd3H-bvD79U-dLK56B-bvD63u-2ckcHUN-QPhFS-zr7fY1-4rne2k-2cbd6Pz-4eUV41-e29Eqh-4gW16N-aRBgse-2dxQvDP-rT9bNw-RTLVA3-2af1ADV-2aM7tr5-S2EHAm-Qx5wo4-2aL9ioG-KumCzi-bco24e-RxLaj5-S6KCVz-5sXdsx-S2KfWj-2Yz48D-2ed9HTf-2iaNoqx-S6cyyR-W2VU2g-RWqQAf-2ck1JKh-2aM7u9Y-e3jvv-7EXjmg-83xzSF-KoYWtt-bpSTTG-4eUV5o-2aEFJSw-gJiXin-Rij6uL-7pm2Lc-2jPe9s-d5PetU-21zcmez-JYsxkF-V2X5P4">UN_photos/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Income for everyone from Village Funds</h2>
<p>The government can modify its Village Funds policy so these funds can be given unconditionally to support people in a form of universal basic income during the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has introduced Village Funds since 2015 to boost infrastructure developments in rural areas. The government has committed <a href="https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2019/02/26/17333511/total-dana-desa-2019-2024-rp-400-triliun">Rp 400 billion (US$27 billion) to be disbursed to more than 78,000 villages from 2019-2024</a>.</p>
<p>The funds are mostly spent on physical infrastructure development such as repairing village offices or constructing roads and public facilities. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2019/06/10/why-infrastructure-projects-prone-to-graft.html">Corruption and mismanagement</a> of the funds are not uncommon at a local level due to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01900692.2020.1722165">complicated budgeting and reporting systems. These are difficult to manage for villages with low levels of financial literacy</a>.</p>
<p>Thus, the government should simplify its disbursement and management of the funds so they can be distributed to people in need in rural areas. This would enable them to temporarily deal with COVID-19 more quickly.</p>
<p>The Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry is still developing guidelines to employ cash transfers using the Village Funds. </p>
<p>However, there are a few conflicting ideas in the “guidelines”. </p>
<p>On the one hand, the ministry suggests each <a href="https://bebas.kompas.id/baca/bebas-akses/2020/04/15/dana-desa-bisa-digunakan-untuk-bantuan-langsung-tunai/">household beneficiary will receive about Rp 600,000 for three months</a>. This applies to more than 78,000 villages.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the allocation for each household will depend on how much funding a village secures from the government. </p>
<p>For villages receiving average funds of Rp 800 million to Rp 1.2 billion (USD 53k-80k), the allocation for COVID-19 transfer is <a href="https://www.kemendesa.go.id/berita/view/detil/3233/cair-april-rp-224-triliun-dana-desa-digunakan-untuk-blt">set at 30% of the total funds for three months</a>. For villages receiving more than Rp 1.2 billion, the allocation can go up to 35% of their budget. </p>
<p>The way the ministry deals with this situation is counterproductive because <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26539215?seq=1">much time and effort are required to design proper conditions on the funding</a>. Targeting is prone to exclusion and inclusion errors, which <a href="https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/62557/1/720519950.pdf">often lead to social tensions</a>. The funds will then be released way too slowly to have quick impacts. </p>
<p>One of the most important principles in setting universal basic income is to eliminate all conditionalities <a href="https://regional.kompas.com/read/2020/04/18/10562821/takut-konflik-sejumlah-kades-menolak-salurkan-bantuan-tunai">to avoid or reduce potential local conflicts</a>. </p>
<p>In emergencies like this pandemic, conditionalities and complicated verification are the last things needed because nearly everyone is affected. </p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>In previous disaster settings, the government has piloted ‘basic income’ through cash transfer programs in Central Sulawesi following earthquakes in the region in 2018.</p>
<p>Led by the Ministry of Social Affairs, the program is supported by <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340986096_Humanitarian_and_disaster_management_ecosystem_for_cash_transfer_programming_Understanding_institutional_and_operational_constraints_in_post-disaster_governance_in_Indonesia">large non-governmental organizations</a>. </p>
<p>Following the 2018 earthquakes, the ministry distributed at least <a href="https://www.kemsos.go.id/kemensos-serahkan-jadup-korban-bencana-sulteng-rp91-miliar">Rp 43.2 billion</a> to 72,000 disaster-affected people in 2019. Also, nongovernmental organizations from <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340986096_Humanitarian_and_disaster_management_ecosystem_for_cash_transfer_programming_Understanding_institutional_and_operational_constraints_in_post-disaster_governance_in_Indonesia">Cash Working Group (CWG) in Central Sulawesi</a> distributed around Rp 300 billion (US$22 million) as of 2019.</p>
<p>The inclusion of beneficiaries during emergencies should be based on simple inclusion criteria such as loss of assets and jobs. And a village-level process can verify such information. </p>
<h2>The urgency of universal basic income</h2>
<p>COVID-19 causes poverty to skyrocket as a <a href="https://www.ifpri.org/blog/how-much-will-global-poverty-increase-because-covid-19">1% reduction in economic growth could increase poverty by up to 3%</a>. </p>
<p>In emergencies, time is a currency. A failure to deliver basic income to the people could have catastrophic consequences. </p>
<p>People are looking for certainty and security in this pandemic era. These two things are exactly <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-made-basic-income-vital/">what universal basic income could provide</a>, especially for the rural population. </p>
<p>The Indonesian government also needs to think beyond Jakarta and Java Island, as those in the peripheries will suffer further because of the <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/16/what-about-the-others-ojol-relief-sparks-concerns-over-aid-inequality.html">lack of attention given to them under current schemes</a>.</p>
<p>While Indonesia is still struggling to “flatten the curve”, the government needs to shift gear to adjust to the crisis without sacrificing the most vulnerable groups. </p>
<p>If businesses are being rescued through intervention such as <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/22/almost-all-business-sectors-will-get-tax-breaks-govt.html">tax breaks</a>, then the government should also rescue the vulnerable and marginalised people at a time when they need it most.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Fanggidae receives her PhD funding from the Australia Awards Scholarships.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonatan A Lassa tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>In emergencies, time is a currency. If the government fails to deliver basic income to the people, the consequences could be catastrophic.Victoria Fanggidae, PhD candidate at the School of Social and Political Science (SSPS), The University of MelbourneJonatan A Lassa, Senior Lecturer, Humanitarian Emergency and Disaster Management, College of Indigenous Futures, Arts and Society, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1275502019-12-13T18:00:33Z2019-12-13T18:00:33ZIn impeachment spotlight, dueling views of professionalism appear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306638/original/file-20191212-85428-1xqen6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C466%2C5278%2C3010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To some, White House aide Jennifer Williams and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman are impartial truth-tellers; to others, they are power-hungry bureaucrats.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Trump-Impeachment/14630731596b4e3cbc5696a80af70958/3/0">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Impeachment hearings have thrust a handful of public servants into the spotlight, where competing ideas about government professionals – variously called the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/kent-taylor-impeachment-ukraine/">establishment</a>, the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/us/politics/trump-deep-state-impeachment.html">deep state</a>,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/twilight-of-the-technocrats.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage">technocrats</a>, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2019-10-25/bureaucrats-prove-key-to-the-impeachment-case-against-trump">bureaucrats</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/trump-attack-vindman-yovanovitch-hill/602383/">experts</a> and <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/donald-trump-criticizes-washingtons-policy-elite-cause">elites</a> – shape public reaction to their testimony.</p>
<p>A recent New York Times column by Frank Bruni <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/opinion/trump-impeachment-inquiry.html">captures the divide</a>. Bruni salutes professionalism as “a reality-based enterprise” with “credentials, benchmarks, all sorts of yardsticks by which a person can be judged.” </p>
<p>But a <a href="https://nyti.ms/2KiffCe#permid=103636261">commenter on the column going by the name of David</a> wants “much less of … the arrogance of those ‘true professionals’ presuming that they know better what is good or bad for the country than a democratically elected president and American people who elected him.”</p>
<p>Bruni’s professionals – the sort recently honored by Time magazine as “<a href="https://time.com/guardians-of-the-year-2019-public-servants/">Guardians of the Year</a>” – are a thin, principled line restraining the president’s worst instincts. Commenter David’s are out-of-touch elites scorning his <a href="https://time.com/4608555/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-final/">particular view of the popular will</a>.</p>
<p>This conflict is not new. As <a href="https://www.rit.edu/directory/mjbgsm-michael-brown">a historian writing about the role of the intellectual in American politics</a> for a forthcoming book, I see it often. </p>
<p>For at least a century, professionalism and the unflattering term “technocrats” have suggested people who, setting aside self-interest, take an objective, expert approach to public affairs. </p>
<p>Thinkers across the political spectrum have questioned this connection, however, seeing in professionalism a bastion of authority rather than a badge of competence. To them, the virtues underlying professionals’ status – rationality, responsibility, detachment – mask their play for power.</p>
<p>How the officials now in the spotlight are perceived – as professionals bound by facts, standards and duty or as elites who invoke them while pursuing their own agenda – may determine whether impeachment proceedings elicit public support or opposition.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306646/original/file-20191212-85391-15dtuud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1884 newspaper illustration, armed guards escort workers through a strike demonstration. It was a chaotic time that led to calls for impartial experts to work on behalf of all citizens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pinkerton_escorts_hocking_valley_leslies.jpg">Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A path to progress</h2>
<p>By the late 19th century, American political life looked chaotic and corrupt to a growing movement of reformers. </p>
<p>Greedy political <a href="https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-prison-escape-of-former-Representative-William-%E2%80%9CBoss%E2%80%9D-Tweed-of-New-York/">bosses</a> presided over cities, and labor disputes involved the naked use of force, with Pinkerton private security guards and state militias in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-strike-homestead-mill/">open battle</a> against striking workers. Amid the melee, many Americans <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/search-for-order-1877-1920/oclc/490459">searched for order</a>.</p>
<p>The possibility that objective, fact-based analysts could do the public’s work, with only the public interest in mind, was an appealing prospect. Self-dealing city bosses could be replaced by well-trained city managers. Public administration might control chaos and corruption. Professionalism could bring progress.</p>
<h2>A route to power</h2>
<p>Critics, however, glimpsed a narrower agenda. Historian Christopher Lasch, for instance, wrote that budding professionals had “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-radicalism-in-america-1889-1963-the-intellectual-as-a-social-type/oclc/256273">no resources, as a class, except argument and exposition</a>.” Lacking the concentrated wealth of the upper class and the numerical strength of the working class, members of the educated middle class were, Lasch argued, underdogs in a brute-force political world. Their best advantage lay in a society governed by reasoned argument rather than raw power. The quest for competent, impartial administration represented middle-class professionals’ vision of progress and their path to influence.</p>
<p>Instead of rising above class struggle, conservative commentator Irving Kristol claimed, professionals joined it.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/about-equality/">The professional classes … are engaged in a class struggle</a> with the business community for status and power,” Kristol warned in 1972. Thinking they could “<a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/about-equality/">do a better job of running our society</a>,” professionals sought the levers of government to do so. Kristol had in mind the domestic regulatory apparatus that the Trump administration <a href="https://time.com/4700311/donald-trump-white-house-counsel-steve-bannon/">wants to undo</a>.</p>
<p>Anarchist-socialist intellectual Noam Chomsky emphasized professionals’ role in global domination rather than stateside business. Borrowing a term for imperial Chinese officials, Chomsky called policy professionals “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/american-power-and-the-new-mandarins/oclc/783551719?referer=di&ht=edition">new mandarins</a>.” To him, they were administrators and apologists for an American empire. Historian <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/bitter-heritage/oclc/814409961?referer=di&ht=edition">Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.</a>, who had served in the Kennedy administration, attributed the Vietnam War to a sequence of blunders; <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/01/02/the-menace-of-liberal-scholarship/">Chomsky</a> thought it “designed and executed by these new mandarins.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306647/original/file-20191212-85417-hxlyb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A career diplomat, Ambassador William Taylor has been criticized by the president and his supporters as a biased ‘Never Trumper.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Trump-Impeachment/a37230b2ce70408eb4d8977676078328/3/0">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A higher code?</h2>
<p>Chomsky, Lasch and Kristol span the political spectrum, from anarchism to neoconservatism, yet all three were skeptical of professionalism. </p>
<p>Behind professionals’ values, they saw a strategy for advancing professionals’ power. But these skeptics were not cynics who thought all values were shams or self-interest the only interest. They believed that public figures could live by a higher code, for they encouraged intellectuals like themselves to do so.</p>
<p>“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies,” <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1967/02/23/a-special-supplement-the-responsibility-of-intelle/">Chomsky declared</a>. Similarly, the Ukraine whistleblower wrote of “<a href="https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf">fulfilling my duty to report this information</a>,” exposing facts that others might prefer remain hidden. </p>
<p>The president’s defenders take a more cynical view: Officials who question his conduct do so from personal motives rather than public responsibility. The whistleblower, they claim, is <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ukraine-whistleblower-had-political-bias-and-was-in-favor-of-trumps-rival-candidate-doj">politically biased</a>. Likewise, the president dubs Ambassador William Taylor, who testified before the House Intelligence Committee, a “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/23/trump-william-taylor-tweet-ukraine-055917">Never Trumper</a>.” </p>
<h2>Professionalism or citizenship?</h2>
<p>Calling these professionals “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/trump-impeachment-ukraine.html">radical unelected bureaucrats</a>,” the president’s allies aim to shift attention from his actions to the specter of an anti-democratic establishment. Indeed, both sides of the impeachment debate claim a duty to democracy: Convicting Trump ends his corrupt authoritarianism; vindicating him protects the people’s “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-speech-at-republican-national-convention-trump-to-paint-dire-picture-of-america/2016/07/21/418f9ae6-4fad-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html">voice</a>.” </p>
<p>When reason and public responsibility define professionalism, these virtues implicitly distinguish professionals from others. That distinction is uncomfortable for democracy. It suggests that professionals are not just a group apart but also one above. </p>
<p>In a culture of dueling stories about professionalism, the officials who testify at impeachment hearings may find that their evidence reaches its widest audience when presented in light not of virtues exclusive to professionals but decency common to citizens.</p>
<p>[ <em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public officials are now in the spotlight: Does the public view them as professionals, bound by duty, or as elites who invoke ideals while pursuing their own agendas?Michael J. Brown, Assistant Professor of History, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1268902019-11-15T13:28:04Z2019-11-15T13:28:04ZProposed asylum fees are part of a bid to make immigrants to the US fund their own red tape<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301339/original/file-20191112-178532-sd71vp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Like making applicants wait in Mexico, fees could discourage asylum seekers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-US-Asylum-Seekers/44834339facf45e7b58146b3717fd253/30/0">AP Photo/Fernando Llano</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/14/2019-24366/us-citizenship-and-immigration-services-fee-schedule-and-changes-to-certain-other-immigration">Trump administration</a> wants to make people fleeing persecution in their home countries pay for something they’ve long gotten for free: the right to apply for asylum in the United States. </p>
<p>As an immigration attorney and a law professor who has <a href="https://www.bu.edu/law/profile/sarah-r-sherman-stokes/">represented people seeking asylum for over a decade</a>, I believe this change, which could go into effect as soon as mid-December following a monthlong comment period, would be not just cruel but also unusual.</p>
<p>At present, only <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/asylum-application-fees/index.php">Iran, Australia and Fiji</a> charge fees to would-be asylum-seekers. </p>
<h2>Fees for everything</h2>
<p>Making immigrants escaping harm and persecution shoulder the cost of processing their paperwork is in line with other trends in U.S. immigration law over the last several decades. <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL34040.html">Fees for everything</a> from green cards to naturalization are not only common but increasingly costly and mandatory.</p>
<p>“You must submit the correct fees or we will reject your form,” <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/fees">U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services</a>, the Department of Homeland Security agency that oversees these applications, warns on its website. It <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/budget-planning-performance">relies primarily on revenue from these fees</a> to cover its entire budget.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2019-24366.pdf">proposed rule</a> would make applying for asylum, which has always been free, cost US$50. While that might not seem like much, asylum seekers do not initially have work authorization, and many, if not most, have fled their home countries with just the clothes on their backs.</p>
<p>In my experience, charging a fee would create a significant barrier for people who flee to the United States to escape trauma and persecution. I’m also concerned that the government plans to make no exceptions. Without any possibility of a fee waiver, those who can’t pay this fee would be unable to seek asylum.</p>
<p>In addition to introducing an asylum application fee, the <a href="https://www.fragomen.com/insights/alerts/uscis-proposes-significant-changes-immigration-benefits-fee-structure">government wants to hike</a> the cost of other immigration petitions and applications by <a href="https://www.aila.org/advo-media/agency-liaison/submit-feedback-notices-requests-for-comment/advance-copy-uscis-proposed-rule-with-adjustments">as much as 532%</a>. Most proposed increases are much smaller than that, and fees for a few services would decline slightly.</p>
<p>The Trump administration says it would use the additional revenue generated to help <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-seeks-to-hike-fees-for-immigration-applications-and-impose-first-ever-asylum-charge/">fund U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services</a>, a government agency that processes immigration applications, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another agency that handles enforcement actions.</p>
<p><iframe id="8qlei" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8qlei/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Established practice</h2>
<p>Immigrants who have suffered past persecution, or who fear future persecution, on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or particular social group may <a href="https://theconversation.com/refugee-or-migrant-sometimes-the-line-is-blurred-79700">qualify for asylum</a>. The process can take months or years. The nation’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov/eoir/about-office">immigration courts</a> currently have <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog">a backlog of more than 1 million cases</a>. </p>
<p>President Donald Trump often denigrates the asylum system and asylum applicants. </p>
<p>“People want to come in. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-border-04-05-19/index.html">They shouldn’t be coming in</a>,” he has said, telling asylum-seekers to “turn around.” He has also called the asylum system a “<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4790668/president-trump-mocks-asylum-seekers-calls-program-scam">scam</a>.”</p>
<p>Yet the United States is bound by both domestic and international law to provide protection to those fleeing persecution.</p>
<p>The U.S. is a signatory of United Nations treaties forged in <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolStatusOfRefugees.aspx">1951 and 1967</a> that spell out the <a href="https://ijrcenter.org/refugee-law/">rights of refugees</a> and asylum-seekers. <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/united-states-immigration-and-refugee-law-1921-1980">Immigration directives</a> issued and laws passed after <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust">millions of Jews</a>, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945">Roma</a> and others perished during the Holocaust established frameworks and systems for asylum applications and processes.</p>
<p>In short, the nation has legal obligations to allow noncitizens to seek asylum and to vet and process those cases in accordance with domestic and international laws.</p>
<p>The U.S. asylum rules and regulations on the books originated in 1974 and were <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1158&num=0&edition=prelim">refined in 1980</a>. Asylum law has evolved since then, explicitly without fees – even as fees became routine for other immigration applications. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/30/most-migration-us-costs-money-theres-reason-asylum-doesnt/">rationale for keeping it that way is simple</a>: The ability to pay should never stand in the way of refugees and asylum-seekers obtaining the protection to which they are legally entitled. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unable to find asylum elsewhere, dozens of Jewish refugees spent months trying to disembark at a Latin American port until the Dutch government let them land on Curacao in the Caribbean in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-ANT-APHS339619-WWII-So-America-Cen-/baeb10c907e94f5a8f679d15b550e4a4/457/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Immigration tolls</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, fees for other kinds of immigration applications have been rising for years, becoming <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18260770/immigration-fee-filing-trump-budget">increasingly onerous</a>.</p>
<p>Applying for naturalization, the process by which immigrants with legal status become citizens, cost <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/pressrelease/feehistory_020304.pdf">$35 in 1985</a> – the equivalent of $83 today after accounting for inflation. But the price tag for that same application is now <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/n-400">$640</a> – eight times as much.</p>
<p>Under changes proposed in November 2019, <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/USCIS-Raises-Service-Costs-564828361.html">naturalization fees</a> would nearly double to $1,170.</p>
<p><a href="https://citizenpath.com/faq/cost-become-us-citizen/">Waivers are available</a> in some cases. But as a result of this sticker shock, many longtime lawful permanent residents – that is, immigrants with green cards – <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11660853/immigrants-seek-stability-of-u-s-citizenship-but-cost-is-often-a-barrier">can’t afford to become citizens</a> despite their eligibility, interest and strong ties to this country through their families, businesses, religious engagement and community involvement.</p>
<p>While some immigration lawyers, like those at <a href="https://www.bu.edu/law/current-students/jd-student-resources/experiential-learning/clinics/immigrants-rights-human-trafficking-clinic/">our clinic</a> at Boston University School of Law, represent clients <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-attorneys-represent-immigrants-for-free-99734">for free</a>, such services are scarce. <a href="https://personalfinance.costhelper.com/immigration-attorney.html">Lawyers’ fees</a>, therefore, can add to the burden as well.</p>
<h2>What happens next</h2>
<p>Are asylum fees inevitable? Not necessarily.</p>
<p>The proposed changes are subject to official rule-making procedures, scheduled to last 30 days. Implementation could be delayed or blocked, however, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/30/18523990/trump-asylum-border-new">by lawsuits</a> filed on behalf of immigrants by advocacy groups. </p>
<p>Likewise, many of the other obstacles the Trump administration has placed in the paths of asylum-seekers, such as forcing them to <a href="https://psmag.com/news/trump-immigration-victory-what-will-it-mean-for-asylum-seekers">wait in Mexico</a> for their hearings and instructing authorities responsible for screening applicants to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/us-asylum-screeners-to-take-more-confrontational-approach-as-trump-aims-to-turn-more-migrants-away-at-the-border/2019/05/07/3b15e076-70de-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html">become more confrontational</a> during preliminary interviews, might not withstand court challenges. </p>
<p>Through it all, one thing is clear. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/01/asylum-seekers-leave-everything-behind-theres-no-way-they-can-pay-trumps-fee/">Most asylum-seekers come with nothing</a>. What little savings they have are often used to pay for their journey to the United States and their basic needs upon arrival. </p>
<p>If they are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and are fortunate enough to have the opportunity and ability to <a href="https://www.aboutbail.com/pages/how-immigration-bail-bonds-work">get out on bail</a>, any funds they have remaining are quickly depleted.</p>
<p>Making it harder for asylum-seekers to access protection is sure to leave many in dire straits.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/charging-asylum-application-fees-is-the-latest-way-the-us-could-make-immigrants-pay-for-its-red-tape-116404">May 13, 2019</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes is affiliated with the Boston University School of Law Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program which provides free legal services to asylum seekers and noncitizens facing deportation. </span></em></p>Fees for everything from green cards to naturalization are not only common, but increasingly costly and mandatory.Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes, Lecturer and Clinical Instructor of Law; Associate Director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1215612019-08-12T19:59:38Z2019-08-12T19:59:38ZRed tape in aged care shouldn’t force staff to prioritise ticking boxes over residents’ outcomes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287634/original/file-20190812-71913-1gmysg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The aged care royal commission has looked at regulation in aged care.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week’s hearings at the <a href="https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/hearings/Pages/post-hearing-submissions.aspx">aged care royal commission</a> in Brisbane looked at regulation in aged care. While rules and regulations are designed to safeguard residents, bureaucratic “red tape” also contributes to the failings in aged care. </p>
<p>The fear among nursing home staff of failing a review visit by an Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission surveyor has been known to shift the focus from care for residents to meeting paper trail requirements.</p>
<p>The best outcome for aged care residents and their families would be new reporting requirements <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335110268_The_Distinction_between_Process_and_Outcomes_Focused_Governance_and_Accountability_Frameworks">centred on outcomes rather than processes</a>. Their primary focus should be on the mediation of critical incidents – that is, looking at what caused them and how they could be prevented in future – and the maintenance of health.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-ailing-aged-care-system-shows-you-cant-skimp-on-nursing-care-115565">Our ailing aged care system shows you can't skimp on nursing care</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How did we get here?</h2>
<p>The crisis in the aged care sector has emerged over time. At least in part, systemic problems in organisations <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/%28SICI%291099-1735%28199603%2913%3A1%3C13%3A%3AAID-SRES66%3E3.0.CO%3B2-O">arise from interactions</a> among its key players. These interactions must be aligned to achieve its <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e33a/5f696b7af6c2eaa3fdbefe94dbf42234bebe.pdf">common goals</a>. </p>
<p>But the key players in the aged care system pursue divergent agendas. Regulators focus on process adherence, while staff struggle with their limited capacity to manage the complex needs of residents. Meanwhile, proprietors focus on economic viability.</p>
<p>The prevailing approach of dealing with the problem of a particular key player in isolation will not solve the problems of aged care as a whole. </p>
<h2>Governance and accountability</h2>
<p>Our research suggests the need for a major culture shift in the aged care system.</p>
<p>Around the world, governments are being urged to put less emphasis on <a href="http://johnbraithwaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Regulating-Aged-Care-Ritualis.pdf">process measurement</a> and more on <a href="http://www.iqg.com.br/uploads/biblioteca/the_strategy.pdf">outcome transparency</a>. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/weve-had-20-aged-care-reviews-in-20-years-will-the-royal-commission-be-any-different-103347">We've had 20 aged care reviews in 20 years – will the royal commission be any different?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Peter Drucker, a well-known management consultant, educator and author, once said “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”. </p>
<p>Ticking the boxes of a protocol to demonstrate “regulatory compliance” – that is, doing things right – is no longer an option on its own. Residents and their families expect staff to be attentive to residents’ changing <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19674233">physical, emotional, social and cognitive needs</a>; that is, doing the right things.</p>
<p>These insights tell us the aged care system needs to be <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319646046">redesigned</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nearly-2-out-of-3-nursing-homes-are-understaffed-these-10-charts-explain-why-aged-care-is-in-crisis-114182">Nearly 2 out of 3 nursing homes are understaffed. These 10 charts explain why aged care is in crisis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What would this look like in practice?</h2>
<p>Let’s consider two common aged care problems – falls and diabetes – whose management is significantly influenced by the chosen accountability framework. The differences between an outcomes-based approach (that is, adapting care to problems in their context) and a process-based approach (adhering to a protocol) are stark.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287636/original/file-20190812-71921-u53rxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The extent to which staff in aged care are required to focus on documentation may detract from their capacity to care for residents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first example: a resident has a fall. Rather than only assessing her for injuries and vital signs (as per protocol), staff would also assess potential reasons for the fall – for example, lack of mobility, pain, low blood pressure, or polypharmacy (taking multiple prescription medications at once) – and involve allied health professionals in preventive and rehabilitative care. This could include muscle strengthening exercises, gait and balance retraining, pain management and medication review. These are measures that could reduce the likelihood of the patient falling again, thereby improving her outcomes.</p>
<p>And let’s take a resident with normally stable diabetes, who one day records an elevated blood sugar reading. Rather than just giving him more insulin, staff would also assess potential underlying reasons for the elevated reading. These could include loss of appetite, an infection, or an episode of <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/delirium/symptoms-causes/syc-20371386">delirium</a>.</p>
<h2>The royal commission should do many things, but adding red tape isn’t one of them</h2>
<p>Increasing frailty and/or significant memory decline are the main reasons for admission to an aged care facility. These people are particularly vulnerable as their health changes frequently and rapidly. </p>
<p>Being bogged down by <a href="http://johnbraithwaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Regulating-Aged-Care-Ritualis.pdf">regulatory ritualism</a> reduces the time staff have available to spend on residents’ physical, social, emotional and cognitive needs. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-wait-for-a-crisis-start-planning-your-aged-care-now-113572">Don't wait for a crisis – start planning your aged care now</a>
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<p>True accountability in aged care is achieved by demonstrating how the provided care has impacted a resident’s well-being. In that regard, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission should provide leadership and primarily act as an educator, helping facilities to become <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/163984/the-fifth-discipline-by-peter-m-senge/9780385517256/">learning organisations</a>. If an aged care facility fails to “learn and improve”, then sanctions and penalties become necessary.</p>
<p>More bureaucracy would only serve to perpetuate the current crisis, and would fail those residents and families who have suffered from <a href="https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au">the current failings in the sector</a>.</p>
<p><em>Len Gainsford, a former adjunct research fellow in accounting & governance at Swinburne University of Technology, contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joachim Sturmberg is Foundation President of the International Society for Systems and Complexity Sciences for Health (ISSCSH). </span></em></p>Bureaucratic ‘red tape’ has contributed to the current crisis in our aged care system. We need a system of accountability that focuses more on residents’ outcomes, and less on processes.Joachim Sturmberg, Conjoint Associate Professor of General Practice, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1203922019-08-02T12:22:41Z2019-08-02T12:22:41ZThe White House is upending decades of protocol for policy-making<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286518/original/file-20190731-186809-1835ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ford, Carter, George H.W. Bush and Clinton led four of the first administrations to fully embrace policy analysis.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Whether it’s <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/asylum-seekers-that-followed-trump-rule-now-dont-qualify-because-of-new-trump-rule">overhauling asylum procedures</a>, adding a question about <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-supreme-court-asked-for-an-explanation-of-the-2020-census-citizenship-question-119567">citizenship to the 2020 Census</a>, or rolling back <a href="https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/17-automakers-ask-trump-to-hold-off-on-fuel-economy-rollback/">fuel standards</a>, a pattern has emerged when the Trump administration changes policies and creates new ones.</p>
<p>An announcement is made, media attention follows, the policy is formally proposed and finalized – generating more news coverage along the way. In many cases, judges suspend the new policy as <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/8/18076324/daca-supreme-court-trump-when-lawsuit">lawsuits work their way through</a> the system. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/trumps-deregulatory-efforts-keep-losing-in-court-and-the-losses-could-make-it-harder-for-future-administrations-to-deregulate/">Unusually</a>, the Supreme Court often ends up determining whether the new policy can go into effect.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2000.11643493">All presidents since the 1960s</a> have embraced a process known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/policy-analysis">policy analysis</a> that requires careful consideration and deliberation at every step of the way. In most cases, the public also gets to weigh in before a final decision is made. Based on <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=R1CcxM8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my research</a> about regulatory decision-making, I’ve observed a sea change in how Trump’s team is dealing with public policy compared to previous administrations.</p>
<h2>Administrative Procedure Act</h2>
<p>For the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F003231879404600211">first 150 years of this country’s history</a>, Congress, not presidents, decided on policies by enacting laws. </p>
<p>Starting <a href="https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/when-and-why-was-fda-formed">around 1900</a>, lawmakers began to delegate this task to independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, and to government agencies under the president’s control. The pace of this shift stepped up <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-1/delegation-of-legislative-power">during the New Deal</a>, three decades later.</p>
<p>But because this arrangement can empower unelected bureaucrats, <a href="https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2448&context=facpubs">questions about accountability</a> arose. Chief among them: Could decisions made by unelected officials that affected millions of people be allowed in a democracy? Requiring public participation and systematic analysis became routine and required for most policy changes as a result.</p>
<p>The mandate for public participation came first.</p>
<p>In 1946, Congress passed the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-administrative-procedure-act">Administrative Procedure Act</a>. It established <a href="https://www.justia.com/administrative-law/rulemaking-writing-agency-regulations/notice-and-comment/">rulemaking procedures</a> that required agencies creating new policies to alert the public, seek comments, and then consider that input before making most policies final. <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.2307/1073060">Many states followed suit</a> with their own versions of this measure.</p>
<h2>Silent Spring</h2>
<p>The environmental, worker safety, and other social movements that arose during the 1960s and early 1970s led Congress to create agencies like the <a href="https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/birth-epa.html">Environmental Protection Agency</a> and the <a href="https://www.osha.gov/as/opa/osha-at-30.html">Occupational Safety and Health Administration</a>. Lawmakers then delegated authority to make policy to those new agencies regarding the issues within their purview.</p>
<p>For example, the public pressure for greater automobile safety in the wake of consumer safety activist Ralph Nader’s book “<a href="https://nader.org/books/unsafe-at-any-speed/">Unsafe at Any Speed</a>” prompted Congress to empower the Department of Transportation to more strictly regulate automakers. Scientist <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rachel-carson">Rachel Carson’s</a> “<a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a>,” a seminal book that exposed the damage caused by pesticides, expedited the passage of <a href="https://environmentallaw.uslegal.com/federal-laws/clean-air-act/">numerous environmental statutes</a> in the <a href="http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/silent-spring/overview">U.S. and elsewhere</a> and the creation of the <a href="https://ceq.doe.gov/">EPA during the Nixon administration</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286639/original/file-20190801-169696-b0micg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alice Rivlin championed the practice of methodically assessing the potential impact of new policies and policy changes, while letting the public weigh in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Financial-Meltdown/443af838982c4b7795573f72e68d3ebe/23/0">AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the wake of these new responsibilities, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23065473?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">starting with Gerald Ford</a>, all presidents, Republican and Democratic alike implemented and refined the requirements for analysis and input from the public prior to the unveiling of new policies. The analysis requirement championed by pioneers like <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/podcast-episode/alice-rivlin-a-career-spent-making-better-public-policy/">Alice Rivlin</a>, who served as President Bill Clinton’s budget chief, has led to <a href="https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784714765">many successes</a>.</p>
<p>One example is when the <a href="https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-historical-perspective.html">EPA decided in the 1980s</a> to require the <a href="https://web.mit.edu/ckolstad/www/Newell.pdf">removal of all lead from gasoline</a> because the analysis of costs and benefits showed how many lives would be saved or improved by its elimination. I relayed another success story in my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2017.1286019">policy analysis textbook</a>: when the Department of Homeland Security scaled back its proposal for stringent requirements on <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/01/13/2014-00415/aircraft-repair-station-security">aircraft repair stations</a> in 2014. The Obama administration took this step after finding the costs to be too high for minimal security benefits.</p>
<p>These mandatory analyses forced agencies to use basic economic principles to calculate costs and benefits and to make the <a href="https://www.reginfo.gov/public/jsp/Utilities/EO_Redirect.myjsp">calculations available to the public</a>. </p>
<p>But this approach can also fail, at least partly because it can make decisions seem overly technocratic. That’s often the case when values are at stake, such as deciding whether protecting an <a href="https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/publications/1995-The-Science-Charade-in-Toxic-Risk-Regulation">endangered species</a> is worth increasing the cost of <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060092887">construction and infrastructure projects</a> – or blocking them altogether. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286641/original/file-20190801-169672-1ev0ibt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers who make tunnels and toil in them are at risk for inhaling airborne silica, which can cause lung disease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Nevada-United-St-/31e4ff58e3e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/4/0">AP Photo/Laura Rauch</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>What’s more, following the requisite steps can also mean the rule-making process takes not just years but decades. OSHA, for example, has taken decades to issue some <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1372818?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">rules that protect workers</a>. Its <a href="https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/03/the-regulation-that-took-four-decades-to-finalize-000078">industrial quartz</a> regulations, for instance, reportedly took 45 years to finish. Technically known as crystalline silica, the substance, when finely ground up for manufacturing or <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/updates/silicupd.html">blasted during construction</a>, can cause workers to contract <a href="https://www.lung.org/lung-health-and-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/silicosis/silicosis-symptoms-causes-risk.html">silicosis</a>, an incurable lung disease, and lung cancer.</p>
<h2>Shifting gears</h2>
<p>The Trump administration hasn’t declared that it’s doing anything different. It hasn’t, as far as I know, ever declared that “policy analysis is bad” or said, “Let’s ignore the public and ignore expertise.”</p>
<p>But the public record shows that <a href="https://www.epi.org/press/dol-scrubs-economic-analysis-that-showed-its-tip-pooling-rule-would-be-terrible-for-workers/">Trump’s team has either ignored</a>, <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/451095-clean-power-plan-repeal-shows-strengths-and-limits-of-policy">manipulated</a> or <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-administrator-pruitt-proposes-cost-benefit-analysis-reform">subverted</a> the requirements for analysis and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3049004">participation</a> on numerous policy actions that range from addressing climate change to the division of waiters'tips.</p>
<p>Whether a federal agency analyzes its decisions or asks for public input on them may seem like the ultimate in inside baseball. But processes make a difference. I believe that its failure to follow the long-established policy analysis process is a key reason why Trump administration is <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/trumps-deregulatory-efforts-keep-losing-in-court-and-the-losses-could-make-it-harder-for-future-administrations-to-deregulate/">losing many court battles</a>. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Shapiro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The process known as policy analysis requires careful consideration and deliberation. In most cases, the public also gets to weigh in.Stuart Shapiro, Professor of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164042019-05-13T10:41:10Z2019-05-13T10:41:10ZCharging asylum application fees is the latest way the US could make immigrants pay for its red tape<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273398/original/file-20190508-183106-1ff0rdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Asylum seekers, lining up in Tijuana in 2018</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Migrant-Caravan-US-Border/1e3c3493eaba4b84b49a58c6f5397b31/3/0">AP Photo/Gregory Bull</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-memorandum-additional-measures-enhance-border-security-restore-integrity-immigration-system/">Trump administration</a> wants to make people fleeing persecution in their home countries pay for something they’ve long gotten for free: the right to apply for asylum in the United States.</p>
<p>As an immigration attorney and a law professor who has <a href="https://www.bu.edu/law/profile/sarah-r-sherman-stokes/">represented people seeking asylum for over a decade</a>, I believe this change, which could go into effect as soon as the summer of 2019, would be not just cruel but also unusual. At present, only <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/asylum-application-fees/index.php">Australia, Iran and Fiji</a> charge fees to would-be asylum-seekers. </p>
<p>But making immigrants escaping harm and persecution shoulder the cost of processing their paperwork is in line with other trends in U.S. immigration law over the last several decades. <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL34040.html">Fees for everything</a> from green cards to naturalization are not only common, but increasingly costly and mandatory.</p>
<p>“You must submit the correct fees or we will reject your form,” <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/fees">U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services</a>, the Department of Homeland Security agency that oversees these applications, warns on its website. It <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/budget-planning-performance">relies primarily on revenue from these fees</a> to cover its entire budget.</p>
<h2>Established practice</h2>
<p>Immigrants who have suffered past persecution, or who fear future persecution, on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or particular social group may <a href="https://theconversation.com/refugee-or-migrant-sometimes-the-line-is-blurred-79700">qualify for asylum</a>. The process can take months or years. The nation’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov/eoir/about-office">immigration courts</a> currently have <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/apprep_backlog.php">a backlog of over 869,000 cases</a>.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump often denigrates the asylum system, and asylum applicants. </p>
<p>“People want to come in. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-border-04-05-19/index.html">They shouldn’t be coming in</a>,” he has said, telling asylum-seekers to “turn around.” </p>
<p>Yet this country is bound by both domestic and international law to provide protection to those fleeing persecution.</p>
<p>The U.S. is a signatory of United Nations treaties forged in <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolStatusOfRefugees.aspx">1951 and 1967</a> that spell out the <a href="https://ijrcenter.org/refugee-law/">rights of refugees</a> and asylum-seekers. <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/united-states-immigration-and-refugee-law-1921-1980">Immigration directives</a> issued and laws passed after <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust">millions of Jews</a>, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945">Roma</a> and others perished during the Holocaust established frameworks and systems for asylum applications and processes.</p>
<p>In short, the nation has legal obligations to allow non-citizens to seek asylum, and to vet and process those cases in accordance with domestic and international laws.</p>
<p>The asylum rules and regulations on the books originated in 1974 and were <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1158&num=0&edition=prelim">refined in 1980</a>. Asylum law has evolved since then, explicitly without fees – even as fees became routine for other immigration applications. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/30/most-migration-us-costs-money-theres-reason-asylum-doesnt/?utm_term=.2001f4225d33">rationale for keeping it that way is simple</a>: The ability to pay should never stand in the way of refugees and asylum-seekers obtaining the protection to which they are legally entitled. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273881/original/file-20190510-183089-1pg6sin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unable to find asylum elsewhere, dozens of Jewish refugees spent months trying to disembark at a Latin American port until the Dutch government let them land on Curacao in the Caribbean in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-ANT-APHS339619-WWII-So-America-Cen-/baeb10c907e94f5a8f679d15b550e4a4/457/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Immigration tolls</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, fees for other kinds of immigration applications have been rising for years, becoming <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18260770/immigration-fee-filing-trump-budget">increasingly onerous</a>.</p>
<p>Applying for naturalization, the process by which immigrants with legal status become citizens, cost <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/pressrelease/feehistory_020304.pdf">US$35 in 1985</a> – the equivalent of $83 today after accounting for inflation. But the price tag for that same application is now <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/n-400">$640</a> – eight times more. And that doesn’t include the mandatory <a href="https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/steps-become-american-citizen.html">$85 fingerprinting fee</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://citizenpath.com/faq/cost-become-us-citizen/">Waivers are available</a> in some cases. But as a result of this sticker shock, many longtime lawful permanent residents, such as immigrants with green cards, <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11660853/immigrants-seek-stability-of-u-s-citizenship-but-cost-is-often-a-barrier">can’t afford to become citizens</a> despite their eligibility, interest and strong ties to this country through their families, businesses, religious engagement and community involvement.</p>
<p>While some immigration lawyers represent clients <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-attorneys-represent-immigrants-for-free-99734">pro bono</a>, meaning for free, such services are scarce. <a href="https://personalfinance.costhelper.com/immigration-attorney.html">Lawyers’ fees</a>, therefore, can add to the burden as well.</p>
<p><iframe id="LyFRi" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/LyFRi/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>What happens next</h2>
<p>Are asylum fees inevitable? Not necessarily.</p>
<p>Trump has asked the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department to establish asylum fees and make <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum">work authorization</a> harder to obtain than it already is for asylum-seekers <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-memorandum-additional-measures-enhance-border-security-restore-integrity-immigration-system/">by the end of July</a>. </p>
<p>Yet the time frame is unclear. These changes are subject to official rule-making procedures – and very likely lawsuits – all of which will delay the policy’s implementation <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/30/18523990/trump-asylum-border-new">beyond the requisite 90 days</a>, or even halt it. Likewise, many of the other obstacles the Trump administration has placed in the path of asylum-seekers, such as forcing them to <a href="https://psmag.com/news/trump-immigration-victory-what-will-it-mean-for-asylum-seekers">wait in Mexico</a> for their hearings and instructing authorities responsible for screening applicants to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/us-asylum-screeners-to-take-more-confrontational-approach-as-trump-aims-to-turn-more-migrants-away-at-the-border/2019/05/07/3b15e076-70de-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html">become more confrontational</a> during preliminary interviews, might not withstand court challenges.</p>
<p>Through it all, one thing is clear. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/01/asylum-seekers-leave-everything-behind-theres-no-way-they-can-pay-trumps-fee/?utm_term=.5d579551549e">Most asylum-seekers come with nothing</a>. What little savings they have are often used to pay for their journey to the United States, as well as their basic needs upon arrival. </p>
<p>If they are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and fortunate enough to have the opportunity and ability to <a href="https://www.aboutbail.com/pages/how-immigration-bail-bonds-work">get out on bail</a>, any of their remaining funds are quickly depleted.</p>
<p>Making it harder for asylum-seekers to access protection is sure to leave many in dire straits.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116404/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only three countries charge people who seek asylum fees. The rationale for not doing that is clear.Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes, Lecturer and Clinical Instructor of Law; Associate Director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1135102019-03-22T06:50:24Z2019-03-22T06:50:24ZWhy New Order doctrine on military role in civilian matters is still relevant in democratic Indonesia<p>The Indonesian public is rejecting the government’s alleged plan to restore an old doctrine imposed under Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order regime. This doctrine, known as the military’s dual function, allowed the military to be involved in almost all aspects of civilian life. </p>
<p>The issue emerged after Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, a retired military general, <a href="https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2019/03/07/16044331/polemik-dwifungsi-tni-dari-pernyataan-luhut-hingga-penahanan-robertus-robet">said</a> the government might recruit military officers for ministerial and government offices.</p>
<p>Luhut <a href="https://www.merdeka.com/peristiwa/luhut-tegaskan-tni-gabung-kementerian-bukan-dwifungsi.html">denied</a> that he wanted to restore the military’s role under the New Order regime with his plan. The military once had positions in ministerial offices, state-owned firms and even in the parliament. </p>
<p>However, his statement has sparked public debate and opposition. </p>
<p>Opponents of the plan argue that it could jeopardise Indonesia’s two decades of democratisation since Soeharto’s resignation following student protests triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Soeharto, who came to power following a bloody anti-communist purge in the 1960s, used the military to sustain his regime for 32 years. </p>
<p>However, as an expert on administrative law focusing on Indonesia’s bureaucratic reform, I argue otherwise. </p>
<p>The concept of the military’s dual function is inspired by the spirit of Indonesian fighters for independence against the Dutch in the 1940s. This kind of spirit of involving all citizens to fight for the country is forever relevant for Indonesia. </p>
<p>As long as they are competent, I believe military officers – just like their predecessors fighting in the Independence War – have the right to participate in serving the public. Competency-based recruitment is part of the current military and civilian bureaucracy reforms to avoid past atrocities from happening again. </p>
<h2>The good history</h2>
<p>The military’s dual function originated from a hallowed tradition during the war against the Dutch between 1945 and 1949. This first generation of Indonesian soldiers fought of their own accord, driven by the sheer desire to defend the country against the Dutch who did not recognise Indonesia’s proclamation of independence in 1945. </p>
<p>At that time, people voluntarily enlisted in an armed group that eventually became the Indonesian military. </p>
<p>One of Indonesia’s prominent military figures, General Abdul Haris Nasution, adopted this spirit and created a concept dubbed “<a href="https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:789515/FULLTEXT01.pdf">Broad Front</a>”. Under that concept, the military was encouraged to focus not only on defence and security matters, but also on the welfare of the state as a whole. The late general, however, asserted that the Indonesian military would not play direct political roles to avoid becoming a tool for politicians to gain power. </p>
<p>That is why during the 1950s and early 1960s the <a href="https://books.google.co.id/books?id=ESXfBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=Jenkins,+David.+(1983)+%22The+evolution+of+Indonesian+Army+doctrinal+thinking:+The+concept+of+%22Dwifungsi.%22+Southeast+Asian+Journal+of+Social+Science+11+(2)+Ideology+in+Southeast+Asia:+15-30.&source=bl&ots=7_xYw9QfvO&sig=ACfU3U31noAcZm_9OQqBk8Kw7qQnIiRjVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr3Mnwoo3hAhXv73MBHabFBz4Q6AEwAXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Jenkins%2C%20David.%20(1983)%20%22The%20evolution%20of%20Indonesian%20Army%20doctrinal%20thinking%3A%20The%20concept%20of%20%22Dwifungsi.%22%20Southeast%20Asian%20Journal%20of%20Social%20Science%2011%20(2)%20Ideology%20in%20Southeast%20Asia%3A%2015-30.&f=false">Indonesian military</a> indeed fought not only on war fronts, but was involved actively – albeit still somewhat indirectly – in political and even economic affairs.</p>
<h2>The bad history</h2>
<p>During the New Order regime, the presence of military officers and generals in any conceivable walk of life was meant to help the government create political stability. </p>
<p>However, political and economic turmoil inherited during Sukarno’s regime served as a convenient pretext for Soeharto’s draconian approach. </p>
<p>Heavy military interference in civilian life led to repression and violence against critical voices or anyone who simply had different ideas from that of the government.</p>
<p>The Indonesian military has been <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/277327.pdf">accused of</a> perpetrating numerous human rights abuses in Indonesian history, including the 1965 anti-communist purges, the 1998 riots, military operations in Papua, and many others. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2019/03/07/16044331/polemik-dwifungsi-tni-dari-pernyataan-luhut-hingga-penahanan-robertus-robet">recent arrest</a> of academic and activist Robertus Robet for singing a song that allegedly insulted the military has brought back this bad memory. </p>
<p>Activists have denounced Luhut’s proposal to ensure bad things in the past will never happen again. </p>
<h2>Analysing Luhut’s proposal</h2>
<p>Luhut’s statement may be driven by a pragmatic motive. </p>
<p>The policy of military recruitment for civilian positions took place until the mid-1990s. After the New Order regime collapsed in 1998, the government ended the policy and abolished all positions – estimated at more than 1,000 – filled by military officers. </p>
<p>The end of the old recruitment policy has left thousands of active officers with no duties. These officers receive meagre base salaries and have to look for other means to support themselves. Some officers work as online taxi drivers.</p>
<p>Fortunately, under the new democratic system, the government has trained and educated officers in the hopes of creating a more professional military. As a result, many military officers are indeed competent in many civilian skills, with expertise such as engineering and management. </p>
<p>This might be why Luhut is confident about offering junior positions in the civilian bureaucracy. </p>
<h2>The return of military’s dual fuction: is it likely?</h2>
<p>After more than 20 years of being a democratic country, can the military get its dual role back?</p>
<p>From an internal military perspective, the chance is pretty slim due to the military’s restructuring program. Initiated during <a href="https://books.google.co.id/books/about/Gus_Dur_militer_dan_politik.html?id=1kinQ101YfQC&redir_esc=y">Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency</a>, it is unlikely to recruit military officers for civilian positions. As president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, an army general renowned for his commitment to democracy, successfully <a href="http://commons.lib.niu.edu/bitstream/handle/10843/13913/Fribert%2c%20Paul%2047108.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">completed the program</a>.</p>
<p>Most Indonesian soldiers are now content with the professional epithet being afforded to them. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwin5o3iyI_hAhXY73MBHaseCEwQFjAAegQIAhAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjournal.ui.ac.id%2Findex.php%2Fmjs%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F4701%2F3300&usg=AOvVaw3NOJ-5sCUFWU56zLJ00xPx">They</a> look at the New Order regime they once experienced with remorse and a sense of shared shame.</p>
<p>However, government institutions are showing encouraging signs of maturity. The reform era since the late 1990s has indeed boosted the confidence of the civilian bureaucracy after years of submission to the military-backed authoritarian regime. </p>
<p>The recruitment process in Indonesia’s institutions now has been designed to be based on skill and competency. If government institutions plan on recruiting military officers, they must go through the same process as other candidates. </p>
<p>With more and more Indonesians serving in the military having professional skills and capacity, it is therefore reasonable to consider utilising these resources. There is no reason to deny the new generation of officers the opportunities to serve in the public sector because of the sins of the past regime. </p>
<p>We must acknowledge, however, that there is still no evidence showing how competency-based recruitment into the public sector can stop abuses of power by the military. Perhaps the only way for the public to accept the military in civilian positions is for the government and the military to continue to show, through their actions, that they wholeheartedly support democracy. </p>
<p>The arrest of an activist academic for insulting the military under Jokowi’s administration (which includes New Order-era military generals in the cabinet) does not show this. Clearly, overcoming the public’s concerns will take time.</p>
<p><em>Ariza Muthia has contributed to publish this article</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113510/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bono graduated from semi-military high school Taruna Nusantara established by Indonesian Armed Forces, attended Naval Academy but did not graduate. He was also involved in 1998 students' movement.</span></em></p>As long as they are competent, I believe military officers have the right to participate in deciding the future of the nation.Bono Budi Priambodo, Associate lecturer, Universitas IndonesiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1080712019-01-09T19:11:04Z2019-01-09T19:11:04ZNational curriculums don’t always work for rural and regional schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252964/original/file-20190109-32133-178r30y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past decade, federal government agencies and their state regulators have packaged most things in education in Australia. Big education decisions, like what to teach and what should be tested, are largely made in capital cities. These moves have all been made in the name of improving standards, but they’ve come at the cost of local independence. </p>
<p>We introduced <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/employers/good-practice-good-business-factsheets/quick-guide-australian-discrimination-laws">anti-discrimination legislation</a> across Australia between the 1970s and 1990s, but then we centralised curriculum and assessment between 2008 and 2010. One move opened up more opportunities for equity, while the other restricted the ability of teachers to make autonomous decisions in response to their local needs and values.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-nsw-teachers-working-long-hours-to-cope-with-administrative-load-99453">New research shows NSW teachers working long hours to cope with administrative load</a>
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<p>Belief systems – whether religious, philosophical, political, ideological or a combination – are one of the most understated influences in education. These systems are based on communities’ collective values and beliefs about what matters. Because we have diverse beliefs in Australia, we also have a <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-choice-is-not-the-answer-to-everything-1966">diversity of schools</a>. </p>
<p>We need to empower and trust local people to take responsibility and collaborate to develop programs for local people. National programs have not yielded <a href="https://theconversation.com/naplan-has-done-little-to-improve-student-outcomes-86049">improved achievement rates</a>, so why do we persist with the idea of <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/minister-flags-national-curriculum-review/news-story/5731ac5dbbf93b3dde39df58e97cca67">centrally packaging</a> the curriculum? </p>
<h2>“Them and us” attitudes make rural students disengage</h2>
<p>Although we have about 9,500 schools across Australia, there are two central education powerhouses: The <a href="http://www.acara.edu.au/">Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority</a> (ACARA) in Sydney, and the <a href="https://www.aitsl.edu.au/">Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership</a> (AITSL) in Melbourne. Urban bureaucratic perspectives are foregrounded and local and regional perspectives are marginalised. It’s a long way from Melbourne to Broome or Bamaga. </p>
<p>All over the country, schools spend hours reporting their activities to government departments, and bureaucrats spend hours checking and publishing school outcomes. It’s a big compliance game. </p>
<p>ACARA administers and reports on NAPLAN. Curriculum is developed by ACARA and interpreted by state agencies in capital cities. AITSL sets standards for teachers and principals, and state governments use these to set awards and develop career paths for them. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251156/original/file-20181218-27767-1jr8we5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Disengagement in school among non-urban students is a major issue as education is seen as a metro-centric enterprise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-student-learning-by-television-class-613847588">www.shutterstock.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Because school data is published on the internet, efforts by local teachers and principals to provide high quality education are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220620.2017.1399864">hijacked</a> by comparative assessment and reporting agendas. If there wasn’t a national comparison game, local educators could give more time to creating meaningful learning experiences for their students.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, non-attendance is a major concern in the regions, but we fail to recognise the significance of the “<a href="https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=indigenous_education">them and us</a>” attitudes that prevail between schools and parents in regional communities. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/student-protests-show-australian-education-does-get-some-things-right-108258">Student protests show Australian education does get some things right</a>
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<p>A review into regional, remote and rural education found there is a genuine concern in regional communities that students are “<a href="http://apo.org.au/system/files/98861/apo-nid98861-357061.pdf">learning for leaving</a>”. This means the main focus of education is seen to be to get educated school-leavers out of the country into the city.</p>
<p>Many non-urban students choose to disengage because they think school is irrelevant. A mismatch of beliefs about what’s important in education can lead to disengagement and poorer schooling outcomes for regional students. </p>
<h2>Reforms</h2>
<p>In regional Indigenous communities, socio-cultural divisions are too often reinforced by teachers who are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13384-017-0229-8">ill-equipped</a> to meet the learning needs of Indigenous students. We have included Indigenous histories and cultures in the Australian Curriculum, but at the same time we’ve compromised Indigenous teaching strategies as local teachers are asked to implement <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/australian-journal-of-indigenous-education/article/indigenous-education-and-literacy-policy-in-australia-bringing-learning-back-to-the-debate/726CD6BFEA5F984DF8ECD650379611BA">pre-packaged curriculum or foreign instruction</a> techniques. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251145/original/file-20181218-27770-17pq6m5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We have included Indigenous histories and cultures in the Australian Curriculum, but at the same time we’ve compromised Indigenous teaching strategies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/628445531?src=_uFH3bKAk7ONSh8RfI6NlA-1-5&size=huge_jpg">www.shutterstock.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>The personal touch</h2>
<p>We falter in democracy when we <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/future-of-queensland-independent-public-schools-under-review-20180424-p4zbch.html">impose programs</a> developed by centralised bureaucracies as band-aids for local problems. Programs alone don’t solve social issues. The catalyst for change is often the teacher, coach, mentor, friend, or colleague. A local person. </p>
<p>We can bureaucratise, standardise and normalise education all we like, but education will always be personal and emotional for local communities because they have their own beliefs, which might not match the beliefs in big cities.</p>
<h2>So what do we do about it?</h2>
<p>Community consultation is not enough. <a href="http://www.oecd.org/education/school/TALIS_2018_brochure_ENG.pdf">OECD reports</a> show teachers who are able to contribute to decision-making also report education is valued in their community, and have higher job satisfaction. </p>
<p>Local schools and teachers should be able to develop their own programs that are tailor-made to meet the needs of local communities so learning is meaningful. This way, local beliefs will not be compromised by government agendas, and teachers will feel empowered to meet the needs of their students rather than just getting through the material. </p>
<p>The power of local autonomy has already been <a href="https://www.springer.com/us/book/9789463007764">proven in Finland</a>, a country that is known for its high educational outcomes. </p>
<p>On a practical level, local schools should be able to choose what they teach and how to test it so learning and assessment is meaningful. We need local autonomy so education can meet the needs of local students.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Willis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>National programs have not yielded improved achievement rates in schools. We need to empower local people to take responsibility and collaborate to develop programs.Alison Willis, Lecturer, School of Education, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/930942018-03-18T11:05:33Z2018-03-18T11:05:33ZRamaphosa makes noises about backing small business. It’s about time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210056/original/file-20180313-30961-1z04r7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa needs to harness the small business sector to jump-start its economy</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s new president, Cyril Rampahosa, is promising to free up and propel the country’s small business sector and its natural partner entrepreneurship, a long overdue move that could help the country realise strong economic growth.</p>
<p>South Africa has been trapped in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-can-expect-zero-growth-its-problems-are-largely-homemade-62943">low growth trajectory</a> for about 10 years. This has made it difficult to reduce high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment. For a while now, many have pointed out that harnessing the small business sector and entrepreneurship lies at the centre of the solution. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa has added his voice to this chorus. Coming from a man whose had close <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-is-cyril-ramaphosa-a-profile-of-the-new-leader-of-south-africa-89456">links to business</a>, the president’s promise to support entrepreneurship and small business development deserves to be taken seriously.</p>
<p>In his hope-filled 2018 state of the nation <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/state-nation-address-president-republic-south-africa%2C-mr-cyril-ramaphosa">address</a>, he touched the essence of what drives entrepreneurship. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While change can produce uncertainty, even anxiety, it also offers great opportunities for renewal and revitalisation, and for progress.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is precisely at the nexus of uncertainty and opportunity that entrepreneurship takes place. According to the traditional neoclassical view, <a href="https://www.ujuh.co.za/dimensions-of-entrepreneurship-explained/">entrepreneurship</a> is the ‘mystical’ element that delivers external shocks to a state of equilibrium in the marketplace by introducing new products and services.</p>
<p>Without the presence of these two factors – lucrative opportunities and enterprising individuals – very little renewal or revitalisation will take place in South Africa. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa knows this. But it won’t be easy, even for him. The neglect and the damage caused to the small business sector and the culture of entrepreneurship over the years is huge. Years of red tape, corruption, bad policies, ill equipped small business support institutions and monopolistic behaviours have stifled entrepreneurial activity.</p>
<p>But the situation won’t change unless a close and detailed look is taken at the accumulated problems. And solutions that are designed must take into account a multitude of factors.</p>
<h2>A lack of entrepreneurial activity</h2>
<p>There’s growing evidence showing that developing countries offer more entrepreneurial opportunities. There’s also <a href="https://www.infodev.org/infodev-files/growth_entrepreneurship_in_developing_countries_-_a_preliminary_literature_review_-_february_2016_-_infodev.pdf">evidence</a> that these are being matched by higher rates of opportunity driven entrepreneurs entering the market.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_we_transform_necessity_entrepreneurs_into_opportunity_entrepreneurs">study</a> found that more than half (69%) of entrepreneurs in developing countries chose to pursue an opportunity as a basis for their entrepreneurial motivations, rather than starting out of necessity.</p>
<p>South Africa has an unusually low share of employers and self-employed people in the labour force. It also has a relatively low share of working age adults in employment. This is a major factor behind the country’s high <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lesser-known-and-scarier-facts-about-unemployment-in-south-africa-83055">joblessness</a> .</p>
<p>In fact, South Africa’s <a href="http://www.gemconsortium.org/country-profile/108">total entrepreneurial activity</a> rate, which measures the prevalence of starting a business from a country’s working age population, remains among the lowest in the peer group of developing nations. The series of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor <a href="http://www.gemconsortium.org/country-profile/108">reports</a>, show that just 9.2% of South African adults were involved in starting up a business in 2015. This compares poorly to the average of 15% in comparable countries like Malaysia, Latvia, Romania, Argentina and Brazil. Ecuador has an entrepreneurial activity rates of 34%, Chile 26%.</p>
<p>Even more disconcerting is the fact that in South Africa many initiatives and programmes sponsored by national government are not yielding much. Many institutions supporting small business development are dogged by bureaucratic inefficiencies and inter-departmental conflicts. </p>
<p>The major weakness of these national institutions is centralised coordination. They are not well suited to react quickly and dynamically.</p>
<p>There is also enormous red tape facing small businesses and entrepreneurs. For instance South Africa’s labour laws have been found to be a significant <a href="https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/2017-OECD-Economic-Survey-South-Africa-overview-2017.pdf">regulatory obstacle</a> to small business growth. And small business is also subjected to long and gruelling delays to get permits and licences. This makes for a corruption rife environment. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa has acknowledged the negative impact of bureaucracy, red tape and corruption on the economy and for start-ups and enterprise growth. </p>
<p>What’s needed now is action.</p>
<h2>Hostility towards small business</h2>
<p>The structure of the South African economy is often overlooked as a factor of small business and entrepreneurship. The country’s economy has traditionally been hostile towards small businesses. This is largely due to its distinctive economic history, which created <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-dominance-of-big-players-is-bad-for-south-africas-economy-92058">highly concentrated markets</a>.</p>
<p>Several industries in South Africa can be categorised as tight oligopolies, where several large firms dominate the competitive landscape. They hold considerable market power and are protected by high entry barriers. Small businesses are kept at bay. </p>
<p>About <a href="http://www.seda.org.za/Publications/Publications/The%20Small,%20Medium%20and%20Micro%20Enterprise%20Sector%20of%20South%20Africa%20Commissioned%20by%20Seda.pdf">half</a> of the country’s small businesses are in business services and retail. In the informal sector the self-employed are overwhelmingly in retail. </p>
<p>It’s hard for South African small businesses to penetrate lucrative sectors such as electricity, gas, water and manufacturing. Entry barriers are extremely high which leaves old monopolies in a comfortable place to the detriment of the broader economy.</p>
<h2>Reinventing entrepreneurship</h2>
<p>If entrepreneurship is to be rekindled the first thing that needs to happen is some readjustment in the structure of the country’s economy. Key adjustments should ensure:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>An environment that offers equal access to opportunities, development tools and access to resources. </p></li>
<li><p>A robust and interactive entrepreneurship ecosystem system that connects everything – from suppliers, distribution channels, universities to venture capital.</p></li>
<li><p>Improved access to finance as well as market access for small businesses.</p></li>
<li><p>Long-term investments in entrepreneurial capital which mainly requires quality education.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>South Africa must realise that small businesses are not simply smaller versions of big business. They are vulnerable because they’re small and new. They need a supportive environment and a mix of responsive policy interventions. </p>
<p>But entrepreneurs can’t simply sit back and blame the environment. Entrepreneurs need to develop a hard-headed awareness of market realities and hard-won business truths. Entrepreneurship requires individuals to take action.</p>
<p>Small scale entrepreneurs must be alive to the <a href="http://www.wbs.ac.za/news/entrepreneurship-is-on-the-agenda-again-more-hype-or-real-action.php">dictum</a> which says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Big businesses are not against you; they are merely for themselves.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93094/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Boris Urban does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trapped in low growth trajectory, South Africa needs to boost small business development.Boris Urban, Professor Wits Business School, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/891302018-01-11T17:36:35Z2018-01-11T17:36:35ZWhen I got DACA, I was forced to revert to a name I had left behind<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201665/original/file-20180111-101492-19a7wah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 'dreamer' reviews documents needed to apply for DACA.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Luis Mogollon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was a great relief, if only for some time.</p>
<p>It allowed 800,000 people like myself to live and work without fear of deportation.</p>
<p>DACA was an executive order issued by former President Barack Obama in 2012 that gave undocumented young people a two-year renewable work permit, provided they met certain criteria. On Sept. 5, 2017, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/us/politics/trump-daca-dreamers-immigration.html?mcubz=0&_r=0">President Donald Trump</a> rescinded the program. While the program is set to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/when-does-daca-end-what-happens-recipients-2017-9">expire on March 5</a>, there is now <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/01/10/court-victory-dreamers-may-prove-short-lived/1020539001/">a legal battle</a> playing out in the courts to keep it intact.</p>
<p>As Congress and the White House debate how to move forward, they should be aware of one little known consequence of DACA. It forced many recipients to change their names, throwing many aspects of their lives into disarray. </p>
<p>I am an anthropologist who has been studying <a href="http://sdsu-dspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.10/6087/Sanchez_sdsu_0220N_10076.pdf;sequence=1.">immigrant youth</a> since 2010. In my most recent research, I <a href="https://www.eventscribe.net/2017/AAA/agenda.asp?startdate=11/30/2017&enddate=11/30/2017&BCFO=M&tn=&cpf2=&cus2=&pta=&h=Thu,%20Nov%2030">interviewed DACA graduate students</a> about the impacts of DACA’s forced name alteration. </p>
<p>Here’s what they told me.</p>
<h2>Forced name change</h2>
<p>DACA forced immigrants who grew up in the United States using only one last name – usually their father’s – to add another last name, usually their mother’s maiden name. This was done because the new forms of identification that were issued through DACA, such as work permits, had to match the information on the applicant’s birth certificate. </p>
<p>The majority of DACA recipients, about 75 percent, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/immigration-facts-deferred-action-for-childhood-arrivals-daca/">are from Mexico</a>, where it is customary to use both paternal and maternal last names. Therefore, many applicants have two last names on their birth certificates. </p>
<p>While the birth certificate name requirement applies to all immigrants, it has unique impact on DACA recipients. DACA recipients were brought to the U.S. at a young age without legal status. In the U.S., it is customary to use only one last name. Many immigrants from Mexico dropped their mother’s last name during their primary education and grew up using just one last name because their families were instructed to do so by institutions like schools and the DMV. All of their U.S. records prior to DACA are often under that shortened name.</p>
<p>For example, I interviewed Rosa V. Martinez (a pseudonym), who says she was forced to add her mother’s last name, Flores, to her name when she applied for DACA. Rosa pleaded with the immigration officials to let her keep just one last name, but she was not allowed. The consequences of this were significant.</p>
<p>Her new legal name did not match a lifetime of records, such as the name on her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, published works and transcripts. When Rosa applied to Ph.D. programs, the schools were unsure if Rosa V. Martinez and Rosa V. Martinez Flores were the same person and were reluctant to accept her transcripts. The already stressful application process became even more complicated.</p>
<p>Another graduate student, Vicente Hernandez (a pseudonym), attempted to get a student loan, but his new legal name, which also had a second “last name,” did not match his credit score. Because of this, the bank was unwilling to give him the loan. Vicente was finally approved only after many stressful weeks and extra paperwork. </p>
<p>Vicente said, “There was no need for that huge inconvenience and hassle. This would have never happened had they [U.S. immigration] allowed me to keep my name as it was.”</p>
<h2>Using surnames for control</h2>
<p>Beyond the negative impacts discussed by the research participants in this study, the renaming of individuals has historically been used as a way to control people. It facilitates a country’s ability to reject and discard individuals deemed unfit for society, as well as criminalize and persecute them. This is not something most DACA recipients are aware of.</p>
<p>A well documented, extreme example of this comes from Europe. By the 19th century, the use of last names was widespread in Europe. But one group, the Ashkenazi Jews, had managed to resist. A Prussian law in 1833 forced all Jews to choose from a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879399?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">fixed list of surnames</a>. Through this decree, the state effectively secured via last names the recognizability of Jews as Jews. The closed list of Jewish surnames made it easier for Nazi Germany to carry out the task of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879399?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">genocide</a>. The efficient expulsion of Jews to their deaths during WWII would have been, logistically, much more difficult prior to the 19th century.</p>
<p>Last names make populations traceable. They aid the government in tracking criminals and other persons of interest and knowing accurate population size for the purposes of taxation and waging war. </p>
<p>Another example of how governments use forced name change to hurt people comes from U.S. history. In 1887, the use of surnames was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879399?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">enforced on Native Americans</a> with the Dawes Act, which created unambiguous personal identities for the purpose of ending communal holdings of property, and opened Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to development of railroads.</p>
<p>As the future of those previously protected by DACA is mired in uncertainty, it is important to learn from the past and be cautious of the potential harmful consequences of forced name changes on people’s lives. It is likely that the negative impacts due to forced name change will worsen if no law is passed to aid former DACA recipients. </p>
<p>The question remains: Will the surname system enable the government to track and criminalize vulnerable immigrants?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda E. Sanchez receives funding from the UC Mexus Doctoral Fellowship and the Cota Robles Fellowship. </span></em></p>Red tape forced some DACA recipients to change their names when they applied, making it all the more difficult to lead a normal life.Linda E. Sanchez, Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/852872017-12-20T16:54:56Z2017-12-20T16:54:56ZHow the law itself can be a corrupting, criminal force – and what can be done about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199961/original/file-20171219-4980-1ewypgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businessmen-making-handshake-money-hands-bribery-598274123">Atstock Productions/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>There are two sorts of corruptions — one when the people do not observe the laws; the other when they are corrupted by the laws: an incurable evil, because it is in the very remedy itself. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>With these words more than 250 years ago, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Montesquieu">Montesquieu</a> captured one of the most disturbing problems of contemporary lawmaking: the law itself can be a cause of crime. We are accustomed to think of law as the answer to crime, but research demonstrates that there are several ways in which the law itself can corrupt.</p>
<p>Have you ever felt that a certain regulation is unfair? Or been upset by the restrictive nature of the requirements to access essential services? Have you found some legal procedures to be too complicated to understand or put into practice? Any of these might have prompted you to wonder why on Earth you should abide by such rules, even if you dismissed the thought immediately afterwards. These are situations where the law might inadvertently lead citizens to find ways to circumvent it, often through criminal behaviour. We have identified <a href="http://www.lorenzopasculli.com/uploads/2/7/3/8/27389245/lrpp_2017_paper_47.pdf">three main typical scenarios</a> in which the law involuntarily encourages criminality. </p>
<h2>When the law is an ass</h2>
<p>The first is when the law makes it difficult to satisfy human needs and ambitions. The prohibition of alcohol or heavy taxation of cigarettes in the US, for instance, can encourage the development of <a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/1998/4/memo2-98.pdf">black markets</a> and the move to <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10610-006-9026-z.pdf">more dangerous products, such as drugs</a>.</p>
<p>The second is the reverse: sometimes the law creates opportunities for particular crimes by introducing benefits or concessions that can perversely invite fraud from those who are not entitled to them. The EU recently <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-3444_en.htm">recognised</a> that its current VAT regime exposes EU countries to unacceptable levels of fraud. On a global level, the tax regulations of particular jurisdictions – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/05/eu-blacklist-names-17-tax-havens-and-puts-caymans-and-jersey-on-notice">tax havens</a> – lead them to be used for transnational tax avoidance and evasion.</p>
<p>What’s more, if the law gives public officers broad discretionary powers to administer such benefits, this invites abuse and corruption. In <a href="https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/redd_and_corruption_risks_for_africas_forests_case_studies_from_cameroon_gh">Zambia</a>, customary land law gives too much power to traditional authorities in relation to the allocation of land, thus exposing them to bribery.</p>
<p>The third is when the law somehow makes the commission of a crime easier, or conviction for crimes more difficult. This happens when law enforcement is reduced or undermined, or when criminal justice is slow, uncertain or inefficient. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” as the saying goes.</p>
<p>Whenever a statute, regulation or judicial decision brings about one of these scenarios, it will probably carry some unintended increased risk of crime. But this is just the start. The risk can be aggravated by obscure, unreasonable or unjust norms and decisions, unnecessary, disproportionate or counterproductive measures, delayed judgements, or overly complicated regulations that cause frustration and mistrust towards the law, undermining law abidance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199967/original/file-20171219-5004-3w204x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laws that seem out of step with what the citizenry want lead to black markets and lawbreaking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fake-dictionary-definition-word-black-market-709584994">Feng Yu/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Crime-proofing the law</h2>
<p>Some pioneering researchers have studied ways to “crime-proof” legislation so that these risks are reduced. The most impressive effort has been made by <a href="http://www.transcrime.it/en">Transcrime</a>, a joint research centre of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, the University of Bologna and the University of Perugia. Led by Ernesto Savona, the team has <a href="http://www.transcrime.it/en/pubblicazioni/the-crime-risk-assessment-mechanism-cram-for-proofing-eu-and-national-legislation-against-crime/">created</a> and <a href="http://www.transcrime.it/en/pubblicazioni/crime-proofing-of-the-new-tobacco-products-directive/">tested</a> its Crime Risk Assessment Mechanism, a sophisticated means to assess the potential crime risks inherent in proposed EU legislation.</p>
<p>There are limits. It can only be applied to legislation or regulations, overlooking other sources of law such as judicial or executive decisions. It is designed to assess proposed legislation before it is enacted, but often crime risks emerge only after an act has entered into force. It relies too much on experts, who play a central role in the process, which hinders community participation. Finally, as it is centred on the legislative procedures typically found in the EU or the West, this makes it difficult to export to other nations, such as those in the developing world where customary law has a larger role and where the problem is more pressing.</p>
<h2>Back-to-basics lawmaking</h2>
<p>What’s required is a more comprehensive, flexible strategy which, to be relevant to countries worldwide, must be based on fundamental principles shared by every democracy: the rule of law, fairness, equality, reasonableness, necessity, proportion, effectiveness, certainty, clarity, and accessibility. The primacy of the law demands that the law is written to the highest standards of quality. Any flaw, distortion or side effect can frustrate its purpose. To set in motion the creation of a culture of high-quality lawmaking that could achieve this, we could establish some minimum steps. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Training: why do we assume that those involved in lawmaking are necessarily good at it? Everyone involved should receive training on how to administrate well and write effective legislation that avoids the unintended corrupting effects of the law.</p></li>
<li><p>Continuous risk of crime assessment: assessments of the crime risks implied by laws or decisions should be run before and after they are adopted, and integrated into existing practices.</p></li>
<li><p>Participation and transparency: the process of lawmaking should be as transparent and participative as possible. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?publication_filter_option=consultations">Consultations with relevant parties and the public</a> are a powerful instrument of participation. But to be effective, such participation relies upon education and access to information – which the state has a duty to provide.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This emerging analysis of the law offers promising ways to reduce or prevent the law from creating a risk of crime. In the UK, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/good-law">Good Law</a> initiative, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consultation-principles-guidance">consultation principles</a>, and the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?keywords=&publication_filter_option=impact-assessments">Regulatory Impact Assessment</a> are excellent examples. </p>
<p>What we need is a better awareness of how the law functions, and the possible distortions it may introduce. With education and research placed front and centre, we could usher in a new global culture of lawmaking – a starting point for a much needed global culture of law and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorenzo Pasculli is the Director of the Integrity Research Group (IRG) at Kingston University London, a not-for-profit research network committed to the interdisciplinary study of corruption and the promotion of integrity in the private and public sectors. The views expressed in the article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IRG and they are the result of the research Lorenzo is currently conducting on the criminogenic effects of the law and systemic corruption. Lorenzo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article beyond his affiliation with the IRG and his academic appointment. </span></em></p>The law can both make and break criminals.Lorenzo Pasculli, Senior Lecturer in Law, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/822032017-11-02T02:52:41Z2017-11-02T02:52:41ZStop doing companies’ digital busywork for free<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192300/original/file-20171027-2402-p3er9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How much time and energy do people spend rating, reviewing and answering surveys?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/reputation-management-concept-feedback-rating-677453737">Ditty_about_summer/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated – even eager – to provide this information. Who doesn’t like being asked their opinion? But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist, I see these requests as part of a broader trend making home life bureaucratic. </p>
<p>Consumer technologies – whether user reviews and recommendations, social media or health care portals – involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home. As economic anthropologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber">David Graeber</a> <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit">observes</a>, “All the software designed to save us from administrative responsibilities [has] turned us into part- or full-time administrators.” Companies may benefit when customers create content, provide feedback and do busywork once done by paid employees, but what about the customers themselves – all of us?</p>
<p>Many researchers recognize professional <a href="https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-managerial-work">workplaces are becoming more bureaucratic</a>, managing workers through documentation and quantification. But fewer acknowledge the expansion of this logic into private life. It might not feel like a burden to update your Facebook profile, review a business or log in to a web portal to message your doctor. But when you lose time answering customer surveys, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/325807937506242/">setting privacy rules</a>, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements or updating firmware, it becomes clear how digital technologies increase managerial work at home. In my forthcoming book, I explore this phenomenon, which I call logistical labor.</p>
<h2>Digitizing daily life</h2>
<p>Here’s a typical example of how this happens at home. I recently received an email from my auto insurance requesting I call. Fair enough; I might not answer if the company called me. But instead of reaching a person familiar with the query, my call fed into an automated system where a synthesized voice asked what I was calling about.</p>
<p>“You told me to call!” I replied.</p>
<p>The automated system was confused: “Sorry, what was that again? You can say auto ‘policy,’ ‘claims’ or ‘tell me my options.’” </p>
<p>Eventually I reached a human, who didn’t know why I’d been asked to call either. “I don’t know,” I told her, “That’s what I’m calling about…” Finally, we figured out what was going on and resolved the issue. Then she asked whether I would stay on the line for a customer service survey. I refused. </p>
<p>Rather than calling or emailing me with specific details, the company made me work through all that automated confusion. Requiring that I call in effectively gave me work previously done by paid employees. And then the insurance company asked for yet more of my time to reflect on how well – or not – my work solved the problem the company had. At what point should I expect to be paid for my work?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192523/original/file-20171030-18735-1uc42c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are these call center workers happy because other people are doing their jobs?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/call-center-worker-accompanied-by-his-707850307">Redpixel.pl/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Managing work</h2>
<p>Bureaucracy – a term coined in the 18th century to mean “<a href="https://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/social-worlds/all-articles/management/desk">rule by writing desk</a>” – refers to the organization of modern government, desk-bound and hierarchical. Max Weber, a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/">founding theorist of social science</a>, viewed bureaucratic organization as fundamental to modern society. He decried its rigidity as an <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/understanding-max-webers-iron-cage-3026373">“iron cage” of rationalization</a> in which social life is managed quantitatively. Since at least the 1970s, bureaucratic management has become common in corporate workplaces. </p>
<p>Sociologist Robert Jackall termed this shift the “<a href="https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-managerial-work">bureaucratization of the economy</a>,” in which rigid hierarchy and constant documentation takes over business places, including “administrative hierarchies, standardized work procedures, regularized timetables, uniform policies, and centralized control.” More bureaucracy means relentlessly tracking metrics and performances in the name of productivity – and internalizing the idea that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95235-9_5">a person’s value can be quantified</a>.</p>
<p>Graeber, the anthropologist of bureaucracy, suggests bureaucratization is becoming more common <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit">as Western economies export manufacturing work to developing countries</a>. The work that remains <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2010/10/01/the-financialization-of-accumulation/">increasingly depends</a> on the <a href="https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/fire_finance_insurance_real_estate_ice_intellectual_cultural_educational/">finance, insurance and real estate sectors</a>, businesses that make their money from service fees and employ people to do pointless <a href="http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/">“bullshit” jobs</a>. Graeber contends that – unlike teaching, manual work, health care or the arts – jobs in management, consulting, PR or other “knowledge” fields could vanish with little effect on society.</p>
<p>In the academic world, <a href="https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/directory/professor-marilyn-strathern-cbe-fba">anthropologists like Marilyn Strathern</a> have described the push to quantify and document university work as “<a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4432135">audit culture</a>.” More broadly, this expansion of administrative work, aided by digital technologies, is transforming how American companies operate. For many companies, shifting administrative labor to consumers and “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-ensure-the-next-generation-of-workers-isnt-worse-off-than-the-last-52110">gig-economy</a>” contractors offers a newly “disruptive” business model. As tech companies <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/354458/whatever-happened-to-customer-support">replace live customer service</a> with online support “topics,” for example, users must spend additional time wading through these articles, or face endless phone trees when they do find a phone number. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192524/original/file-20171030-18704-1xnbkte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When is bureaucracy too much?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/busy-businessman-under-stress-due-excessive-551850775">Elnur/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Laboring for social media companies</h2>
<p>New technologies can generate more pointless work, and not just in professional settings. The <a href="https://www.epicpeople.org/how-theory-matters/">logic of tracking and monitoring</a>, for example, threatens to take over American home life as well, from fitness and wearable tech to smart homes that assess <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDlQu1ow_0s">when you need toilet paper</a> or milk.</p>
<p>But spending time on new tech platforms doesn’t always seem like work. <a href="http://www.jordankraemer.com/writings/">Young Europeans I have studied</a>, for example, enjoy spending time on social networking sites and describe them warmly. But Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and the rest profit from the posts, photos, reviews and links people create, because they incite the “engagement” that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUFN.2016.7536934">drives ad revenue</a>. As with consumer surveys or user feedback, these firms <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/books/culture-and-economy-in-the-age-of-social-media/">are harnessing user-generated content</a> to convert people’s leisure time into corporate profit. </p>
<p>As new social network sites are created and become popular, each person spends more time keeping profiles up to date, checking on connections’ activities or chasing down forgotten passwords. Managing these accounts isn’t just time-consuming; it can be mentally taxing. Inspired by Chandra Mukerji’s <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8911.html">research on the logistical power of water in civil engineering projects</a>, I consider this cognitive effort “logistical labor.” Logistical labor is in this sense the work consumers do to manage tech platforms, often as companies outsource content creation and streamline their operations. </p>
<h2>A new digital divide</h2>
<p>The scope of this uncompensated digital busywork – from which companies profit – goes well beyond social media maintenance and taking consumer surveys. Even setting up a home printer requires exploring settings and configurations and troubleshooting, which can be daunting without the right tech know-how. People who are unwilling or unable to do that miss out on some of technology’s benefits.</p>
<p>In my research, for example, one young person in Berlin balked at purchasing a new mobile phone, overwhelmed by the task of sorting through service plans. Another shared wireless internet service with a friend across the street, resigning herself to spotty connections and limited online activity rather than wrestle with choosing, ordering and configuring her own service. Others were concerned about data privacy but were stymied by Facebook’s privacy options.</p>
<p>The scale of these problems is not only about quality of life – but about life itself. </p>
<h2>Handling health care</h2>
<p>Expecting consumers to be deeply involved expert users is especially concerning when it comes to managing health care. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-health-economy-is-big-but-is-it-better-80593">dysfunctional U.S. health care system</a> is already a Byzantine system of preauthorizations, insurance codes and impersonal treatment. Digitization alone isn’t to blame, but tech platforms like <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2196%2Fjmir.7099">online portals</a> increase administrative work for patients.</p>
<p>Patients, for example, often encounter multiple online portals in the process of paying bills or obtaining prescriptions. Although these systems save time in some ways, they require patients do more legwork like setting up user accounts. This problem is made worse as doctors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/us/salaried-doctors-may-not-lead-to-cheaper-health-care.html">leave private practice</a> for hospital groups, which often use unwieldy online platforms and automated phone systems that make it difficult to reach a doctor directly. </p>
<p>Although the health care industry touts such portals <a href="https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/business-case-increasing-patient-portal-adoption">as better for business</a> – and in theory, <a href="https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2014/06/30/how-patient-portals-are-changing-health-care">for coordinating care</a> – little attention has been paid to the additional work they create for patients, or the barriers to accessing their doctors.</p>
<h2>Inequality at home</h2>
<p>In all these examples, managing information on computer systems – for health care, insurance coverage or social media interaction – requires a new level of logistical effort, even with access to computers and the internet. This logistical labor adds to the <a href="https://www.psychologistworld.com/memory/cognitive-load-theory">mental work of managing a household</a>.</p>
<p>In most homes, this additional effort, sometimes called “cognitive load,” <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2017-09-14/the-mental-load-and-what-to-do-about-it/8942032">falls disproportionately to women</a>, who keep track of their families’ needs. For working women, the “second shift” isn’t just about housework or child care, but <a href="http://time.com/money/4561314/women-work-home-gender-gap/">the cumulative fatigue of planning, delegating and worrying</a>. It’s not a coincidence that many “smart home” technologies effectively replace the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDlQu1ow_0s">care work of mothers</a>. This invisible labor typically goes unpaid, further devaluing responsibilities traditionally associated with women. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NDlQu1ow_0s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Do smart technologies tend to focus on gender-biased tasks?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, the logistical labor of managing new technologies entails a cognitive load that can overtake daily life. Of course, I still follow social media, read consumer reviews and sign up for paperless billing. But I’m more aware of how easily my time and labor become new sources of profit, through an unseen exploitation that places the onus on individuals to manage complex systems in the guise of optimizing user “experience.” This broader trend, however, makes individuals complicit in their own exploitation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Kraemer received funding previously from Intel Labs.</span></em></p>Companies may benefit when customers create content, provide feedback and do busywork once done by paid employees, but what about the customers themselves – all of us?Jordan Kraemer, Visiting Scholar in Anthropology, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/841832017-09-28T23:01:50Z2017-09-28T23:01:50ZVancouver’s urban conundrum: Let’s design better cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187289/original/file-20170924-17290-lic743.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The city of Vancouver is set among a beautiful background, but the scenic wonder masks other problems.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vancouver promotes itself as a modern if not postmodern city. Doug Coupland’s book, <a href="http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/viewFile/185160/184539"><em>City of Glass</em></a>, rightly captured the city’s look and aesthetic, which is dominated by high rises set against magnificent mountains and the ocean.</p>
<p>It’s an exciting place to live, profoundly multi-faceted and rich in diversity. It is a peaceful city with many contradictions, the <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/on-cheque-day-a-toxic-mix-of-money-and-drugs-in-vancouvers-downtowneastside/article33462579/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&">downtown Eastside</a> being the most visible example of the challenges faced by local governments struggling with the needs of the poor and underprivileged against a backdrop of incredible wealth and economic activity.</p>
<p>These contradictions are not unique to Vancouver. But there was always the hope that British Columbia and its largest city would find the measure of these problems and develop creative solutions to envision the city differently.</p>
<p>Over the last 16 years, I have been working on the development of a new campus for Emily Carr University of Art and Design. As a consequence, I have learned more than I ever could have imagined about the challenges of creatively engaging with the built environment in urban centres and with the ways in which cities like Vancouver are organized to both facilitate and impede the development of new areas of the city and the buildings we put into them. </p>
<p>The new campus is situated on what was the former site of the Finning Corp. <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/property-report/art-school-at-centre-of-redrawn-vancouver-neighbourhood/article27537978/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&">Finning gifted 18 acres to four post-secondary institutions</a> in the Vancouver area in 2001: University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia Institute of Technology and Emily Carr. </p>
<p>The gift was generous and was given with the understanding that the lands would be used for collaborative purposes by the four institutions. <a href="http://news.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2005/05feb03/planning.html">The initial vision</a> was to build and then share facilities in a cross-disciplinary environment for the benefit of students coming from many different parts of the city.</p>
<h2>An unrealized vision</h2>
<p>This vision was never realized because the institutions never found the measure of each other’s strengths and never negotiated long enough to make something happen. </p>
<p>But Emily Carr decided to go ahead and <a href="https://www.straight.com/arts/862956/emily-carr-university-launches-new-visual-identity-ahead-move-great-northern-way">build a new campus </a>because of the four institutions, it owned no land and had leased its facilities over its 92-year history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187291/original/file-20170925-17290-18n2dts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The new Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus in Vancouver opened in September, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among all the challenges, three stand out: Raising $122.5 million to build the campus; developing the architectural plan for the facility and, finally, the City of Vancouver itself. </p>
<p>A summary of just some of the challenges: From permitting through to planning and engineering, differing interests, different personalities, sometimes ambiguous rules and regulations, conflict among people working at City Hall that led to many slowdowns, lack of clarity as to how to achieve the goals of the project, arbitrary interpretations of land use, conflict-laden discussions of transportation, parking and amenities. </p>
<p>Sometimes we were told something had to happen because “rules are rules.” Alternately we were told that time did not permit the depth of research required to make changes to existing site and district plans, some of which had been formulated years and decades earlier.</p>
<p>Inevitably, this lead to compromises, some good and some bad. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most challenging compromise was the grade upon which the building was erected. The costs of following the city plan were not only financial but also affected the design and look and feel of the building. Part of the interior of the building is now underground as a result of a decision that still today feels awkward and unnecessary. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ecuad.ca/about/at-a-glance/locations">location</a> of the campus means that it could link the western and eastern parts of the city through large open plazas and a permeable campus closely linked to the immediate communities in which it is situated. </p>
<p>My ideal scenario would see the area turn into a connector, allowing people to walk from the east side of the city to the downtown core through a series of connected walkways. None of this will be possible because at some point or other plans were developed that now, from all accounts, cannot and will not change. </p>
<p>The heart of the issue here is how cities respond to change. I don’t think that Vancouver is unique.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187293/original/file-20170925-17248-aiexul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A student is silhouetted at the new Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus in Vancouver.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Differing interests and contesting values especially around land use and housing are at the heart of debates among citizens, politicians and bureaucrats in all cities. The new campus was <a href="https://www.straight.com/arts/958531/first-look-emily-carr-university-art-and-designs-new-campus">completed a few months ago and is magnificent</a>, but all of the problems I have described still exist.</p>
<h2>Design as a discipline</h2>
<p>As someone who works in an art and design institution, I am amazed that some of the great value that design as a discipline brings to so many areas has not really infiltrated City Hall.</p>
<p>For example, how can new building sites be broken down into nodes and networks so that building mass is lighter and less imposing and landscaping is not just peripheral but integral and central? </p>
<p>Well, there are at least four different city departments that would have to get together and answer those types of questions. Aside from the challenges of scheduling, it is not possible to bring that many differing interests to the same table in an environment of engaged and productive discussion.</p>
<p>Design is a problem-solving discipline and one that, like engineering, seeks answers to difficult challenges. But if the context for problem-solving is unclear, then even the best designers will have difficulties in solving complex issues. </p>
<p>Cities have always struggled with the ups and downs of population growth, affordable housing and making space for industry and employers to actually set up their businesses. </p>
<p>From a historical point of view, and over the course of the 20th century in particular, there have always been tensions between urban needs and suburban growth, between areas that undergo gentrification and those that remain “undeveloped.”</p>
<p>In all this, no magic solutions have been found to rising costs and decreasing availability in the housing sector. And cities continue to develop their transportation systems without deeper questions being asked about sustainability or even capacity. </p>
<p>Some cities grow by design, but most grow incrementally and without a real understanding of the short and long-term implications of planning processes and outcomes and decisions that often ripple far beyond their initial assumptions.</p>
<p>It’s almost impossible to sustain a vision for a city without modelling, critiquing and examining the outcomes of decisions made by many different departments, which for most part operate in isolation from each other.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187294/original/file-20170925-17241-gnq8ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The new Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus took 16 years from conception to completion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a consequence, cities have large bureaucracies with conflicting interests that often have nothing to do with good policy development or pragmatic planning. They are self-perpetuating machines. They set rules in one decade and hold onto the same rules in another, even when conditions on the ground have changed. </p>
<p>Imagine the difficulty for the thousands who work in city halls to engage in an ethnography of their cities and themselves; to research in an impartial manner how people live and what their aspirations are and to try and understand the flow and flux of their everyday lives in the context of policy development. </p>
<p>No one has the time for what appears to be an academic exercise and yet this knowledge should drive decision-making. What is described as consultation is more often than not an exercise in futility — not because anyone’s intentions are negative, but because real consultation takes more than a few hours on a Thursday evening.</p>
<h2>The city as an onion</h2>
<p>Cities are like onions without a core. The more you peel off, the more challenges there seem to be. And the beauty of this contradiction is that cities are resilient inventions, able to outlive poor government and poor governance, able to grow in response to the elasticity of the economy, full of culture and cultural activities, vibrant and in some cases genuinely open-minded.</p>
<p>The challenge is that cities and the people who live in them have different and sometimes unusual expectations. What’s more, cities are places that change by the day if not by the hour. Cities scramble to keep up, including Vancouver.</p>
<p>We need new models for the planning process. We need to think about cities as living organisms, and most of all we need to face the mistakes head on. </p>
<p>Vancouver may see itself as postmodern, but it has fallen far behind cities like Melbourne because in all the areas to tick off in discussing cities — road safety, traffic congestion, integrated transportation systems, varied approaches to the movement of people, (why isn’t there any light rail in Vancouver?), housing affordability, access to services, traffic management, cultural venues and streetscapes, and yes, the role of bikes — Vancouver is not in the game. </p>
<p>Its development and discussion of policy does not attract open debate and true dialogue. The control that City Hall exercises over development is more bureaucratic than progressive, and it seems to be pedalling backwards as the city accelerates.</p>
<p>Vancouver is indeed, at this moment in its history, a city of glass.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ron Burnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Vancouver may be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but the president of Emily Carr University says the city could benefit from the discipline of design.Ron Burnett, President and Vice-Chancellor, Emily Carr UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/800512017-06-28T11:36:11Z2017-06-28T11:36:11ZLessons from Lakanal House were not heeded – then Grenfell happened<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175850/original/file-20170627-24760-d10x2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Warnings were loud and clear.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carl Court/PA Archive/PA Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a special correspondent for the BBC, I investigated the Lakanal House fire in 2009 that killed six people in a south London tower block <a href="https://mdxminds.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/barling-1_investigationoflakanalhousefire.pdf">and its consequences</a> over the next few years. What seems patently obvious in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower inferno is that trust in the fire safety regime governing residential tower blocks is unravelling dangerously quickly. Fundamental lessons from the Lakanal fire were ignored – and the government and its advisers must accept the blame.</p>
<p>The unseemly scramble <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/25/camden-evacuation-refuseniks-urged-to-go-so-fire-safety-work-can-start">to decant tenants from their homes</a> in the London Borough of Camden because of non-compliant cladding, begs the question of why was it installed in the first place? As the days pass – and more and more cladding samples fail fire tests – we will need to face the obvious explanation: the cladding <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-is-the-type-of-cladding-used-on-grenfell-tower-actually-banned-in-britain-79803">probably complies</a> with the building regulations. It is the regulations themselves that are ambivalent and flawed. Put another way, the building regulations are so flawed it has become all too easy, with impunity, to add combustible materials to safe buildings.</p>
<h2>Sickening errors</h2>
<p>At the end of the Lakanal inquest in 2013, Mbet Udoaka and Raphael Cervi, who lost their wives and children in the blaze, faced the press and said they hoped other families <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/15/london-tower-block-fire-camberwell">would never have to suffer their pain</a>. On the day of the Grenfell fire, Mbet was heartbroken again.</p>
<p>It’s worth recalling what the coroner justice, Frances Kirkham, <a href="https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/ec-letter-to-DCLG-pursuant-to-rule43-28March2013.pdf">recommended</a> to then local government minister, Eric Pickles, in her Rule 43 letter. It was this that gave these men hope that the deaths of their loved ones might prevent future tragedy. I am sickened reading it again: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is recommended that your department review Approved Document B … to ensure that it provides clear guidance in relation to Regulation B4 of the Building Regulations, with particular regard to the spread of fire over the external envelope of the building and the circumstances in which attention should be paid to whether proposed work might reduce existing fire protection.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There it is in black and white. Either the government’s advisers failed to put into practice a very clear recommendation from the coroner or the construction industry has been breaching wholesale the building regulations. The truth is the government and its fire advisers appear to be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-40318318/chancellor-philip-hammond-says-grenfell-cladding-was-banned-in-uk">pushing the blame away</a> from Department for Communities and Local Government by now implying it is the builders who have not complied with the regulations instead of blaming the official dithering on revising the Part B document to make them clearer and getting the changes enforced. </p>
<p>An inquiry will need to establish whether the evidence of such tragic fires suggests rigorous enforcement was missing during either the refurbishment or the building’s Fire Risk Assessment process, which is a <a href="http://www.firecareandsecurity.co.uk/fire-services/fire-regulations-advice/">bit like an MOT for a car</a>. Alternatively it might be established that both are inadequate to the task of ensuring high rises are safe in a fire.</p>
<p>The dire consequence of this building regulation mess is that the cornerstone of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1541/part/2/made">new fire safety regulatory regime</a> introduced in 2005, the Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs) – which are a legal requirement for every dwelling in England – are no longer fit for purpose. I haven’t seen any FRAs for the buildings where the cladding has failed in all post-Grenfell fire safety checks, but I’d like to know if there is a single mention of combustible cladding in any of them.</p>
<p>So if landlords can’t now trust the FRAs – which they commission and pay for from fire assessors (the evacuated Camden blocks presumably had satisfactory FRAs) – why would tenants? How can the government now stop this self-regulatory method of fire risk assessments falling into disrepute? The 2005 law change that removed the fire brigades from regulating fire safety and pushed it on to landlords has failed. Two fatal infernos now make a review urgent.</p>
<h2>Advice unravels</h2>
<p>I recently returned to Lakanal House in Camberwell for the BBC and spoke to residents there. I asked them what they made of the “stay put” advice which had led to the deaths in Lakanal and that so many residents at Grenfell had ignored and as a consequence saved themselves. They said that the commonsense view on the ground for high-rise tenants is now to get out. This runs roughshod through firefighting and rescue policies in place <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/14/stay-put-safety-advice-under-scrutiny-grenfell-tower-fire">for 60 years</a> since the first high rises were built.</p>
<p>This could of course now hamper firefighters, particularly when there is only one staircase as at Grenfell. But the failure to impose strict compliance with the building regulations means that compartmentation – which confines fire to a single dwelling for up to 60 minutes – can no longer be guaranteed. The premise on which fire safety was ensured has literally gone up in smoke.</p>
<p>So will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/14/review-of-fire-safety-rules-pledged-by-minister-last-year-yet-to-be-published">the advice</a> from the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety & Rescue Group to retrofit sprinklers be acted on or not? The disruption caused by this would need to be explained to hundreds of thousands of high-rise residents. But, given just about every other guarantee is wilting in the post-Grenfell political meltdown, this may become a pragmatic solution. </p>
<p>We also need to grasp the implications of a bigger question: how has this culture of apparent negligence been allowed in the social housing sector? Housing and shelter is a right enshrined in the principles of the welfare state. There is a very strong argument that – after years of “<a href="https://righttobuy.gov.uk/">right-to-buy</a>” policies supported by all political parties – social housing that used to be such priority for local councils has become progressively underfunded. The political desire to empower people with home ownership has chipped inexorably away at a public good that provided security of tenure and decent homes for the less well off. Pity the poor housing officers who are the new social workers: difficult to recruit, poorly rewarded and unloved. </p>
<p>The housing landscape that has evolved is full of fragmented responsibilities, where often leaseholders are lumbered with the costs of years of building neglect and social landlords struggle to meet the financial imperatives of maintaining ageing stock. It is well known in housing circles that fire safety has not, for example, been helped when tenants become owners and then set about modifying their flats without due regard to the fire safety aspects of the building as a whole. The Fire Risk Assessments, for example, only deal with the common parts of a residential block. Changing a front door for one that is not fire rated, unfilled holes in the wall for a new kitchen or bathroom, internal doors removed or other structural changes, all potentially compromise fire safety.</p>
<p>After Grenfell there are no easy answers. But – with so many lives so tragically lost – on the issue of fire safety, landlords (social or otherwise) are now being forced to address the key question: how do you stop fires spreading and protect lives? Rebuilding trust in fire safety regimes in tall buildings is urgent – and the people at the top of government giving the advice must be competent this time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kurt Barling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A former BBC special correspondent looks at why fundamental lessons weren’t learnt after the deadly Lakanal Fire that he investigated in 2009.Kurt Barling, Professor of Journalism, Middlesex UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778992017-05-18T00:54:29Z2017-05-18T00:54:29ZComey isn’t the first FBI director to keep memos on a president<p>President Donald Trump allegedly asked FBI Director James Comey to drop the FBI’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/politics/james-comey-trump-flynn-russia-investigation.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">investigation into Michael Flynn</a>.</p>
<p>President Franklin Roosevelt <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/FDR%20Aug%201936%20memos.pdf">asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover</a> to collect information on Americans who had committed no crimes. </p>
<p>President Richard Nixon <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/25%20Nov%201970%20Nixon%20memo.jpg">asked Hoover</a> to provide the White House a list of reporters the FBI knew were homosexual.</p>
<p>How do we know? FBI director memos.</p>
<p><a href="http://greaterallegheny.psu.edu/person/douglas-m-charles-phd">As an FBI historian</a>, I was not surprised to learn that Comey kept memos. He referred to them in <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf">his prepared remarks</a> for Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, and they’ll probably form the basis of his answers to questions about his meetings with Trump. The FBI’s history shows such documentation can be essential to how FBI directors operate, and how they can insulate or protect the FBI’s integrity.</p>
<h2>Intelligence on noncriminal activity</h2>
<p>In the summer of 1936, Roosevelt met the FBI director in the White House to discuss, according to Hoover’s memo, “subversive activities in the United States, particularly Fascism and Communism.” Hoover wrote that FDR was interested in getting from the FBI “a broad picture of the general movement and its activities as may effect the economic and political life of the country as a whole.” Hoover replied that “no governmental organization” collected that kind of information.</p>
<p>Nobody collected that information because of FBI improprieties dating to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VnQduXa4JdoC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=Theoharis+FBI+reference+guide+la+follette&source=bl&ots=SCfWzq8YhO&sig=ysf7Ua8aUvf9S4SUap5XzMk9HjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_3cHn0vfTAhVBTCYKHdDQBlgQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=Theoharis%20FBI%20reference%20guide%20la%20follette&f=false">World War I and the Red Scare of 1919 to 1920</a>. During that period, the FBI had collected political intelligence on prominent politicians, social justice advocates and others it <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300142846/fbi">perceived as dangerous</a>. In response, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone publicly issued investigative guidelines that banned FBI agents from collecting intelligence related to noncriminal activity.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding these restrictions, FBI Director Hoover <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/FDR%20Aug%201936%20memos.pdf">informed the president</a> that a statute from 1916 allowed the FBI to investigate “any matters referred to it by the Department of State.” Roosevelt, though, was “reluctant” to formally ask the State Department for this request because information was constantly leaked from the department.</p>
<p>Instead, he asked Hoover to return to the White House the following day with Secretary of State Cordell Hull.</p>
<p>The next day, FDR explained to Hull and Hoover that he wanted a “survey” of Communist and Fascist activity in the country. Hull asked if he wanted the State Department to make a written request of the FBI. Roosevelt declined, saying he wanted “the matter to be handled quite confidentially.”</p>
<p>The president promised Hoover he would write his own memo about his request and place it in his White House safe, but such a document has never been located in FDR’s presidential papers. <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/FDR%20Aug%201936%20memos.pdf">Hoover’s memo</a> about the meeting remains our only historical source about it. The presidential directive to the FBI then remained a verbal one, albeit secretly documented by Hoover, with no White House-generated paper trail.</p>
<p>The meeting and memo were significant because they marked a shift for the FBI. Because of the president’s request and Hoover’s own interests, the FBI began <a href="https://templepress.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/how-security-interests-can-have-adverse-consequences-for-society/">prioritizing noncriminal intelligence investigations</a> over criminal ones. This is the point where the FBI became, primarily, an intelligence agency. Hoover would thereafter collect massive amounts of noncriminal-related intelligence on Americans both prominent and common. </p>
<h2>Homosexual reporters</h2>
<p>A second example of the FBI director generating a memo about a sensitive presidential request dates to Nixon in 1970, during Hoover’s final years as FBI director. At that time, Nixon was obsessed with the constant stream of leaks from his administration and in discrediting the leakers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169799/original/file-20170517-24333-xaycb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">J. Edgar Hoover memo from 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://vault.fbi.gov/clyde-a.-tolson">FBI</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nixon had his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman call Hoover to request “a run down on the homosexuals known and suspected in the Washington press corps.” Haldeman said the president thought the request would be easy because he assumed Hoover “would have it pretty much at hand.”</p>
<p>Hoover said he “thought we have some of that material.” To that, the chief of staff offered a couple of names of suspected gay journalists and added the president “has an interest in what, if anything else, we know.” Hoover told him the FBI “would get after that right away.” </p>
<p>In 1970, Hoover had passed what was then the mandatory retirement age of 70. He remained FBI director only because President Lyndon Johnson had issued an <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/IMG_0249.jpg">executive order</a> exempting Hoover. Nixon could revoke that order at any time. With his job vulnerable, Hoover willingly complied with Nixon’s request. Hoover’s FBI also actively <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/sexdeviatesmemo.pdf">collected and disseminated</a> information <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2119-4.html">about gays</a>, and Nixon knew this.</p>
<p>Handwritten notes on Hoover’s memo – the only record of the request, sent to Hoover’s top FBI officials – indicate that the FBI compiled the requested information and sent it to the White House in letter format, dated Nov. 27, 1970. To date, this letter has not surfaced either at the FBI or among the Nixon papers. Because we don’t have the letter, we also do not know the exact content of the information Hoover shared, or whether and how Nixon might have used it against reporters.</p>
<p>Hoover was an astute bureaucrat who had a history of dealing with sensitive or controversial presidential requests. He fully realized, like Comey, the value of documenting his interactions with presidents. Hoover knew that if need be, he could produce the memo as proof he was ordered to do something that, if undocumented, might jeopardize his position as FBI director or lead him to legal trouble. In other words, the memo was a get-out-of-jail-free card.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"863007411132649473"}"></div></p>
<p>It seems a similar situation may be unfolding with Comey. President Trump implied or boasted he might have tapes to use against Comey. But Comey actually documented his interactions with the president. The Comey memos and the FBI’s history shows how a careful bureaucrat in charge of a powerful agency can not only deftly protect himself, but the integrity of a democratic institution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas M. Charles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Past presidents have made strange requests of the FBI, some of which were documented by J. Edgar Hoover.Douglas M. Charles, Associate Professor of History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778322017-05-17T01:19:23Z2017-05-17T01:19:23ZWhat is classified information, and who gets to decide?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169630/original/file-20170516-24307-1wvu8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Classified documents.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://download.shutterstock.com/gatekeeper/W3siZSI6MTQ5NTAwNTgzMiwiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfMzc3MzgyMzI4IiwiayI6InBob3RvLzM3NzM4MjMyOC9odWdlLmpwZyIsIm0iOiIxIiwiZCI6InNodXR0ZXJzdG9jay1tZWRpYSJ9LCJtVlM5YUN2WjYvMkVZTkxvZjNISTg0L3VZYjAiXQ/shutterstock_377382328.jpg">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before coming to academia, I worked for many years as an analyst at both the State Department and the Department of Defense. </p>
<p>I held a top secret clearance, frequently worked with classified information and participated in classified meetings. Classified information is that which a government or agency deems sensitive enough to national security that access to it must be controlled and restricted. For example, I dealt with information related to weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation.</p>
<p>Handling written classified information is generally straightforward. Documents are marked indicating classification levels. It is sometimes more difficult to remember, however, whether specific things heard or learned about in meetings or oral briefings are classified. Government employees sometimes reveal classified details accidentally in casual conversations and media interviews. We may not hear about it because it’s not in the interviewee’s or employee’s interest to point it out after the fact, or he or she may not even realize it at the time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169626/original/file-20170516-11956-75vla1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">David Boren of Oklahoma, right, talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Duicka</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In 1991, Sen. David Boren <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/us/senator-s-slip-costs-cloak-and-dagger-agent-the-rest-of-his-cloak.html">accidentally revealed</a> the name of a clandestine CIA agent during a news conference. At the time, Boren was no less than chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.</p>
<p>Not all revelations of classified details are earth-shattering, like nuclear launch codes. Many are are rather mundane. A former colleague of mine who was a retired CIA analyst used to tell his students he would never knowingly, but almost certainly would inadvertently, share a tidbit of classified information in the classroom. It is very difficult to remember many “smaller” details that are sensitive.</p>
<p>Dealing with large amounts of classified information over a career increases the possibility of accidentally sharing a small nugget. Sharing classified information knowingly, or revealing information one should know is sensitive, is a different matter. </p>
<p>Here’s how the system of classification works.</p>
<h2>Classification levels and content</h2>
<p>The U.S. government uses <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/18/executive-order-13549-classified-national-security-information-programs-%22%22">three levels of classification</a> to designate how sensitive certain information is: confidential, secret and top secret.</p>
<p>The lowest level, confidential, designates information that if released could damage U.S. national security. The other designations refer to information the disclosure of which could cause “serious” (secret) or “exceptionally grave” (top secret) damage to national security. </p>
<p>At the top secret level, some information is “<a href="http://www.acqnotes.com/acqnote/careerfields/sensitive-compartmented-information">compartmented</a>.” That means only certain people who have a top secret security clearance may view it. Sometimes this information is given a “code word” so that only those cleared for that particular code word can access the information. This is often used for the most highly sensitive information.</p>
<p>There are several other designators that also indicate restricted access. For example, only those holding a secret or top secret clearance, and the critical nuclear weapon design information designation, are allowed to access information related to many aspects of the operation and design of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>It is common for written documents to contain information that is classified at different levels, including unclassified information. Individual paragraphs are marked to indicate the level of classification. For example, a document’s title might be preceded with the marker (U) indicating the title and existence of the document is unclassified. </p>
<p>Within a document, paragraphs might carry the markers “S” for secret, “C” for confidential or “TS” for top secret. The highest classification of any portion of the document determines its overall classification. This approach allows for the easy identification and removal of classified portions of a document so that less sensitive sections can be shared in unclassified settings. </p>
<h2>Not quite confidential</h2>
<p>Below the confidential level, there are varying terms for information that is not classified but still sensitive.</p>
<p>Government agencies use different terms for this category of information. The State Department uses the phrase “sensitive but unclassified,” while the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security use “for official use only.” These markers are often seen in the headers and footers of documents just like classified designations.</p>
<h2>Who decides?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-01-05/pdf/E9-31418.pdf">Executive Order 13256</a> spells out who specifically may classify information.</p>
<p>Authority to take certain pieces of information, say the existence of a weapons program, and classify it top secret is given only to specific individuals. They include the president and vice president, agency heads and those specifically designated by authorities outlined in the executive order.</p>
<p>Procedures for declassification of materials are complicated. They are delineated in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12356.html#part3">Executive Order 12356</a>. However, the president has ultimate declassification authority and may declassify anything at any time.</p>
<p>Deciding what information is classified is subjective. Some things clearly need to be kept secret, like the identity of covert operatives or battle plans. Other issues are not as obvious. Should the mere fact that the secretary of state had a conversation with a counterpart be classified? Different agencies disagree about issues like this all the time.</p>
<p>In practice, when people leave the government they often engage in media interviews, write books and have casual conversations. There are bound to be complications and revelations – accidental or otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Fields receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation.</span></em></p>A professor who once held top secret clearance explains how levels of classification work and where handling sensitive information gets tricky.Jeffrey Fields, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.