https://modernpower.substack.com/p/recoding-america-a-rallying-cry-for#footnote-anchor-4-102168485
As a result of the distance between policymakers and on-the-ground problems, we have a lot of dysfunctional policies and processes. But in waterfall, the upward flow of information from “lower” levels of the system, which are more proximate to actual end users, isn’t prioritized for cultural and historical reasons we’ll get into later in the piece.
The upshot is that when a process is not going to properly achieve an outcome, a government staffer can either (a) go along with the process, outcome be damned or (b) pursue the outcome, process be damned.
Jen shares a couple anecdotes where government staff take the former path — Paula, EDD’s leader during the pandemic, and Kevin, a senior IT leader at Veterans Affairs (VA).
In the VA story, Kevin has been handed down a set of requirements by policymakers that don’t make any sense and will definitely exacerbate the problem of getting veterans the mental health services they require. At the time, 16 veterans were committing suicide each day.
“I’ve spent my entire career training my team not to have an opinion on business requirements,” [Kevin] told me. “If they ask us to build a concrete boat, we’ll build a concrete boat.” Why? I asked. “Because that way, when it goes wrong, it’s not our fault.”
The last thing he wanted was to have a seat at the table. Keeping his teams in order-taking mode didn’t make them immune from criticism—there were constant headlines about the VA backlogs and ongoing fury from administration officials who wanted veterans taken care of—but it had been a winning strategy for him personally. Like Paula, he’d been promoted countless times, rewarded by a rule-bound civil service regime that values years of experience and a clean record but has little ability to judge competencies, leadership acumen, or a track record of meaningful results. Like Paula, he saw withstanding the criticism as part of the deal. In the end, he could say he’d just been following the established process. He’d just been doing what he was told.