Gov't , economics and technology (was Re: METROCAST BLOCKS RESIDENTIAL E-MAIL)

[Kuni Tetsu]

--- Jeff Kinz <jkinz at kinz.org> wrote:
> > Since when has the government been interested in delivering service to us
at 
> > the lowest cost? 
> 
> At the level of abstract goals government is interested at being
> efficient. The real obstacle to creating an efficient government service
> is that there are few, if any, rewards for efficiency to the individuals
> who actually supervise/do the work.   For example, in the business sector, a
> person who is productive keeps their job and gets a raise occasionally.
> 
> The general public perceives that people in civil service don't have to
> be efficient or productive to keep theirs jobs and get an occasional
> raise.  (I can't speak either way on this perception as I have no data).
> People in business have clear incentives to change: money and jobs.

Gov't employees (at least at the uncivil servant level) are all union members.
In general, you don't get merit pay, you only get raises based on years served.
The longer you are an employee, the more you make. Promotions are another way
to make more money, but those are based on someone above you retiring.

As such, they have 0 incentive to be move efficient, unless there is a pending
promotion. Being human beings, they have a built in incentive to make their
life easier so they do things to "customers" to lighten their day, show their
power, and otherwise make THEIR day better.

My wife worked for the DOT for a while. She was actually reprimanded for being
TOO efficient and thus making the rest of the slackers look bad.

I would love to hear counterpoints to this observed and annecdoted theorum. And
yes, I understand that the plural of annecdote is not data :)

Policy makers do make noises about "lowest cost providers" and "budget
consrtaints", but no gov't beaurocracy is more efficient than the dreaded
Private Sector. There you can get fired for poor performance.

> Individuals have to be dragged into change unless they see a clear
> benefit to themselves in the change.  This is a basic human trait.
> Change is uncomfortable, people avoid discomfort unless they perceive an
> advantage on the other side of the change.  

Exactly.

> One example - still not much known today, the great crime rate drop of
> the 80' and 90's was caused not by burgeoning economic times or great
> social programs.  They were caused by the women suddenly being able to
> freely obtain an abortion. (Freakonomics, Levitt & Dubner, 2005.)

Um. That is not the sum total. Freakonomics is hardly real science, let alone
good data. Yes, I have read it. I have also read what real economists thing
about it. That is a whole other thread and I will not bring it in here.

The rise of technology is definitely a factor, especially in the 90's. There,
we are at least back on a tangental thread.

During the 90's most companies were putting computers on the desks of their
administrators, and that helped efficiency a great deal. Although is it
anathema to mention it here, add to it the fact that most of said computers
were pretty monocultured, and all had the same interface. People could now move
from job to job or even company to company and not have to relearn a lot of the
tools used in their jobs. As such, they significantly reduced the amount of
time it took them to spin-up to speed at their new job and thus were more
efficient. 

The biggest road block I have seen to the acceptance of Open Office is the fact
that they do not have the same menues as the products they are trying to
supplant. That is not the way to get your product accepted. I don't care it is
is a more logical or "better" way to do menues. That is not the point. Note
that Word had a "Wordperfect compatible menu mode" for precisely this reason.
(Look on-topic bits!)

There were a lot of economic incentives as well. Reducing the tax rates meant
people had more to spend; people had to work to produce those new products;
Since those folks were now employed they thus had more money to spend, etc.
Snear and slap a label on this if you want, but this is pretty basic economics.
Unless you think Kensey is the end-all-be-all of economics. This is however,
not a thread for this list.


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