James Gordon, Part Two: The Administrative Burden of Social Programs

Image provided by Councilor Gordon.
I suspect the painting is by local artist Greg Denton,
one of Guelph's "artistic crown jewels".

In the second part of my conversation with James Gordon we broaden it to deal with larger issues, such as "Why are bureaucracies often so darned hard to navigate?" I sometimes get comments to the effect that I put too much of myself into my interviews. I understand the sentiment, and I will admit that the first question I ask really does this. But in my defense I've found that I often ask questions that politicians seem to have never heard before. This raises what Noam Chomsky calls "the tyranny of conciseness".

That is the observation that when you are saying something in accord with "conventional wisdom" or "the common sense", you don't have to actually explain your terms or give evidence of the phenomenon you are describing. That's because everyone already understands what you are talking about. This means you just have to signal to people that that is what you are talking about instead of having to explain it. In contrast, when you are explaining something totally new to another person you usually have to bring in and define a new term, and then give evidence that supports your claim that this is "actually a thing". In my audio clip with James the new term is "the administrative burden of social programs". 

The personal examples I raise are to illustrate what this phrase means and suggests that it is really a significant problem. I go into real detail with Councilor Gordon because I've found over the years that elected officials generally "tune out" concerns about bureaucracy. I suspect that part of this is because they often have to deal with absolutely furious constituents who have been enraged by the way that they've been treated by front-line staff in various government organizations. No one likes being yelled-at, and many people automatically ignore anyone who vents at them. 

Secondly, a lot of politicians are decent folks who want to support government employees and they see complaints as being profoundly unfair comments about individuals---instead of a statement about the way our government programs are organized. 

Finally, most elected officials come from positions of privilege (even if they don't, specifically because they are in elected office this means that most bureaucrats will treat them differently than if they were just a "nobody") so they don't get the same treatment as the general public---or people who are specifically "under privileged" or routinely discriminated against. As a result, they often simply do not believe that such-and-such a thing is happening---because nothing like that has ever happened to them. (And, of course, if they ask administrative staff about whether or not such-and-such a thing ever happens, they are usually going to get a self-serving defense instead of an objective assessment of what actually happens. Consider how expert the police have been at sweeping incidents of excessive use of force under the carpet--. It's much the same thing.)

I believe that Gordon is a genuinely compassionate, decent man in many different ways. But also I believe that if you listen to the sound file he seems genuinely surprised by the question I'm asking. This isn't because I raised it, but rather because he's never thought about it, and, it has never come up while he has been an Councilor. Again, this isn't on him---it's an aspect of how our society has evolved over long periods of time. We've created a "firewall" between bureaucrats and the politicians so elected officials can't interfere with what works get done, but in the process we've stopped having any democratic oversight of the systems where people interact with the government. I am convinced, however, that this is a real problem and one that we really need to deal with if we want to live in a better world.

Why is the bureaucracy often so hard to navigate? (click on this link to get the sound file)

I was struck by James Gordon's mention of "accessibility" (at about 7:45). I think that most elected officials would be up in arms about a government office that was on the top of a large flight of stairs so no one with mobility issues would be able to apply for something like a disability pension. They might also get hot under the collar if service was only allowed in French---or even German. But it occurred to me that there are a whole class of people who have "invisible disabilities" who have the same sort of barriers placed in front of them. 

I suspect most people have heard of "trigger warnings" without really thinking through what they are or only having heard a negative definition from someone who thinks that they are an example of silly "political correctness". But let me talk a bit about them and explain why I think that the concept might be relevant. 

Years ago I was having lunch in a downtown restaurant with a Mercury reporter. She pointed out a middle-aged man who was walking slowly down the sidewalk across the street. She said that she'd interviewed him and found out the reason he walks like that was because the Ethiopean KGB beat him by whipping the soles of his feet with fine wires. As a result, he had very painful scars on them.

There are a lot of people in our society who walk around with psychological scars, ones that cause real problems for them in certain situations. They are often absolutely consumed by horrific memories that have actually "hard-wired" their brains to react in a way that makes it very hard to function in settings that "normal" people would not find difficult. People with these sorts of problems often follow various types of helpful and dysfunctional ways of forgetting about these memories. (For example, they often abuse alcohol in order to sleep. I understand that Veterans Affairs sends out quite liberal amounts of cannabis to our veterans with PTSD. Obviously stoner vets are a better thing than alcoholic ones---.)

PTSD flashbacks are often portrayed in movies and tv as about people actually thinking that they are in the situation that screwed up their heads. But that's an artistic convention instead of a reality. Instead what they are doing is reliving the feelings and emotions---not the actual experience. (They often have reoccurring nightmares where they do re-experience the event, but that's a different symptom.)

When someone warns a crowd or viewers about potentially "triggering" stuff, they are giving people who suffer from these anxiety disorders an opportunity to change the channel or leave the room. Just to let people "get into the head" of people who have problems with bureaucracies, I'll let people know part of why I have problems with them. I suffer from PTSD because of an abusive childhood. I have all the symptoms---including an absolutely gut-wrenching fear of authority figures. That's because when I was a child I was totally at the mercy of people who were functionally indifferent to how much misery they inflicted on me. Whenever I have to deal with a system where there is no real human being to talk through something, which has tremendous impact on my life, and, where everyone involved obviously no real interest in making the system work for me---I go back to being a scared 12 year old having the crap beaten out of me every time I made a mistake while attempting to do a full-grown man's work.

A lot of people who suffer from the "administrative burden of social programs" are people who have had rough lives, and the stupid paperwork that gets inflicted on them triggers strong emotions. That's not surprising, because it is just another example of people screwing them over because of their sheer indifference for their well-being. Could someone tell why this is so much different from putting that office at the top of flight of stairs or expecting everyone who applies to understand German? 

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Personally, I think that the subject of this article is tremendously important. But it's not really something that people can read about and understand without going into some real detail. And that's something that modern reporters often don't have the time get into. That's why I publish the Back-Grounder. It's feature journalism in a world where most professionals don't have time to do more than get a "sound bite" and a picture. I spent hours and hours on this article---just coming up with the questions to ask James took up several hours. Then I had to find and install an editing suite on my computer and teach myself how to edit the conversation.

I also did an interview with someone else, but unfortunately there was a problem with the recording device and it crapped out. So there's several hours work that you will never see here. And all the links I put into the text are there as the result of reading a lot of complex articles---many from academic publications---so I can make sure that I have the story right.

This is a job. I'm happy to put what I write on line because I know people read it. I also know that some university students use the blog for their research. (I have gotten hits from on-line plagiarism detection services to prove it.) But it is still work, and if people want to learn about what's going on around them, they have to be willing to pay for it. Only a dollar a month is fine---and it's easy to do through Patreon and Paypal. 

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Just to point out that I'm not making this stuff up, here're some links for further reading on this subject with a couple short excerpts. 

• Q&A: Sometimes Bureaucracy Is Intentionally Complex, in The American Prospect. This is a short, easy to read interview with two academics who'd just written a book on the subject. 

How did you come to study this topic?

Herd: It was sort of some personal experiences that instigated this project for us. [Moynihan] grew up in Ireland and he, as someone who actually studies bureaucracies and studies public administration, had a difficult experience trying to navigate the immigration system here [in the U.S.], [given] the complexity of the paperwork. He has a Ph.D. and he really struggled to figure a lot of that out.

We also have a child with a disability and I was trying to navigate [Medicaid]. Even though I had taught for years about Medicaid, I was pretty confounded when I actually tried to navigate it myself. For a period, I gave up on the application process even though I knew she would be eligible.

Moynihan: When we talked with friends, everyone also reported having similar experiences at some point with government. This is the biggest issue that people haven’t heard about. But they intuitively get once you explain it. Everyone has a story—about the nightmare interaction that they’ve had [with government], the inflexibility of the process, and the challenges placed upon them.

We realized there wasn't language or a framework that could help us talk about or explore those experiences. So we set out to build one.

• The Bite of Administrative Burden: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation, from Journal of Public Administration Research And Theory. This is a more academic paper, but it starts out with an extensive literature review which would be useful for people interested in finding out more about this subject.

One predictable and frequent finding in studies that have assessed the costs of administrative burden is that program access (or take up of benefits) is constrained and low. In the United States, take-up rates for a number of important social program interventions hover around 25%, including training and work supports, housing programs, and Medicaid (Currie

2006; Shore-Sheppard 2008; Wallace 2002).

• Both the Ontario and Federal governments have recently brought in programs aimed at reducing the burden of government bureaucracy, but only for businesses. The Red Tape Reduction Action Plan is a government of Canada program and the Ontario government has a "Red Tape Reduction Ministry" that created a web page devoted to this project. This raises the important question "why is the government only interested in reducing red tape for businesses---and not ordinary citizens?"

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I think readers should also consider James' particular reaction to the points I raise. Like most people, he brings my concerns back to his experience. That is, that staff get in the way of him doing his job as a Councilor. In the course of that, however, he raises the concern that this lack of "nimbleness" that he admits City Hall manifests might just be the price of real democracy. Since our talk I've mulled over this idea for quite a while and come to the conclusion it's something else. 

I think that the real problem is that bureaucrats have become incredibly risk averse. They have made our government services---as James says---like a store that refuses to open until there is absolutely no risk of anyone shoplifting. This probably driven by the fact that opposition politicians and the media can build their "brand" by playing "gotcha" when projects don't work out the way they were promoted---or even according to the way that opposition or the media have defined them. Looking back at how things have worked in municipal politics over the past decades, I can understand that no one who is trying to hang in long enough to get a pension wants to be connected to anything with a whiff of controversy. (Consider the District Energy Initiative.) But the end result of refusing to ever let someone try something that might end in failure is to give our city a lobotomy. People have forgotten that the biggest risk anyone can ever take is to refuse to ever take any risks at all. Unfortunately, in many cases the people at risk are marginalized people---not the bureaucrats who have nice jobs with benefits. I wish more politicians would consider this and put some effort into trying to cut through the red tape that seems designed to make people's lives needlessly miserable. 

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!