U.S. Intelligence Agencies; SNAFU

[Caliga]

 

[grumbler]

The goals of virtually anyone in a bureaucracy involve getting promoted within the bureaucracy.  To the extent that those goals are met by fulfilling the organization's mission, bureaucrats fulfill the organization's mission.  When fulfilling the organization's mission conflicts with getting promoted within the bureaucracy, though, the bureaucrat ignores the mission.  It is the nature of bureaucracies and humans.  Any group of humans is more stupid than any of those humans are individually.  The key is making people in a bureaucracy accountable for the mission, and that is hard.

I have bolded the flawed part of your analysis.

What is flawed about it?

[Jacob]

What is flawed about it?

I think he meant that he bolded the part of your analysis that highlighted the flaw of the setup, not that your analysis is flawed.

[grumbler]

What is flawed about it?

I think he meant that he bolded the part of your analysis that highlighted the flaw of the setup, not that your analysis is flawed.

So he highlighted a part of my post to show that the part of my post wherein I described the flaw in the system was the part where I described the flaw in the system?

Must be a Canucklehead thing.

[Caliga]

It seemed clear to me that he was disagreeing with (at least a portion of) grumbler's statement.

[Barrister]

The extent that individual promotion depends on meeting the organization's goals are so miniscule it is not worth any comment.

[grumbler]

The extent that individual promotion depends on meeting the organization's goals are so miniscule it is not worth any comment.

What do you consider to be "flawed" about the part of my"analysis" that accommodates your unevidenced contention?

Even if what you say happens to correspond to reality in all organizations, it certainly does not contradict what I said, let alone demonstrate any "flaws."

[Barrister]

The extent that individual promotion depends on meeting the organization's goals are so miniscule it is not worth any comment.

What do you consider to be "flawed" about the part of my"analysis" that accommodates your unevidenced contention?

Even if what you say happens to correspond to reality in all organizations, it certainly does not contradict what I said, let alone demonstrate any "flaws."

Personaly observation and experience is a form of evidence...

[jimmy olsen]

I don't know why anyone expected more bureaucracy to be the answer to "too much bureaucracy."

Not everyone.  Only the guys whose motto is "less government" prefer to create one more agency to do the work the 2 previous ones were supposed to do.

That's unfair, Bush was against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security but the political pressure in favor of it was too much to withstand.

[grumbler]

Personaly observation and experience is a form of evidence...

I conclude from these evasions that you are simply not going to address the issue at all, and so will proceed under the assumption that you either misread what I wrote and stubbornly refuse to admit it, or else you are otnay ightbray enough to figure out what I meant.  In either case, you cannot respond meaningfully to my initial query and so I withdraw it.

[grumbler]

Not everyone.  Only the guys whose motto is "less government" prefer to create one more agency to do the work the 2 previous ones were supposed to do.

I am not sure how this responds to anything I said.    I don't know who "the guys whose motto is 'less government'" even are (some Canadian club?) nor do I know what agency has been created to do the work of two previous agencies.

It would work nice in theory, but in the field, I think there's just too many people working for the government for this to ever be realistically applied.  Too many people = Too easy to shift the blame.

It works quite well in practice, too.  Ask people in the military.  When people are tasked with a mission and held responsible for it, they cannot shift the blame.  When a US Navy ship runs aground or collides with another ship, there is no shifting of any blame there is attached to the incident:  the CO is directly responsible and will be relieved if any non-criminal actions of any crewman contributed to the accident.

That does not mean that any given military is always good at doing this, of course:  the US airmen who murdered those Canuck soldiers in Afghanistan, or the ones that murdered the UN team in the helos in Bosnia, were not held responsible, of course, but that was the US Air Force.  You cannot expect professionalism out of it.

[KRonn]

I don't know why anyone expected more bureaucracy to be the answer to "too much bureaucracy."

I am gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the answer to the "more bureaucracy just adds to the problem of too much bureaucracy" will be the establishment of more bureaucracy. 

Empowering responsible people and then making them accountable is never the solution, it seems.

Sounds like we need a large bureaucracy or two to handle all these smaller bureaucracies.