While the ministers are nominally in charge, the officials can subtly block the implementation of policies they dislike. Because the civil service is permanent and ministers transient, the ministers are always at the disadvantage (there is also too much happening for one person to keep track of all the details). Further, because of movement within the civil service, it is almost impossible to hold people to account for their mistakes as they will often only arise years later, but which point they may have moved on to another department. (The last two complaints seem like they are in contradiction, but maybe I am misunderstanding him here).
The issues are
1. The ministers are “accountable”, but not in control.
2. Those in control are not accountable, and move around a lot.
Imagine you try to make things better by coming up with possible solutions as a ‘leader’. Rather than approaches succeeding or failing on their own merits, they may be secretly vetoed or modified by a cabal, whose members serve as roving shadow judges.
Ultimately the interests of the cabal are advanced over the ‘leaders’ or the beneficiaries, even if one ‘shadow judge’ may not stay in the same place for a long time. (Yes, this might limit the cabal’s ability to come up with good plans because ‘shadow judges’ switch a lot.*)
*Focus on this issue seems to be theme. I’m calling it: “Problem 1”.
Nor does he see any attempt to learn from previous mistakes.
This lines up with the above. (Problem 1.)
he argues that in order to achieve the greatest successes we need to be willing to endure massive failures.
Failure is a part of learning. (Problem 2.)
(Another argument would be the constantly shifting priorities can result in enormous waste when projects are stopped, then restarting again).
(Problem 1.)
Another key property is openness so that people are comfortable enough to admit errors so that they can be learned from. Instead of punishing people for admitting errors, the focus should be on punishing people who don’t admit errors.
(Problem 2.)
He worries that our educational system isn’t set up to produce the kinds of leaders that are needed for such an environment.
That makes sense.
These leaders need to be trained quantitatively so that they understand things like “exponential functions, normal distributions and conditional probability”. He argues that less than 1% of the population are capable of understanding complex systems from a cross-disciplinary perspective and these people are almost invariably not in charge of government.
This might be a good thing, though we do care about complicated things that might not be capturable by numbers - in the conventional sense. (What does it mean to give a movie 5 stars? That it was really good and you’ll watch it again soon? Then shouldn’t the rating be “really good, I’ll watch it again soon”? If it’s something else that ‘can’t be put into words’ that exists only as a rough comparison, then why is it a number instead of the phrase “as good as movie X” for some movie that’s a benchmark for really good?*)
*If someone doesn’t like movie X, then why would their opinion matter as much to you as the opinion of someone who did?
My confusion was he seems to think the permanent nature of the civil service provides them an advantage over ministers, but if they are always shifting around then wouldn’t this prevent them from gaining a local knowledge advantage.
1. There’s a difference between having unchecked power/no accountability, and being good at your job.
a. The ministers also move around. (Perhaps they can’t gain a large knowledge advantage, but if no one can fire you, and you’re actually in control (if only via a ‘succeed/fail switch’) then you can have a power advantage.
b. They are at an advantage if they have (greater) career security—even in the form of moving around, while the elected officials may not have the same job security. For an analogy, how good is someone at a job on their first day? After 2 years? After switching departments?
2. They can have more information:
a. For example, if internally they are able to find predecessors, they could in theory communicate individually. At a group level, think of it as a conspiracy—maybe they don’t write things down, or destroy records, but they can still operate over time and communicate (if they bother).
b. Knowing things like ‘did the policy fail, or fail because it was never tried?’ can convey a slight relative advantage. Additionally if they tend to ‘serve’ in the same capacity for longer periods (as compared to ministers), then even if they were starting from scratch, they’d have time to build up more of an advantage.
The issues are
1. The ministers are “accountable”, but not in control.
2. Those in control are not accountable, and move around a lot.
Imagine you try to make things better by coming up with possible solutions as a ‘leader’. Rather than approaches succeeding or failing on their own merits, they may be secretly vetoed or modified by a cabal, whose members serve as roving shadow judges.
Ultimately the interests of the cabal are advanced over the ‘leaders’ or the beneficiaries, even if one ‘shadow judge’ may not stay in the same place for a long time. (Yes, this might limit the cabal’s ability to come up with good plans because ‘shadow judges’ switch a lot.*)
*Focus on this issue seems to be theme. I’m calling it: “Problem 1”.
This lines up with the above. (Problem 1.)
Failure is a part of learning. (Problem 2.)
(Problem 1.)
(Problem 2.)
That makes sense.
This might be a good thing, though we do care about complicated things that might not be capturable by numbers - in the conventional sense. (What does it mean to give a movie 5 stars? That it was really good and you’ll watch it again soon? Then shouldn’t the rating be “really good, I’ll watch it again soon”? If it’s something else that ‘can’t be put into words’ that exists only as a rough comparison, then why is it a number instead of the phrase “as good as movie X” for some movie that’s a benchmark for really good?*)
*If someone doesn’t like movie X, then why would their opinion matter as much to you as the opinion of someone who did?
My confusion was he seems to think the permanent nature of the civil service provides them an advantage over ministers, but if they are always shifting around then wouldn’t this prevent them from gaining a local knowledge advantage.
1. There’s a difference between having unchecked power/no accountability, and being good at your job.
a. The ministers also move around. (Perhaps they can’t gain a large knowledge advantage, but if no one can fire you, and you’re actually in control (if only via a ‘succeed/fail switch’) then you can have a power advantage.
b. They are at an advantage if they have (greater) career security—even in the form of moving around, while the elected officials may not have the same job security. For an analogy, how good is someone at a job on their first day? After 2 years? After switching departments?
2. They can have more information:
a. For example, if internally they are able to find predecessors, they could in theory communicate individually. At a group level, think of it as a conspiracy—maybe they don’t write things down, or destroy records, but they can still operate over time and communicate (if they bother).
b. Knowing things like ‘did the policy fail, or fail because it was never tried?’ can convey a slight relative advantage. Additionally if they tend to ‘serve’ in the same capacity for longer periods (as compared to ministers), then even if they were starting from scratch, they’d have time to build up more of an advantage.