An article from the NYT about some guy's dream for the government to open a special school for public servants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07academy.html
Not sure what I think about this. Might be great, or it might create too many "insiders" like someone in the article suggests...
What say you, readers?
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5 comments:
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. I find the prospect of Bureaucrat University irresistible. West Point for public servants is better spin though.
While I'm all for public service, I'm not sure we need a special school for it. I've worked in a variety of public service settings (NPS, Smithsonian, USDA) and found many of them well-staffed by capable and engaging people already. Many bright and ambitious colleagues/family members work in government agencies as well.
Schools of public policy and history and natural resource management seem more relevant than schools of bureaucratese for these fields. What we need more than a school for bureaucrats, I reckon, is to stop underfunding public agencies like the park service, national archives, etc. so that they can hire the qualified and capable, educated folks who would love to serve already.
There are something like 10 fewer park service employees working at the visitor center at which I worked in the late 1990s.
I think the guy's major point is to increase the status of the jobs, so you're probably right, ldp, that simply giving the agencies adequate funding might do the trick.
I think what you need to do is revamp the entire civil service. Reduce the number of political appointees(the number is around 7,000) to just the immeadiate heads of cabinet departments and tthe President's closest advisors and then increase the ability of permanant civil servants to reach the highest levels of government. I imagine something like the UK system should be the model.
Imagine that! BB thinks the UK should be the model. I'm shocked, simply shocked.
(You're probably right though, seriously. What you said makes sense to me.)
It's time to end government on the cheap! The Pentagon needs to take its turn being the poor cousin and let some other departments see what they can do with all the cash those gold-plated toilets were costing.
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