The Bureaucracy

Survey the types of jobs career civil servants perform.

- Career civil servants are nonpolitical personnel who must pass an exam to secure their jobs and compete on an equal playing field with anyone else who has the same credentials. - federal civil service employees fall into three categories: blue-collar, white-collar, and senior executive positions - Blue-collar jobs consist of "craft, repair, operator, and laborer jobs," and employees in this category are under the Federal Wage System - Executive-level management employees are governed by the Senior Executive Service guidelines, which generally follow the General Schedule (GS) pay scale - All federal employees are subject to performance evaluations and may receive gradual raises, promotions up the career ladder, and incentive and merit bonuses for outstanding job performance - civil service is designed to protect employees from partisanship, and employees are expected to be objective as they carry out their job responsibilities.

Equate the establishment of cabinet departments with developments in the U.S. economy and society.

- Article I, Section 8—to regulate commerce among the states and with foreign nations, to provide for defense, to collect taxes and borrow money, and to establish post offices and post roads - Department of Education, created in 1979, and the Department of Health and Human Services in 1980 to oversee health care and welfare programs. In 1949, the War Department was transformed into the Department of Defense - 1989, the Department of Veterans Affairs was created with the support of President George H. W. Bush - Department of Homeland Security in 2003 in a direct response to the widely perceived intelligence failures associated with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Explain ways the legislative and judicial branches can check the bureaucracy.

- Congress contributes to the accountability and responsiveness of the bureaucracy through its oversight of implementation and its so-called power of the purse. - Congress can hold the bureaucracy accountable is through its powers to authorize and appropriate. Authorization and appropriation hearings give Congress a chance to evaluate federal agencies and to withhold or reduce funds if there are dissatisfactions - The courts can serve as effective monitors of implementation because they are a gateway for groups adversely affected by a federal regulation to argue their case against it.

Outline the essential elements of a bureaucracy

- Each bureaucratic organization has a clear mission, a hierarchical decision-making process, an area of expertise, and a bureaucratic culture. Aside from cabinet departments, there are various types of organizations within the bureaucracy, some designed to be more or less independent of the president.

Explain how the mission of a bureaucracy shapes its goals.

- Each federal agency has a stated mission that defines its role and responsibilities within the federal bureaucracy.

Describe bureaucratic culture.

- Every organization has a culture, that is, a persistent, patterned way of thinking about the central tasks of and human relationships within an organization. Culture is to an organization what personality is to an individual. - bureaucratic culture can act as a gate that prevents efficiency and responsiveness in government because it can create situations in which employees in different organizations duplicate tasks, counterbalance one another's efforts, and ultimately fail to accomplish their agency's or department's mission. - lack of communication and expert direction exposed the inherent dangers of a flawed bureaucratic culture.

Define bureaucracy.

- Executive branch departments, agencies, boards, and commissions that carry out the responsibilities of the federal government. - The part of the executive branch that actually administers government policies and programs.

Assess how the bureaucracy is both accountable and responsive, and how it can fail

- Following a consistent regulatory process, agencies draft regulations, which are open to comment by citizens, members of Congress, interest groups, and relevant businesses and industries before they are finalized. Congress exercises influence over policy through its oversight responsibilities and power to authorize and allocate funds. Lawsuits can involve the judicial branch in the interpretation of public policy. The bureaucracy is subject to criticism for acting slowly, but in a democracy, the need for efficiency is counterbalanced by the need for transparency. Reform efforts have improved transparency by providing protections for whistleblowers. The policy-making process and regulatory process together exemplify government responsiveness and accountability to citizens even as they reflect the concerns of competing interests.

Characterize bureaucratic expertise.

- Fundamental to the core of the federal bureaucracy is the presumption that the people who hold bureaucratic positions have expertise in the issue areas they oversee and implement.

State the advantages and disadvantages of the hierarchical decision-making process.

- HHS contains the following levels of authority, in ascending order: bureau chief, assistant secretary, deputy secretary, secretary - ensures that the unit responds consistently and predictably - hierarchical structure can present an obstacle to speedy decision making.

Recall why political appointees have increased in number over time.

- Political appointees, unlike civil servants, get their jobs because they are members of the same party that controls the executive branch, they have connections to politically powerful people, or they have served in a prior presidential administration - President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) appointed a layer of federal employees, known as Schedule C appointees, to oversee civil service employees. - President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) appointed a layer of federal employees, known as Schedule C appointees, to oversee civil service employees.

Describe the growth of the bureaucracy over time

- Since 1789, the bureaucracy has grown from three to fifteen executive departments as government's responsibilities have grown, primarily in the area of the economy. The first regulatory agency was established in 1887 to regulate railroad practices. Federal employment has developed from a corps of wealthy elites with political connections to members of the Congress and the president into a merit- and performance-based civil service designed to be protected from political influence. The president appoints cabinet secretaries and other high-level political appointees who are expected to carry out the president's agenda.

Explain how and why the civil service evolved.

- The assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881 by an individual who had sought, but had not received, a federal job caused a public outcry against patronage in government employment. - Pendleton Act ~ made the selection of civil servants based off of merit not patronage - The Civil Service Commission to administer entrance exams for the federal civil service and set job requirements and promotion standards based on a merit system and performance, not political affiliation

Explain what the bureaucracy does

- The bureaucracy is the collection of executive branch departments, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that carry out the responsibilities of the federal government. Today nearly 4.1 million people, including those in the armed services, work for the federal government. The constitutional foundations for the bureaucracy include the president's power to nominate and appoint officers of executive departments, from whom he may request advice. The bureaucracy is also based in the president's broad grant of executive power.

Relate the consequences of bureaucratic failure.

- The dual responsibilities of accountability and responsiveness in the federal bureaucracy require the bureaucracy to do its job well enough to protect citizens from physical and financial harm. - Unfortunately, the American people are so familiar with the failures of the federal bureaucracy that its successes are overlooked. - It is up to the voters to hold their elected officials—in Congress as well as the president—accountable for the performance of the federal bureaucracy.

Examine how the need for bureaucratic efficiency and transparency can counteract each other.

- The government can justify the slowness of the decision-making process on the grounds that it considers many points of view in implementing policy. Unfortunately, inclusiveness comes at the expense of efficiency. - If the government fails to make its practices transparent and does not consider all the implications of its decisions, citizens may lose trust in government. Note: - In 1966, the Freedom of Information Act established a procedure by which ordinary citizens can directly request documents and reports from the federal government by paying a nominal fee, as long as the documents are not classified.

Describe what regulatory agencies do.

- regulatory agencies are gateways through which citizens can ask government to protect them from fraudulent and unsafe products sold in the marketplace.

Explain the growth of the use of private-sector contract workers.

-Companies can range from nonprofit community organizations, to midsize security firms, to large health care conglomerates - Although company employees have an incentive to do their jobs well, fraud, waste, and abuse can go undetected for years because of the lack of direct federal oversight - It is more efficient to use a private firm that has expertise in an area to provide a service at a lower cost than to use permanent employees and achieve the same outcome. That allows the government to increase or decrease employment for specific projects; it is much more difficult to eliminate federal positions.

Explain how the Constitution provides a basis for bureaucratic power.

-Constitutional basis of the federal bureacracy found in Article II of the Constitution in the reference to the creation of "executive departments" -The establishment of bureaucratic agencies developed as a result of custom, tradition, and precedent -The Cabinet was formed by President George Washington -Independent regulatory agencies were created in the twentieth century as a result of a perceived need to regulate insustry and protect the public.

Describe the structure of the federal bureaucracy.

-The federal bureacracy has a "hierarchal" structure, where ajn agency has defined responsibilites -Cabinet departments are responisble to the Cabinet secretaries that head them -Regulatory agencies, also known as independent regulatory agencies, are funded by the Congress and report to the President -Government corporations are agencies that act like private sector industries but are run by the government -Independent executive agencies are bureaucracies that have specific functions that support the goals and functions of the government -The vast majority of government employees working in bureacratic agencies are appointed through civil service system and are not poltical appointees.

Hatch Act

A federal law prohibiting government employees from active participation in partisan politics. In 1993, the Hatch Act Reform Amendments loosened restrictions on political activities by government employees as long as the activities occurred while they were off duty.

Describe what it means to be a whistleblower.

Employees who report mismanagement, corruption, or illegal activity within their agencies. - Before the Whistleblower protection act in 1989, whistleblowers didn't have a real protection from their colleagues