I would assert that Bureacracy is how the 'wet' world enforces protocols. By wet world I mean human governance. This is in contrast to dry protocols, such as Ethernet, TCP/IP, etc. Protocols are obviously very valuable. Good protocols reduce risk for upstart ideas, such as new businesses, as existing adopted protocols are information commodities. By this I mean that if you want to start an email service, it doesn't mean you have to reinvent the internet. You can layer your service on top of the existing informational flows that exist and provide value for many more people and companies than just you and yours.
In order to get a complete picture of buraucracy in the context of information protocols, we have to focus on incentives for the conduit, aka the bureaucrat and also focus on the information transaction being executed.
What general types of transaction are provided by a bureaucracy?
- Certification --> public acknowledgement that a party is qualified to perform a task. Examples: License/registration, vehicle safety. For this type of transaction the bureaucrat is often empowered to make a yes/no decision based on a pre-existing workflow and expected dataset.
- Information gathering --> Acquiring information, interpreting that information, then providing recommendations to decision makers. For this type of transaction the bureaucrat must aggregate diverse non-standard data inputs and translate those into standard formats for consumption by an executive or other decision maker. In this case the bureaucrat is ofthen not empowered to reach a final decision but must have a much greater understanding of the inputs than within a certification workflow.
Both of these transactions share a common workflow, but their priorities differ. Information starts as raw data, is interpreted, and becomes a black and white result. For certification workflows, transparency of the data and how it is transformed into the final decision is paramount. For information gathering, trust in the competency of the staff is the most important aspect. As with any monetary task speed, cost, and quality all define the effectiveness of the process.
In a dry protocol, one doesn't have to worry so much about the incentives of the conduit, just the perceived state of a message transmitter and the message receiver. This is definitely not the case with a bureaucratic protocol. The bureaucrat's incentives are essential. In order to ensure bureacracies are efficient and effective those incentives must be well aligned with the intention of the protocol itself.
One of the most important aspects is motivation: does a bureaucrats motivations align with the intention of the protocol itself? Or are they mis-aligned?
Ideas to explore. What are the incentives associated with a bureaucrats:
- interaction with protocol inputs
- interaction with protocol outputs
- monotony of the workflow
- exhaustion of the workflow
- motivation to understand the underlying problem(s) the protocol is designed to solve
- empowerment to fix or improve the workflow