Why bureaucracy matters, part 4: Living in the paper labyrinth
Public servants often work in a system designed for fairness yet feel trapped by process. Unlocking potential is key.
First published in the Mandarin.
What does bureaucracy feel like from the inside?
Harriet Martineau imagined bureaucracy as a logical, humane alternative to the fragmentation of local governance. To her, centralisation offered fairness, consistency, and compassion through skilled administration. Charles Dickens, on the other hand, saw bureaucracy as a farcical, self-perpetuating machine that overwhelmed ordinary people with red tape and empty rituals.
Both were right; bureaucracy can both protect and harm. While we have long debated its effects, we’ve paid less attention to what it is like to live within it.
What is the experience for those who work daily in systems designed for justice and compassion, yet sometimes feel helpless and absurd?
If we want public institutions to be productive, we must first make them inhabitable. This involves recognising the cultural conditions that hollow out purpose and suppress agency.
Reforms to enhance public sector productivity will fail if they only concentrate on performance metrics and structural change. Continuous effort is required to develop the bureaucracy from within to keep it relevant and effective.
Recurring stereotypes
Public servants are easy targets for satire as lazy pencil pushers, mindless rule enforcers, and faceless functionaries. Since the turn of the century, the public service has been the subject of recurring media tropes — it’s bloated, costly, privileged, lazy, unaccountable, or ideologically captured.
In NSW, the government’s reversal of remote work policies has sparked conflicts with public servants. The debate about returning to the office is often driven by stories of laziness and a lack of accountability. Recently, ex-prime minister Tony Abbott continued his criticism of the public service, referring to the “unelected and unaccountable” officials in Canberra responsible for his government’s failures.
A notable aspect of the most recent federal election was the pushback against these familiar ideas. For the first time in a while, there was some debate about the role of the public service.
The system, not the people
In practice, bureaucrats often serve as the stewards of the systems and processes that maintain safety, justice, welfare, and opportunity. They represent the community’s expectations of fairness, dignity, and impartiality. However, the bureaucratic system can sometimes restrict a public servant’s effectiveness as much as it can frustrate those who access it.
Dr H. C. (‘Nugget’) Coombs served as the chairman of the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration in 1976. During a speech at the National Press Club, he remarked that he found “the younger members of the bureaucracy impressive” and concluded that “the raw material which the system has to work with is of good quality”.
However, he then asked, “But what does it do with it?” His thoughts will sound familiar to many public servants today.
“Years of involvement in routine and ritualistic processes, an inability to see the outcome of work done, a sense of isolation from those with whose affairs government administration is concerned and a prevailing flatness in the quality of life, official and unofficial, generally has destroyed much of the vitality and concern which no doubt were as evident 20 years ago among them as it now is among their successors. There is, I believe, something seriously wrong with a system which so stultifies worthwhile human beings.”
Today, the proliferation of compliance frameworks and procedural rules is complicating the roles of public servants. Bureaucratic contradictions balance the public’s demand for speed, fairness, and compassion.
Be responsive, but stay within your scope; be accountable, but avoid creating problems; regulate, but don’t restrict; be innovative, but steer clear of risks. The result is a cumulative form of psychological strain. It is a slow, internalised frustration that manifests as burnout, cynicism, and withdrawal. Coombs’ observations from 50 years ago will no doubt ring true for public servants today.
The tyranny of process
Franz Kafka depicted the inner world of bureaucracy in his novels The Trial and The Castle. While Coombs describes the outcome, Kafka illustrates the experience of disorientation and alienation.
In The Castle, land surveyor K. tries to contact an authority that is everywhere yet unreachable. Messages are often misdelivered, approvals are delayed, and no one can explain why. The bureaucracy runs smoothly and elegantly, but seemingly for no apparent reason. Kafka’s point is that the system’s absurdity isn’t about inefficiency; instead, it no longer acts for the people and functions for itself.
Modern bureaucrats understand this feeling well. In digital bureaucracy, the increase in data analysis, portals, dashboards, metric-based decisions, process reviews, organisational restructures, evaluations, and days full of meetings signals a future where the perpetual motion of administration becomes a reality.
Spies and organisational decay
Joseph Irwin Miller was the chair and CEO of Cummins Engines. In 1959, he shared a CEO’s perspective on management, concluding that his real ‘antagonist’ was ‘neither the customer, nor his bankers, nor the union. His real antagonist was the ‘organisation’.
This same sentiment appears in the Cold War spy novels of Graham Greene, Len Deighton, and John le Carré, where the bureaucratic organisation was as much the enemy as the actual enemy was.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond presents the spy as an action hero. His enemies, whether a criminal mastermind, rogue organisation, or foreign agent, are always outside the system. Bond’s independence clashes with bureaucracy, but through a mix of daring, judgment, and luck, he always manages to come out on top.
In contrast, John le Carré’s novels depict an intelligence service, designed to uphold a set of principles, that becomes a machine that erodes them.
The hero is not a dashing figure but a weary, melancholic, intellectual, and clinical bureaucrat who has spent many years working to keep his humanity intact while engaging in the dehumanising logic of the bureaucratic system within a decaying institution.
The hero is not an infallible ideal but an ambiguous, doubt-filled figure who endures more than he wins. He is someone who constantly compromises with his own organisation, causing him to question the worth of his ‘wins’. He is a bureaucrat struggling to find meaning in his work.
The enemy is not easily recognised; instead, it lies in conspiracy, politics, and compromise within his own institutions. A sense of rootlessness and uncertainty plagues these Cold War heroes. The erosion of purpose leads to a focus on method rather than meaning.
One such hero, George Smiley, notes that his colleagues simply saw a major intelligence coup as a “…victory of technique. Nothing more … just another skilful bit of tradecraft in a long and delicate poker game.”
Kafka revealed the absurdity of the system, and Cold War spy novelists showed how bureaucratic compromise wears people down, where craftsmanship becomes valued for its own sake.
‘Nugget’ Coombs and Joseph Irwin found that these bleak fictional portrayals of bureaucracy were not just fictional.
The inner life of the bureaucrat
A strange tension exists between purpose and rules, between care and compliance, and between human judgment and algorithmic decision-making that public servants face daily. They are asked to innovate but are also responsible for following the rules.
Navigating bureaucracy is like wandering through a paper labyrinth where every exit sign points back inside.
Reform, whether through revolution or evolution, cannot rely solely on reorganisation or digitisation. It stems from influencing the system in ways that unlock human potential.
We could do worse than adopting Dr Coombs’ closing remarks at his National Press Club speech.
“It has been said that within every fat man there is a lean one struggling to be free. I believe that within the Australian bureaucracy there are men and women of dedication and capacity struggling for a chance to serve governments and community more effectively. If our report frees them even in part for those tasks, we will have been amply rewarded.”
