It appears to me that the structure and mission of a lot of US government agencies has been carefully designed and constructed by the corporate wielders of big money to advance their interests. The upcoming fate of
vaping is a good example of what that leads to.
I put in a few years as a software contractor working for the Civil Service in the UK so I saw it from the inside. Politicians used to complain that the CS ignored them and just went on doing things the way they had always been done, leadership in the CS was a long term career path and they were pretty much untouchable. In the US there are a multitude of political appointees at the higher levels of departments. They move in for short periods, they may or may not be competent leaders, and have to prove themselves quickly to whoever appointed them. A motley crew of political ideologues, donors, and lobbyists. So management styles and policies swing wildly from one extreme to another every few years. I guess both structures have positives and negatives. Tradition and inertia, or the swamp.
Here’s a fun Civil Service story. Back in the 70’s I was working for the Trade and Industry dept. We were due to get a visit from the Minister in charge of the dept, as it happens he was a Lord. Management were in a tizzy for weeks getting ready for it.
The computer team were mostly contractors. We decided to have a bit of fun with our manager. He told us to wear suits and behave. We came in that morning wearing suits but right before the minister arrived we changed into crazy gear to wind up our manager.
The place where we worked was an old WW2 establishment, a series of long narrow one story prefabs. One guy left it too late to get back to the office where our suits were. He decided to climb out of a window and run around the back of the building. He ended up jumping out of the window in fancy dress just as the minister’s convoy was driving in. His Lordship was actually quite cool, when he heard the story he mercilessly ragged our manager about it.
Here’s some of our crew.
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