T he dance of the modern bureaucrat is algorithmic performance art. Dutifully executing protocols, they moves pulpy packets of information between fle

Disrupting Bureaucracy

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2024-11-11 08:30:04

T he dance of the modern bureaucrat is algorithmic performance art. Dutifully executing protocols, they moves pulpy packets of information between fleshy nodes, up and down interlocking hierarchies. Opaque and resistant to adaptation, they represent the lowest of the low hanging fruit in an era of disruptive innovation. Software may be eating the world, but some things are simply harder to digest.

Yet the time will come. In the early 1990s, falling transaction costs in the form of rapid innovations in information technology lead to a wave of corporate outsourcing and downsizing. This trend trickled up to shape public-sector reforms worldwide, from major acts of deregulation to increased subcontracting of government services (though still within a lumbering and easily corrupted analog medium).

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the internet and spread of personal computers inspired a “first wave” of e-government initiatives, like early web portals for e-procurement, again following corporate’s lead. Today, software driven information systems and ad hoc contracting have become the private sector norm, automating significant administrative and logistical functions in ways that increasingly use artificial intelligence (sometimes called “autonomics”) to adapt in real time.