Efficiency in Public Organizations

I have heard recently that efficiency in public bureaucratic organizations means shortening the time of finding and retreating long-searched information from extensive archives. If this proposition is right it means that bureaucracy main role is to organize and to reduce the financial cost and time search range of updated figures and insightful analyses. However, the perception of citizens toward mammoth systems is exactly the opposite of Weber’s ideal model for public agencies. Governmental departments, for example, are largely recognized for taking a long time to solve citizens’ routine complaints.

So, what went wrong with Weber’s model for efficiency?

The motives are various but two internal reasons can be highlighted. First, capacity-building, public servants are generally poorly trained, lack motivation to come up with creative solutions, and do not receive constructive feedbacks from complacent managers. Second, procedures and technology, systems found in public offices are usually outdated as well as the information added from time to time to the hardware. These two issues prevent the Weberian model from witnessing the evolution of bureaucratic systems by optimizing time search and financial costs during planning and implementation of projects.

Another issue has to do with structure. Bureaucracies are mainly vertical and one-way organized. Information and decisions come from top to lower ranks. As the majority does not participate in hardly any relevant decisions, ownership and reward are concepts little known among bureaucrats.

Efficiency, thus, has more to do with the implementation of a two-way continuous exchange of information and the establishment of fluid horizontal boundaries from where information freely flow and quick decisions are made. An example is IT companies where employees are at the same time service providers and stakeholders of the success of the entire system. An employee reaches easily any other person in the hierarchy and is responsible for the consequences of the services provided to the general public.

If public organizations have something to learn from private companies is that efficiency in terms of costs of time and capital has more to do with decision-making, ownership, and competition rather than organizing heaps of information in archives that become outdated in an extreme short period of time.