Public Administration: A Personal Approach
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1954.tb01727.x |
| Author | F. P. Dunnill |
| Date | 01 March 1954 |
| Published date | 01 March 1954 |
Public Administration
:
A
Personal
Approach
By
F.
P.
DUNNILL
This article was awarded the Haldane Prize
for
1953.
T
is as well to remind oneself now and then that Public Administration
I
concerns people, and to try to distinguish its legitimate from its actual
beneficiaries. One may, perhaps, even
go
further and make some tentative
suggestions as to how public servants might apply themselves to their primary
task of looking after people.
Let
us
begin by examining some of the more obvious heresies that obscure
the connexion between the machinery
of
government and the people it is
supposed to benefit. Consider first institutionalism-the conscious or uncon-
scious belief that the system has life, virtue, validity of its own, mystically
detached from the people it exists to serve. Hear two elderly civil servants
concurring over coffee.
“
It’s nice to find old departments like ours helping
each other out,” says one.
“
We’re always ready,” says the other with a wink,
“
to stretch a point for the Board of. . . ”.
“
I
make no secret,” says a senior
official,
“
that my first loyalty is to the office
:
individuals come second.”
“
When I’m considering a man for promotion,” says another,
“
I
always ask
myself whether he’s put himself out on behalf of the office. Does he play cricket,
take part in social activities
?
It’s the same as it was at school
:
one can spot
a good man that way.” Proper sentiments
!
Well, are they
?
A second heresy is expertism-the belief that any job, however marginal,
is worth doing supremely well.
“
If you want this sum done,” cries one
statistician,
“
for God’s sake don’t ask for the answer tomorrow. Let me do it
properly, in my own time.”
“
I
want this form reprinted, this or that
refinement,” says another,
“
to get my figures just so much nearer perfection.
Of course they’re perfectly serviceable at present, but
.
.
. ”.
“
Don’t ask me
for a snap decision on that,” says the administrator-lawyer,
“
I
have
my
professional reputation to think
of.
Yes, yes,
I
know it’s urgent.”
“
We must
avoid at
all
costs,” says the administrator-doctor,
“
anything that might annoy
the medical profession.” Honourable, sensible men! But who pays for
their fastidiousness
?
Athirdgroup of heretics comprises the carpet-baggers, the empire-builders
who make the service their oyster. We find them taking good ideas and flogging
them to death, crying their departmental wares in the market place, forming
committees for the perpetuation
of
more committees, deploying their sub-
ordinates in intricate struggles that have little relation to the needs of the
people who pay their salaries. But public
servants . .
.
?
It
does not end there, for there are other, subtler heretical categories
:
the quiet-lifers, the clear desk merchants, the formal logicians, the feuders,
the cranks. One can extend the list indefinitely-and find a suitable niche for
oneself. The point is that it is all too easy to forget, in the conditions that
official
flesh
is
heir
to,
that
one’s
first
duty
lies
outside
the
service-with
people,
Active, able, persuasive men.
123
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