Instructor Notes - The Bureaucracy

Instructor Notes for Week 9 – Chapter 13 - The Bureaucracy

This may sound like a very boring chapter to students but this is an amazing subject area about the people who actually run our government on a daily basis. They provide continuity between administrations and in their often long careers, they learn to work with both parties to uphold the laws of our land. I worked in the state government in Topeka in both the Kansas Corporation Commission and also in the Governor's office. At the time, I had two degrees in Political Science and therefore a book knowledge of the government. I learned during my tenure that the bureaucracy is actually of a much higher quality than I had imagined. There are many dedicated and intelligent people working for our government - of course there are glaring exceptions and these are the ones who give the bureaucracy the bad/negative reputation. Enjoy this chapter and try to keep an open mind as you read, discuss and learn.

My sister had five degrees and worked for the Federal Government most of her adult life. She had an exciting career in the secret service for part of that time and achieved a G-18 rating. A government job can be a good career decision for college graduates.

"The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), originally the National Performance Review, was the Clinton-Gore Administration's interagency task force to reform and streamline the way the federal government works. It was the eleventh federal reform effort in the twentieth century. In creating NPR on March 3, 1993, President Clinton said: “Our goal is to make the entire federal government less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment.”The President asked the Vice President to report on the findings of this National Performance Review within six months. Vice President Gore, however, went far beyond preparing a report and led an effort that evolved into the longest-running and most successful reform effort in U.S. history to date. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/whoweare/historyofnpr.html (Links to an external site.)