This is smaller government?

In the October issue of Washington Monthly, the editor’s column, “Tilting at Windmills,” contains a bit about the layering of bureaucracy in Washington these days. (Washington Monthly is, by the way, an excellent magazine. A friend gave me a copy — I was only familiar with it since Kevin Drum started blogging for them a year or so ago. I’ve read the thing cover to cover, and I feel much smarter for it. I’ll forget it all in a week’s time, though. C’est la vie.) I’ve reproduced the relevant bit here.

One day when I was working in the government, I was chatting with a young woman who had recently left my division for another in which she headed one of the smaller units. During our conversation I was somewhat taken aback when she referred to “my deputy”—there were only three other people in her unit.

The problem this anecdote illustrates is called “layering”—and it’s getting worse, according to Paul Light of New York University and Brookings, who is the leading academic authority on the federal bureaucracy. In 1960, the government had 17 layers. Today it has 58. My favorite are the titles authorized under the Assistant Secretary level. They are Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Assistant Secretary, Principal Deputy Deputy Assistant Secretary, Deputy Deputy Assistant Secretary, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary, Chief of Staff to the Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary, Deputy Associate Assistant Secretary, Assistant Deputy Assistant Secretary, Principal Associate Assistant Secretary, Associate Assistant Secretary, Chief of Staff to the Associate Assistant Secretary. Deputy Associate Assistant Secretary, Principal Assistant Assistant Secretary, and Assistant Assistant Secretary.

It’s like a Monty Python sketch, or perhaps a particularly brief chapter of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »