When bureaucracies go wrong

[andrewducker]

This is a perfect example of how bureaucracies go wrong.  And it's because people don't understand systems and their limitations.

At some point, someone has set up the rule "If an escort is travelling to school with a child then they must have passed police checks."  Which is, I think you'll agree, a good rule.

However, they've failed to provide the exception "Unless they are the person's parent."  Which is clearly a vital exception.  But it seems the council _doesn't have an exception making system_.  Once a rule is set up, nobody is able to make changes to the system once it's in place, in order to finesse it.  This is deadly.

I work in a large company.  We have huge, complex systems.  And whenever we build a new one, we make damn sure that we have ways of creating exceptions.  In fact there tend to be two types of exceptions - ones where a senior person can say "That rule doesn't apply in this exceptional circumstance, override it." and ones where a senior person can say "This doesn't fit any of the normal exceptions, we need to go in and do things completely differently."  These equate to flexible rules in the system (overridable warnings) and direct database modification.  The latter clearly requires all sorts of sign-off - but the _underlying system_ allows it to be done, because we know that any system has exceptions we've thought of, and exceptions we haven't.

Clearly, what the council needs is a way of dealing with these two exceptions - someone reaosnably senior should have a "temporary escort waiver for a parent/guardian" form, which can be used while someone is being checked by the police, and someone more senior than that should be able to step in and say "This rule doesn't apply in this situation - person X is exempt." (either temporarily or permanently).

This applies to _any_ system, whether it's financial, bureaucratic, legal, political, etc.  If you don't have a way of dealing with exceptional circumstances, both expected and unexpected, you're fucked.

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Which is, I think you'll agree, a good rule.

Nope, it's a stupidly paranoid one that won't particularly help. It prevents not just the parent but many who might otherwise be nominated by the parent, be it family, friends, or the local shopkeeper they've gotten to know. We should stop seeing some datacheck on people's backgrounds as such a safety blanket and return more trust to the actual parents of kids.

A sparkling CRB certificate is evidence of nothing useful. It doesn't mean the person is not a potential threat, it means they may be perfectly innocent, they may be about to commit their first offense or they may have gotten away with previous ones somehow. Making people produce bits of paper to placate councils whilst preventing trustworthy people from interacting with children because they don't have one is as stupid as stopping people in the street because taking photographs might indicate they're about to blow someone up.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I agree with that sentiment, however, society is well down the road to putting more trust in a piece of paper than common sense. It's the same in many educational fields where a qualification is seen as more important than years of experience.

[andrewducker]

In some ways, that's a good thing. Because the old system, where you didn't have to back up your decisions with a paper trail, was even more open to nepotism and severely biased/bigoted choices.

[andrewducker]

So what you need is an exception whereby the parent can sign off an alternative carer.

If someone is being supplied by the council then it makes sense to at least check that someone has never been found guilty of assaulting kids.

[drplokta]

Look at it from the point of view of the chief executive of the council. If he allows for exceptions to procedures, then everyone who has the authority to make such exceptions can destroy the chief executive's career at any time, by making an exception that turns out badly. If he doesn't allow for any exceptions at all, then the worst that can happen is a few news stories complaining about over-rigid procedures.

In the private sector, the chief executive has more to gain from flexibility in procedures (higher profitability means a bigger bonus/more valuable share options) and less to lose (less public scrutiny, so his career can probably survive a disaster or two).

[andrewducker]

A simple "Employee X gave permission without checking correctly or engaging his brain. He's been sent off the vats, and all other employees have been hit with the clue stick." should be enough to save a chief exec's job.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps the chief exec him/herself could be required to sign off on exceptions. This one only needs done once: CRB checked person or the child's parent. (Possibly also the parent's nominee.) Allowing exceptions in a system doesn't mean letting anyone do anything to it.

[ami-bender.livejournal.com]

A large percentage of abuse (most?) happens by relatives. It may very well be that we perceive as stupidity was actually, for better or worse, a thought out decision.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

The vast majority, I think. But protecting a child from abuse only during council-funded taxi journeys would be an odd priority.

[andrewducker]

You just made me giggle loudly enough to wake Julie up.

I hope you're proud of yourself :-p

[zz]

the web developer at work joined us full of programming methodologies, and will still write things entirely OO and with a bundle of abstraction layers where possible, but he's stopped complaining about how seemingly kludgy and disorganised the existing code is, now that he's written things (carefully designed with use-case diagrams before writing any code...) from scratch and then been asked for a new special case or feature every week for the past few months, he seems to be slowly gaining enlightenment. :>

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I have tendencies in that direction, although they don't go as far as UML. I do like to have patterns, but I've learned to make sure they're flexible and minimal enough to allow actual work to get done :->

[girl-onthego.livejournal.com]

Wow. I love your country, really I do, but sometimes the government bodies there are just f*cking *stupid*.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

But it seems the council _doesn't have an exception making system_. Once a rule is set up, nobody is able to make changes to the system once it's in place, in order to finesse it.

Of course there are people who can change the system once it's been set up. They're called councillors. In this case, the relevant cabinet member could decide to amend the policy, or the full council could vote for a change. Making an exception to the CRB requirement for parent carers would have no financial implications, and so could be done quite straightforwardly at any time.