A Cure Worse than the Disease

In recent years，our national leaders responded to the growing crisis with traditional medicine.They blamed the bureaucrats.They railed against“fraud，waste，and abuse”.And they slapped ever more controls on the bureaucracy to prevent it.

But the cure has become indistinguishable from the disease.The problem is not lazy or incompetent people;it is red tape and regulation so suffocating that they stifle every ounce of creativity.No one would offer a drowning man a drink of water.And yet，for more than a decade，we have added red tape to a system already strangling in it.(https://www.daowen.com)

The federal government is filled with good people trapped in bad systems:budget systems，personnel systems，procurement systems，financial management systems，information systems.When we blame the people and impose more controls，we make the systems worse.Over the past 15 years，for example.Congress has created within each agency an independent office of the inspector general.The idea was to root out fraud，waste，and abuse.The inspectors general have certainly uncovered important problems.But as we learned in conversation after conversation，they have so intimidated federal employees that many are now afraid to deviate even slightly from standard operating procedure.

Yet innovation，by its nature，requires deviation.Unfortunately，faced with so many controls，many employees have simply given up.They do everything by the book—whether it makes sense or not.They fill out forms that should never have been created，follow rules that should never have been imposed，and prepare reports that serve no purpose—and are often never even read.In the name of controlling waste，we have created paralyzing inefficiency.It's time we found a way to get rid of waste and encourage efficiency.