Rest in Peace, Herr Weber!*

Ask anyone the first thing that comes to mind when they heard the word ‘government’. Chances are you will hear the word ‘bureaucracy’. And very rarely in a friendly tone, either. What is it with bureaucracy that send people shivering in disgust?

For one, the word signifies a maze of a process with lots of forms to fill and equally lots of people to seek approval from, not to mention the frequent, not-so-short waits that go with it. The depressingly long and time-consuming procedure is also known as red tape. The expression refers to old British custom of tying up official documents with red ribbons.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine caught a rather severe flu. Being a dedicated employee that he is, he didn’t want to miss a day’s work and therefore decided to visit the MoF clinic during lunchtime. With his head pounding and his nose running to the point that he started sneezing every ten seconds, he casually walked to the clinic expecting to get an immediate treatment. He was so wrong that even God himself could not make it right.

As he had never been there before, he was required to fill up a form consisting of the details of him and his family. Other than that, he had to fill up two slips, yellow and blue. However, to obtain those two slips he must first fill another form that necessitated the approval of his superior or somebody from the General Affairs Division. That meant he had to go back to his office to get the signature of his superior and get back to the clinic to get the colored slips, and return to his office again because the slips had to be manually-typed, not handwritten. On top of that, he had to go to a nearby Fujifilm outlet to have his photos processed because the slips required an attachment of two recent photos. He was starting to see a long, dark tunnel with a bright light at the end by the time he arrived back to the clinic to get some medical treatment. See what I mean?

It didn’t start out this way, mind you. A German gentleman named Weber developed this noble concept of setting things in order. Within bureaucracy, Herr Weber dictates that labor should be well-defined and specified to avoid confusion, roles should be hierarchically arranged with a single chain of command, rules should be impersonal to ensure fair treatments, and similarly relationships should also be made impersonal by the use of procedures and written records. All these are designed to ensure that works are organized efficiently and services dispensed effectively. However, as is the case with other noble concepts that looks good on paper but do not mix well with human implementation (remember Socialism?), along the way bureaucracy began to derail from its original course.

Hierarchy which was supposed to be a way of delegation of authority and procedure as a way of standardizing service are often seen as a convenient method to avoid making decision. If you try to question the clinic people why the slips has to be manually typed, the most likely response you will get is: Hey, I don’t make the rules! If you are mad enough to insist that the rules be changed, they will tell you that they don’t have the authority and refer you to their supervisor whom will in turn refer you to his supervisor, and so on and so forth. The next thing you know, you are filling the guest book of Istana Merdeka.

However, before you start sipping Baygon, please note that there is still hope. MoF is undergoing a bureaucracy reform. The reform includes a restructuring of the existing organizational structure, development of better—hopefully less maddening—procedures, improvement of business process, and enhancement of Human Resource quality. Hopefully, once the dust has settled MoF will emerge as a more efficient and better serving organization. And Herr Weber would stop stirring in his grave.

It's an article I submitted to the office mag, Warta Anggaran