What do these divisions suggest about the way Congress exercises oversight over the federal bureaucracy? Do you think this oversight is an effective way to control a bureaucracy as large and complex as the U. Why or why not? A number of laws passed in the decades between the end of the Second World War and the late s have created a framework through which citizens can exercise their own bureaucratic oversight.
FOIA provides journalists and the general public the right to request records from various federal agencies. These agencies are required by law to release that information unless it qualifies for one of nine exemptions. These exceptions cite sensitive issues related to national security or foreign policy, internal personnel rules, trade secrets, violations of personnel privacy rights, law enforcement information, and oil well data.
FOIA also compels agencies to post some types of information for the public regularly without being requested. The black marks cover information the CIA deemed particularly sensitive.
In fiscal year , the government received , FOIA requests, with just three departments—Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice—accounting for more than half those queries. In its latest report, published in and using and data the most recent available , ten of the fifteen did not earn satisfactory overall grades, scoring less than seventy of a possible one hundred points.
The Government in Sunshine Act of is different from FOIA in that it requires all multi-headed federal agencies to hold their meetings in a public forum on a regular basis. The act defines a meeting as any gathering of agency members in person or by phone, whether in a formal or informal manner. These include meetings where classified information is discussed, proprietary data has been submitted for review, employee privacy matters are discussed, criminal matters are brought up, and information would prove financially harmful to companies were it released.
Citizens and citizen groups can also follow rulemaking and testify at hearings held around the country on proposed rules.
The rulemaking process and the efforts by federal agencies to keep open records and solicit public input on important changes are examples of responsive bureaucracy. A more extreme, and in many instances, more controversial solution to the perceived and real inefficiencies in the bureaucracy is privatization. In the United States, largely because it was born during the Enlightenment and has a long history of championing free-market principles, the urge to privatize government services has never been as strong as it is in many other countries.
There are simply far fewer government-run services. Nevertheless, the federal government has used forms of privatization and contracting throughout its history. This movement grew stronger in the s and s as politicians, particularly on the right, declared that air needed to be let out of the bloated federal government.
In the s, as President Bill Clinton and especially his vice president, Al Gore, worked to aggressively shrink the federal bureaucracy, privatization came to be embraced across the political spectrum. But to many others, talk of privatization is worrying. They contend that certain government functions are simply not possible to replicate in a private context.
When those in government speak of privatization, they are often referring to one of a host of different models that incorporate the market forces of the private sector into the function of government to varying degrees. We will look at three of these types of privatization shortly. Following his reelection in , President George W. Bush attempted to push a proposal to partially privatize Social Security. The proposal did not make it to either the House or Senate floor for a vote.
Divestiture, or full privatization, occurs when government services are transferred, usually through sale, from government bureaucratic control into an entirely market-based, private environment. At the federal level this form of privatization is very rare, although it does occur.
When it was created in , it was designed to be a government entity for processing federal student education loans. Over time, however, it gradually moved further from its original purpose and became increasingly private.
Sallie Mae reached full privatization in Investigations Services, Inc. At the state level, however, the privatization of roads, public utilities, bridges, schools, and even prisons has become increasingly common as state and municipal authorities look for ways to reduce the cost of government. Possibly the best-known form of privatization is the process of issuing government contracts to private companies in order for them to provide necessary services.
Under President George W. Bush, the use of contracting out federal services reached new heights. By , reliance on contracting to run the war was so great that contractors outnumbered soldiers.
Such contracting has faced quite a bit of criticism for both its high cost and its potential for corruption and inefficiencies. Third-party financing is a far more complex form of privatization than divestiture or contracting.
Here the federal government signs an agreement with a private entity so the two can form a special-purpose vehicle to take ownership of the object being financed. The special-purpose vehicle is empowered to reach out to private financial markets to borrow money. This type of privatization is typically used to finance government office space, military base housing, and other large infrastructure projects.
Departments like the Congressional Budget Office have frequently criticized this form of privatization as particularly inefficient and costly for the government. One the most the most important forms of bureaucratic oversight comes from inside the bureaucracy itself. Those within are in the best position to recognize and report on misconduct. But bureaucracies tend to jealously guard their reputations and are generally resistant to criticism from without and from within.
This can create quite a problem for insiders who recognize and want to report mismanagement and even criminal behavior. The personal cost of doing the right thing can be prohibitive. Under heightened skepticism due to government inefficiency and outright corruption in the s, government officials began looking for solutions. It imposes constraints on what bureaucrats can do, it creates mandates for the information they must collect, and it establishes expectations about the transparency in which they must operate.
Bureaucrats sometimes find the collection of constraints annoying. Sometimes the steps toward accountability get in the way of good government, by creating mindless forms and piles of paper that no one reads.
In a democracy, however, there is nothing more threatening than a bureaucracy that is NOT accountable. Bureaucracies are how governments exercise their power: how they collect taxes, deploy armies, regulate commerce, manage programs, and often limit the rights of citizens. But, on the other hand, there is nothing more threatening to the effectiveness of government than a bureaucracy that is unaccountable.
A bureaucracy that fails to meet the standards of accountability—that does not answer to the policy goals of elected officials or the policy aspirations of citizens—soon loses its legitimacy.
That makes it harder to raise money to do what citizens and policy makers want done. That only ties the hands of bureaucrats more, driving costs up and effectiveness down. How is the bureaucracy held accountable by Congress?
Which of the following bureaucratic agencies are clientele agencies? Who has an issue with the bureaucracies making laws? What is rule making authority? What is rule making action? Why is Rulemaking important? Does the SEC promulgate rules and regulations? Why is the rule making so important in public policy?
Is Rulemaking a political process? What is individual rulemaking? How do you create rules and regulations? Is notice and comment rulemaking formal? How do I submit a public comment?
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