Joseph Wambaugh Quotes

Lacking a profit motive, workers in the government by and large have a different work ethic from those in private industry. When they could make one call, federal workers take a meeting. When they could find an answer on the Internet, they form a study committee. Instead of appointing one supervisor, they appoint five.

The British civil service ... is a beautifully designed and effective braking mechanism.

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—how not to do it. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart.

I think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

The minute you're working with the government, you're dealing with bureaucracy, you're dealing with time lags, you're dealing with rigidity, you're dealing with a slow pace.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..

People complain about bureaucracy. You haven't seen bureaucracy until you've seen bureaucracy in China.

Government on its own is always inefficient.

Don't make government work like a business... it's inherently inefficient.

It's that government bureaucracies crush innovation. We are falling further and further behind in our government.

The velocity of decision making in government was extraordinary slow. It took 18 to 24 months and 15 to 20 trips to Delhi to get a license to import computers.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil.

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel? We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.

I will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.

Delay has the odor of the Beltway.

The persistence of public officials varies inversely with the importance of the matter on which they are persisting

Should bureaucratic ways prevail and paper reign supreme? Should red tape and the Status Quo become our nation’s dream?

It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.

It is easier to waste time on bureaucratic reorganization than it is to accomplish anything concrete.

The city’s [civil service] workforce must be considered part of the solution, not the problem.

Almost everything the government runs becomes mediocre in time ... bureaucracy leads to mediocrity.

You can't fire anybody in Government; everyone blames the system. Look what is happening in NASA. Now we have to truck out these 200-plus audits out of the closet because we had a disaster [the Challenger], and we still can't find someone to fire.

Have you ever noticed that it’s only the public sector that complains about too many customers.