Amy Zegart Quotes

I think cleaning house at the CIA needed to happen.

The 33 different intelligence systems paid for by 15 different agencies need to be brought together…. A national debate on intelligence is necessary! … I am going to continue to fight a system that doesn’t want to hear the word “reform.”

Accountability goes hand in hand with reform.

Senior military officers will not accept defense reform unless it is forced upon them.

In the absence of a crisis, the status quo in Washington is more or less set in cement, as advocacy groups and turf-conscious government officials are able to thwart change.

[Independent Federal] agencies, like other bureaucracies don’t like being transformed.. They have cultures and they want to preserve those cultures.

As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction.

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.

Entrenched bureaucracies are always opposed to fundamental changes.

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better.

We do as much harm holding onto programs and people past their natural life span as we do when we employ massive organizational air strikes. However, destroying comes at the end of life's cycle, not as a first response.

Professional opinion is almost inevitably against changes.

Those Who Slow Reforms Are Against Europe

In every society the permanent government is more change averse than the changing government.

Reform is a monstrous way of dealing with problems.

There are changes in the works.

Abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Everybody wants change. But the problem is how you manage change.

… the admirable purpose of Cabinet Ministers, bent on reforming their different departments, but dexterously 'blocked' by the permanent officials

There are limits to what reorganization and reform can do.

Most governments and people want reform. It’s the prospect of change that makes reform rare.

These reforms will not be popular with everybody—especially those who are doing just fine under the present system.

We’ve already decided to change. The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?

In every developing country, even developed ones, vested interests prevent sectors from being reformed.