Bureaucratic capture

[Brian Gladman]

Julian wrote:

>I've had some involvement with setting up of outside (but government
>appointed) over-seer or review committees (i.e parliamentary
>sub-committees). Provided the selection process isn't tainted,
>these committees usually start out quite well, but invariably become
>captured by the very bureaucrats they were designed to control
>(west-minster style ministers are of course the sorry instance of
>an over-seer committee of one).

Yes I can imagine that this is a problem but they still seem better than
nothing.  I am convinced that secrecy, although necessary in some government
activities, can be, and often is, used for the wrong purposes.

>Frequent rotation of reviewing members sounds like a good idea,
>but often actually makes the review panel even less effective. New
>members (and ministers) often rely excessively on existing members,
>department honchos and technocrats because they are ignorant about
>the technical environment and bureaucratic structure of the department
>they are meant to be policing. During this babe-in-the wood
>phase new members are incredibly vulnerable to what can only be called
>bureaucratic predation. Readers of this list might like to ponder
>what aspects bureaucratic predation of novice ministers is involved in
>the current shifts in the crypto policy of New Labour.

I think that a tunover of members is a good thing, though, despite such
difficulties

>Ordinary specialist government review committees as outlined above
>have a hard enough time of keeping their independence. When you
>push that model into a world of classified, secret briefings, which
>can't be discussed with anyone half-way objective, and enrolment
>into the secret enclave of the boys own spy adventure - a rather
>exciting and aren't-we-special experience for members of the UK
>labour party who most UK IC guys wouldn't otherwise touch with a
>ten-foot pole - in an area with no voter discipline (e.g the Health
>Department can give you all the secret briefings it desires, if
>you screw up, the voting public - or by proxy your political party's
>pre-selection endorsement system will spank you - the same can not
>be said for intelligence, which the voting public doesn't care
>about and which the intelligence community ensure's will never care
>about - even to the extent of hiding the level of public funds
>being syphoning off to feed them) bureaucratic capture is inevitable
>and absolute.

I am not so sure of this. I liked what the NRC did for cryptography in the
US and I don't think anyone could seriously accuse them of being totally
captured by the groups they reviewed.

We have enough academics (and others) in the UK who I would be happy to
trust for purposes of independent scrutiny.  In particular, I simply do not
accept the 'if you knew what we knew you would agree with us' argument
unless it is subject to real independent scrutiny - I have seen this from
the other side!

Such scrutiny processes may be imperfect but less so than doing nothing.  I
guess that you are not suggesting doing nothing though?

    regards, Brian