Katrina Lesson #1 -- Bureaucracy Will Kill Us, Outsource to Private Sector

Wall Street Journal ^ | September 5, 2005

[quesney]

By DANIEL HENNINGER WSJ Op/Ed columnist

...We know what to do, but we are not good at using what we know. Why not?

We fail to use well what we know because we rely too much on large public bureaucracies. This was the primary lesson of the 9/11 Commission Report. Large public bureaucracies, whether the FBI and the CIA or FEMA and the Corps of Engineers, don't talk to each other much. They are poorly incentivized, if at all. Budgets, the oxygen of the acronymic planets, make bureaucracy's managers first responders to constant political whim...

Homeland Security, a new big bureaucracy, has struggled since 2001 to assemble a feasible plan to respond to another major terror event inside the U.S. The possibility, or likelihood, of a bird-borne flu pandemic is beginning to reach public awareness...Any bets on which will come first -- the flu or the distribution system?

Big public bureaucracies are going to get us killed...we ought to at least recognize that our increasingly tough First World problems -- terrorism, viruses, the rising incidence of powerful natural disasters -- are being addressed by a public sector that too often is coming to resemble a Third World that can't execute.

...We should consider outsourcing some of these functions to the private sector. In recent days, offers of help have come from such companies as Anheuser-Busch and Culligan (water), Lilly, Merck and Wyeth (pharmaceuticals), Nissan and GM (cars and trucks), Sprint, Nextel and Qwest (communications gear and phone cards)...Give contract authority to organize these resources...

...if we're going to live with First World threats, such as the destruction of a major port city, let's deploy the most imaginative First World brains -- in the private sector and academia...Laughably implausible? Look at your TV screen. The status quo isn't funny.

[quesney]

Man's got a point.

[quesney]

link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112562889661629997-email,00.html

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[Loyal Buckeye]

One of the writer's assumption is that some functions should be outsourced to the private sector. While the private sector would be better than government for some of the functions, it is not foolproof.

I believe FEMA's function s/b rolled into the Defense Dept. where the skills and resources reside.

[hflynn]

We should consider outsourcing some of these functions to the private sector.

And then the private sector will outsource it to India. Great idea. I can hardly wait to call Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit to tell her I'm on my roof in New York when will you be coming by to rescue me? Oh yeah, 1 more thing Delhi, bring me a Ham & Swiss on rye.

[sergeantdave]

I have no problem with seeing 10 million bureaucrats fired and the money used to pay for their bloated salaries and welfare benefits returned to the citizens and business.

[Uncle Ike]

The first order of business in any crisis should be to round up all politicians and pundits and ship them to a gulag in the desert for the duration.

[Jeff Head]

LESSONS I LEARNED FROM KATRINA

[shekkian]

Last year I worked as a reservist for FEMA, to help with hurricane relief. I'll tell you straight out that you cannot rely on the government to take care of you.

It's all politics.

[AngrySpud]

" It's all politics."

And as one who has worked on public health Homeland Security issues for three years, allow me say that it's 1/3 politics, 1/3 misguided priorities, and 1/3 missing sense of urgency. We are NOT ready for a disease pandemic or bioterrorism, and clearly not ready for a major natural disaster.

The President needs to knock some heads together and set priorities. Anyone who works in Homeland Security should see the President as their Commander-in-Chief, and start doing their jobs as if it were a MISSION, because it IS.

[HEY4QDEMS]

The private sector could answer some of the issues at hand.

But the biggest point that was made on me was mentioned over the weekend on the news which was that the levy was plugged and shored up without wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and years of red tape on feel good environmental impact studies.

Even the private sector developers have to grovel before conservation boards which cow tow to the radical greens.

And now because swamps are now called wetlands we are facing ever increasing threats from mosquito borne plagues.

So anyone who considers voting green in the future should look at New Orleans and ask themselves if this is really how they want to live.

It's to bad that a catastrophe like Katrina is required to make people wake up.

[moasicwolf]

How about everyone just taking responsibility for their own lives. What a concept.

[Morgan in Denver]

Frankly, I think it would do a world of good to get rid of the union influence in government as well. There's too much of the attitude they cannot be fired for incompetence and not enough management power to make employees do their jobs.

[AngrySpud]

Yup, and that's a problem even where government employees *aren't* unionized.

[Morgan in Denver]

True. It's not always the unions. Much of the problem I've seen dealing with various government types is lack of good business proceedure or management.

[xrhopsiomega]

Bureaucracy is not a bad thing. In fact is it necessary. Without it, no large coordinated effort can succeed. As bad as bureaucracy can seem, the alternative would be chaos.

[tiki]

But, but, the government always knows best! We need our nanny state to hold our hands at each important moment in our lives. We all know that government is the only effective means of help for all people. No one is self-sufficient, nor should they be, that's why we need government to be so top heavy and why we need to send them more and more money.