Stepping out of the federal building, one morning, I met a couple of settlement workers, on their way to an interview with one of the private settlement agencies. For the five-to-fifteen percent of immigrants who enter as refugees (maybe 15-30,000 yearly), these contract agencies are vital, teaching them everything from opening a bank account to grocery shopping.

These agencies run on a shoestring. That shoestring is really frayed by the government’s reporting obligations, the hours spent meeting all the Transparency and Accountability regulations. These regulations prevent anyone from getting rich off the public purse.

So here were these two settlement workers, waiting at the bus stop.  How come? Why were they taking the bus, when our office had a stack of taxi chits and two cars parked in the basement parkade? Because all the paperwork just to get a taxi chit or borrow the car was such a pain in the ass. They had their own monthly bus passes, and transit was just plain easier.

“All the paperwork” across the public service prevents civil servants from getting rich off the public purse. But I was dumfounded to discover that “all the paperwork” oppresses clerks and team leaders, even more than ordinary citizens. And at an enormous cost to the taxpayer.

Do the math: two middle-level civil-servant salaries (gross) times forty-five minutes each way on the bus, versus two 10-minute cab rides, there and back. A cost of well over $100 for riding the bus, versus under $50 for taking a cab.  But the $50 comes from the manager’s operating budget. The salaries are department expenses and already spent.  And bonus:  the loss of productive time from hard-working clerks might just generate the need to hire more.

Now, if you want to check out some private charitable organization, whether it’s generally well run, you can find websites with spread-sheets on their “Cost of Administration” – what it takes them just to run their office. An average charity (like a private settlement agency) has a cost of administration in the 14-16 percent range. Special circumstances or their sort of work may justify a cost of administration of 20 percent. If it passes 20 percent, watch out. Almost certainly they’re skimming off the top, overpaying staff or bloating their workforce.

In 2007, then-federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser announced that the cost of administration of the Government of Canada had passed 30 percent. Thirty cents of every tax dollar spent just getting the money somewhere – ignoring whatever good or bad it does there.

That was the same year I started working as a federal adjudicator. In my 11 years since, I saw “Transparency and Accountability” run down the rabbit hole. I racked up expenses of $289 on a government trip to a neighboring city, and I figured that it cost the taxpayer well over $700 – in my time, my Ottawa director’s time, and her assistant’s time –filling and approving all the forms. I got an $8.00 per diem for breakfast, so the assistant had to call my motel, to ensure that my breakfast hadn’t been included in the room charge. I might have flown to Rio on that…

Everyone knows that the Public Service is bloated, but few realize that it’s bloating from the very regulations designed to prevent “the abuse of public funds.” If we have private market instincts, we may think bureaucrats find those regulations burdensome. But they don’t. They love them. The Public Service has no bottom line, there’s reward for efficiency, and directors worry only about avoiding managerial screw-ups. So “Transparency and Accountability” is their playing field in competing for promotion. Careers are made by multiplying the regulatory burdens on the lowly clerks below them.

Directors waste buckets, preventing the appearance of perks, two or three levels down – the appearance of perks. Suppose we have a public ceremony at an evening venue. The team leader signs out the department minivan to get everybody there. When the ceremony is done, 9:00 or 10:00 PM, everybody must get home. They can’t take a late-night bus. Something might happen. Someone would be responsible. So, common sense says the team leader should use the minivan to get everyone home, go home herself, and bring the minivan back the next morning. Call that: “the lowest cost.” That’s what the team leader wants to do. But using the minivan to come to work the next day violates a regulation against using a government vehicle for private transportation. So everybody goes back to the office in the minivan, gets a taxi chit and then takes separate cabs home. Call that: the greatest cost, but least responsibility.

You may ask, why can’t public servants simply use common-sense?  Because the HUMA – the Homogenous, Universal and Managerial Administration – has no “R” for Responsible.  The Public Service is a monopoly and has a limitless (so it thinks) revenue.  So this really is a fundamental, monopolistic problem. How does any ambitious young civil servant climb to the top?  With the greatest Transparency and Accountability. By circulating proposed Program Delivery Instructions to innumerable policy advisors for the most cautious selection of verbs.  (Emails on verb choice…) By cultivating consensus through interminable meetings, so that procedural decisions arise from no one in particular. By multiplying reports, spreadsheets, Powerpoint decks and “dashboards.” By being utterly innocuous toward upper management, while causing all sorts of collateral complication in the actual work on the shop floor.  It’s like a religious hierarchy, competing for advancement by displaying ever more dramatic levels of devotion, faith and holiness.

I once had a brief but heart-felt conversation with a really smart, life-long civil servant, who had risen fairly high as an executive assistant. I vented to her about my latest annoyance or two with the CYA culture, again mentioned Sheila Fraser’s revelation, and then condemned “Transparency and Accountability” as the arteriosclerosis of the Public Service. At some point, the veins get so clogged, the heart – the national economy – stops beating.

Her response was decisive:  “Transparency and accountability are good things. How can you argue against them?” And indeed, how can you? Where’s the traction?  We need checks-and-balances within government to prevent graft. But then, how do you structure the monopoly public service, so people can’t build their careers simply by avoiding responsibility?

We know how the marketplace does it. There’s a profit bottom-line. Despite HUMA mythology, private industry has found that the bottom-line is boosted by ambitious managers knowing how to make their people happy.  Most people seek happiness in working hard at their jobs, and bosses generally build the bottom-line by helping them do that. Directors in the Public Service, however, are under no such pressure – except when their bosses want reports on workplace satisfaction.  In which they always get glowing marks.

Much more on this, as we proceed.