Administrative Burden

Administrative Burden

Author: Pamela Herd

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 2019-01-09

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 087154444X

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Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award Presented by the Public and Nonprofit Section of the National Academy of Management Winner of the 2019 Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration Bureaucracy, confusing paperwork, and complex regulations—or what public policy scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan call administrative burdens—often introduce delay and frustration into our experiences with government agencies. Administrative burdens diminish the effectiveness of public programs and can even block individuals from fundamental rights like voting. In AdministrativeBurden, Herd and Moynihan document that the administrative burdens citizens regularly encounter in their interactions with the state are not simply unintended byproducts of governance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Because burdens affect people’s perceptions of government and often perpetuate long-standing inequalities, understanding why administrative burdens exist and how they can be reduced is essential for maintaining a healthy public sector. Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion is legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles. However, policymakers have sometimes reduced administrative burdens or shifted them away from citizens and onto the government. One example is Social Security, which early administrators of the program implemented in the 1930s with the goal of minimizing burdens for beneficiaries. As a result, the take-up rate is about 100 percent because the Social Security Administration keeps track of peoples’ earnings for them, automatically calculates benefits and eligibility, and simply requires an easy online enrollment or visiting one of 1,200 field offices. Making more programs and public services operate this efficiently, the authors argue, requires adoption of a nonpartisan, evidence-based metric for determining when and how to institute administrative burdens, with a bias toward reducing them. By ensuring that the public’s interaction with government is no more onerous than it need be, policymakers and administrators can reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state that works for all citizens.


Cops, Teachers, Counselors

Cops, Teachers, Counselors

Author: Steven Williams Maynard-Moody

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2009-11-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 047202387X

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Whether on a patrol beat, in social service offices, or in public school classrooms, street-level workers continually confront rules in relation to their own beliefs about the people they encounter. Cops, Teachers, Counselors is the first major study of street-level bureaucracy to rely on storytelling. Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno collect the stories told by these workers in order to analyze the ways that they ascribe identities to the people they encounter and use these identities to account for their own decisions and actions. The authors show us how the world of street-level work is defined by the competing tensions of law abidance and cultural abidance in a unique study that finally allows cops, teachers, and counselors to voice their own views of their work. Steven Maynard-Moody is Director of the Policy Research Institute and Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas. Michael Musheno is Professor of Justice and Policy Studies at Lycoming College and Professor Emeritus of Justice Studies, Arizona State University.


Sludge

Sludge

Author: Cass R. Sunstein

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 0262365332

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How we became so burdened by red tape and unnecessary paperwork, and why we must do better. We've all had to fight our way through administrative sludge--filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality. Confronted by sludge, people just give up--and lose a promised outcome: a visa, a job, a permit, an educational opportunity, necessary medical help. In this lively and entertaining look at the terribleness of sludge, Sunstein explains what we can do to reduce it. Because of sludge, Sunstein, explains, too many people don't receive benefits to which they are entitled. Sludge even prevents many people from exercising their constitutional rights--when, for example, barriers to voting in an election are too high. (A Sludge Reduction Act would be a Voting Rights Act.) Sunstein takes readers on a tour of the not-so-wonderful world of sludge, describes justifications for certain kinds of sludge, and proposes "Sludge Audits" as a way to measure the effects of sludge. On balance, Sunstein argues, sludge infringes on human dignity, making people feel that their time and even their lives don't matter. We must do better.


Reducing the Burden of Injury

Reducing the Burden of Injury

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1998-12-21

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 030917354X

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Injuries are the leading cause of death and disability among people under age 35 in the United States. Despite great strides in injury prevention over the decades, injuries result in 150,000 deaths, 2.6 million hospitalizations, and 36 million visits to the emergency room each year. Reducing the Burden of Injury describes the cost and magnitude of the injury problem in America and looks critically at the current response by the public and private sectors, including: Data and surveillance needs. Research priorities. Trauma care systems development. Infrastructure support, including training for injury professionals. Firearm safety. Coordination among federal agencies. The authors define the field of injury and establish boundaries for the field regarding intentional injuries. This book highlights the crosscutting nature of the injury field, identifies opportunities to leverage resources and expertise of the numerous parties involved, and discusses issues regarding leadership at the federal level.


Cutting Red Tape National Strategies for Administrative Simplification

Cutting Red Tape National Strategies for Administrative Simplification

Author: OECD

Publisher: OECD Publishing

Published: 2006-11-28

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9264029796

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Red tape is burdensome to companies, inhibits entrepreneurship, and reduces competitiveness. This book examines country strategies and tools for reducing red tape and the institutional frameworks set up to reduce red tape, and finds what the trends ...


Government at a Glance 2009

Government at a Glance 2009

Author: OECD

Publisher: OECD Publishing

Published: 2009-10-22

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 9264061657

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A new, biennial publication, Government at a Glance provides over 30 indicators describing OECD governments' performance. It compares their political and institutional frameworks, provides data on revenues, expenditures and employment, and indicators on openness, integrity, and e-government.


Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout

Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2020-01-02

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0309495474

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Patient-centered, high-quality health care relies on the well-being, health, and safety of health care clinicians. However, alarmingly high rates of clinician burnout in the United States are detrimental to the quality of care being provided, harmful to individuals in the workforce, and costly. It is important to take a systemic approach to address burnout that focuses on the structure, organization, and culture of health care. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being builds upon two groundbreaking reports from the past twenty years, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, which both called attention to the issues around patient safety and quality of care. This report explores the extent, consequences, and contributing factors of clinician burnout and provides a framework for a systems approach to clinician burnout and professional well-being, a research agenda to advance clinician well-being, and recommendations for the field.


Reducing Administrative Barriers to Investment

Reducing Administrative Barriers to Investment

Author: Scott H. Jacobs

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 0821364952

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This book describes the recent activities of the Foreign Investment Advisory Service (a joint facility of the IFC and the World Bank) to help governments in developing and transition economies to identify and remove administrative barriers to investment. Lessons learned include the critical need for political will to implement reforms, leadership from center of government, and capacity to ensure sound implementation of legislative and regulatory reform over an extended period of time, including regular monitoring and evaluation.