by By David Zetland (Via One handed economist) Innovative bureaucrats? The Dutch are fond of subsidies for arts, sustainability and… innovation. These subsidies arise when bureaucrats with “topical portfolios” award cash to winners of various “promise to stimulate [topic]” contests. On the one hand, I am pleased to see the government providing public goods, i.e., stimulating efforts to help everyone. On the other hand, these programs tend to find the least-productive incentives to advance the “topic” (My one-handed view is that this structure is wrong… keep reading…) So the irony is that the bureaucracy in charge of innovation… …has permanent employment contracts and long vacations; …gains nothing from success but loses nothing from failure; …works in
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by David Zetland (Via One handed economist)
Innovative bureaucrats?
The Dutch are fond of subsidies for arts, sustainability and… innovation.
These subsidies arise when bureaucrats with “topical portfolios” award cash to winners of various “promise to stimulate [topic]” contests.
On the one hand, I am pleased to see the government providing public goods, i.e., stimulating efforts to help everyone.
On the other hand, these programs tend to find the least-productive incentives to advance the “topic”
(My one-handed view is that this structure is wrong… keep reading…)
So the irony is that the bureaucracy in charge of innovation…
- …has permanent employment contracts and long vacations;
- …gains nothing from success but loses nothing from failure;
- …works in non-market areas where the lack of objective measures of performance leads to subjective choices of winners and losers; and
- …happily spews a meaningless whirlpool of jargon borrowed from strategic plans, conference videos, and social media #buzzwords.
If I was in charge of these topics, I would follow the new development model of “pay for results” by specifying the criteria for success and then rewarding the most successful efforts to reach those goals with cash and publicity.
This system would have nothing to say about who did the work, what angle they took, or how fancy their method. It would pay for results.
My one-handed conclusion is that governments should stop chasing “creative,” “innovative,” “smart,” or “sustainable” and just reward results.
What’s your experience on this topic?