Street-level bureaucracy
Street-level civil servants carry out and/or enforce the actions required by a government's laws and public policies, in areas ranging from safety and security to education and social services.
[1] Street-level bureaucrats interact and communicate with the general public, either in person (as with a police officer doing a random checkpoint to check for drunk driving or a civil servant in a department of transportation who helps people to register a newly purchased car and provide them with licence plates); over the phone (as with a government call center, where civil servants answer phone calls from people who are applying for or receiving unemployment insurance); or, in jurisdictions which have implemented electronic government technologies, via the Internet (e.g., a person finding out about the government's taxation laws by going onto the taxation department's official website and asking questions to a civil servant via email).
For example, a police officer who catches a speeding motorist typically can decide whether to give the driver a warning or apply a penalty such as a fine or criminal charge; a border guard who finds undeclared rum in a border-crossing motorist's car trunk can either give the person a warning, confiscate and destroy the contraband item, or levy a fine or other penalty; a government social worker who meets with an unemployed person can decide whether or not to provide social assistance or unemployment insurance benefits; and a high school principal who finds that a student is skipping school can decide whether or not to suspend the person, taking into account the student's unique circumstances and situation.
A "government will be better accepted if its administrators [e.g., bureaucrats] reflect the origins [and needs] of its people",[3] an ideal which embodies the goals of an effective street-level bureaucracy in America.
The presidency of Woodrow Wilson helped to spur a large growth in public administration and government policy-making, which in turn led to larger-sized and better-funded street-level bureaucracies.
"[5] The interpretation of the duties, scope, and responsibilities of street-level bureaucrats are still debated in the 2000s, with ongoing discussion on the roles of discretion, accountability, lack of resources, and technology and concerns raised about the risks of corruption.
[11] An example of corruption would be cases where a police officer or border guard accepted a bribe from a member of the public in return for not enforcing a law or regulation.
The term "black market medicine" refers to a variety of illegal actions that individuals take in order to obtain healthcare services for themselves.
[15] According to Lipsky, many of these street-level bureaucrats will "often spend their work lives in these corrupted world of service... doing the best they can in adverse circumstances" This can highlight the inherent problems associated with the public policy-making process.
"Traditionally, accountability has involved defining rules and procedures and then employing various means to ensure compliance with these expectations"[18] Performance-based practices rely on standardized processes that measure performance in terms of output and results.
[19] Michael Lipsky states street level bureaucrats have discretion because human judgment is in the nature of service work that machines could not replace.
[20] Lipsky said the use of discretion by street level bureaucrats can’t be removed from everyday practice due to the complexity and uncertainty of human service work.
Carrington identifies the fear of power abuse as a major reason for the opposition of discretion in the arena of street level bureaucrats and its citizens.
[21] Lipsky concludes that the lack of resources causes street level bureaucrat to develop simplified routines for processing cases that influence their everyday tasks.
Technological advances such as the widespread availability of the Internet and online databases have had a major impact on street-level bureaucracy and the front-line civil servants who provide services to citizens.
Enablement theory holds that increasing technological advances, at best, empower the existing abilities of the street-level bureaucrat and better inform the citizen.
It was first argued by Snellen that increasing technological advances (ITA) "deeply challeng[e] [the street-level bureaucrat's] ability to manipulate information.
[25] In a pre-technological advances era, a front-line bureaucrat might have used his or her discretion over decisions to allow an application in which some of the information requests are not completed (e.g., due to urgent need on the part of the citizen or the existence of an emergency situation).
In contrast to the curtailment theory, a 2007 study by Jorna and Wagenaar showed that ITA was able to increase the amount of work done while cutting down on inconsistencies.
