Lament
Addressing the problems of 15 years ago today. Addressing today's problems in 2040.
There are a great many public sector challenges that deserve to be more widely discussed, but where political commentary can point to published facts and statements made by politicians, most of the issues that need to be covered sit below the public record. The Official Information Act can sometimes shed light on particular staff-level decisions, but knowledge of the systems and incentives that influence how these are arrived at is confined almost exclusively to active civil servants. These people understandably don’t want to compromise relationships and their careers by talking out of turn, so any public discussion of the inner workings that does occur tends to be highly abstract, rather than giving concrete examples.
In my free essays I try to publish something worthy of the public’s time and attention, which I hope to be able to continue to be able to defend over the years (even as my views change). This piece is more personal in nature, and the subjective mirror to my recent piece ‘Youth and Leadership’. The Kiwi in me feels what I’m about to write is almost unspeakably arrogant. My internal North American1 is coming to the view that I’m far too introspective about my faults, and should be more forthright about my strengths. Either way, my frustrations are the same.
