International bureaucracies

Secretarial work

Bureaucracies grow faster than they can be pruned

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Readers' comments



The original Parkinson's Laws are true now, as ever:

(1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals." (2) "Officials make work for each other."


"United Nations Economic Commission for Europe" That's a new low, even from the UN. How about disbanding that slothful organization?

Sensible GaTech Student

My browser displayed the following line:

"It is easy to find further candidates for abolition. The Geneva-based United Nations"

That line break really had me going for a few milliseconds!

ahmed limam

This article is spot-on. 15 years ago I worked for the sleepy Madrid-based World Tourism Organization, a UN agency. Back then , at one of those endless, mind-numbingly boring international conferences I met a US diplomat who, when he realized I was from UNWTO, exclaimed, “But, ten years ago, at the State Department I fought to get rid of it, it’s such a pointless organization. I thought it had been closed.” (Several countries such as the US, Britain, Canada and Australia had actually withdrawn from it.) And he was right: since in most countries travel and tourism enterprises (airlines, hotels, travel agencies) are all private businesses, well supported by local state tourism board, having a taxpayer-funded international layer to do the same is redundant. It is even more unjustified when there’s already a private organization (The World Travel and Tourism Council) that does the international lobbying and coordination work. If that US diplomat could read these lines now, maybe he is, he would shake his head in disbelief that a quarter-century on the same useless organization is still alive.
Another egregious example is the UN anti- Apartheid agency which outlived Apartheid itself by several years, organizing meetings (about what?) in plush surroundings in New York and drawing fat tax-free salaries for its employees. Yes, even when the purpose for which it was built has been achieved, you still can’t kill the beast.

Ahmed Limam
Junior Administrator, UNWTO, Madrid



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