Backhanded Bureacracy

The other day my boss told us that he had spoken with the senior policy advisor to our new political appointee and they had told him that our program would cease to exist. He told a few of this on A Friday and then left on his honeymoon the next day. We were left sitting there thinking, "How do we deal with this?" By Monday we had organized ourselves. We had drafted a memo for the agency to issue to tell the whole world and all of the program's members that the program was going into shut down mode immediately. And then we waited all week for the official announcement, the memo, to be signed and distributed. And we waited. And unofficial messages started flying everywhere, we even issued an unofficial message to tell all of our staff in the field, what was going on. And then we waited.

Now more than a week later, no signed memo, and a lot of disheartened employees.

I have been wondering how long it would be until there was a either a big change and relaunch of our program, (it has problems), or the program was shut down. I even asked about this in my interview for the job. But I was really surprised, and continue to be, that the program is going to be shut down and that it was communicated in such as backassward way. Can an appointee get away with that? Yes, is definitely the answer, but at what cost? And this Administration? I am so surprised. I thought January 20 marked the beginning of a new era of transparent government and thoughtful decisions.

We shall see. The media has started reporting on this. Whether they will pick up on the inconsiderate manner the program is being shut down or just on the inadequacies of the program will be interesting. Stay tuned.