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It is a serious mistake to think that technology can remove bureaucracy. Indeed, technology by its nature makes bureaucracy a lot more rigid. Bureaucracy is about homogenising processes and erasing individual differences, and software reinforces these properties because it allows even less human input or deviation from the process. (That isn't true of all software, just software that is intended to somehow deal with large numbers of people uniformly.)



When I said remove bureaucracy I meant remove bureaucracy from people's lives. Obviously it will exist behind the curtains. I agree with you that software reinforces bureaucratic properties and it should. That is what it was supposed to do. But technology failed when it comes to rectification of any deviations in bureaucratic processes.

For example, assume you are submitting a form and the address is incorrect/not matching exactly what is stored in the database; software should (rightly) flag it and have a human review it and do the necessary correction. Instead we have the worst of both worlds, where the software flags the problem but there is no human in the loop anymore. Even the human is automated out. So the problem is never fixed. Instead, the customer/client who is interacting with the software is indirectly made aware of the internal bureaucratic process but has no recourse.




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