Government Loves Paperwork. I Prefer “Just Do It.”...A Public Servant Redefines Advocacy
I have spent more than two decades in New York City government, much of that time working in budgeting, capital planning, procurement and technology administration.
I would not describe myself professionally as a lobbyist.
But I have come to realize that I have spent a significant portion of my career advocating.
Every budget request is an act of advocacy.
Every request for additional staff is advocacy.
Every capital project competing for limited resources requires advocacy.
Every procurement for which someone asks, “Why do you need this?” requires advocacy.
And every time a public servant notices something that doesn’t make sense and decides not to simply walk past it, that can be advocacy too.
Some of the advocacy I am proudest of began exactly that way.
Sometimes You Have to Stop and Ask Why
Earlier in my career, while working at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, I became concerned about ventilation in one of the agency’s automotive garages.
The contradiction bothered me.
This was the Health Department. Environmental and occupational health are fundamental components of public health. Yet employees were working around vehicles in a garage where I believed the ventilation needed improvement.
It would have been easy to conclude that it wasn’t my problem.
I didn’t.
I raised the issue and advocated for it to be addressed. Within roughly 30 days, new ventilation fans were installed at a cost of about $50,000.
In the context of a major City agency, $50,000 was not an extraordinary expenditure. More importantly, it was nothing compared with the potential cost of inaction—whether measured in employee health, occupational exposure, lost productivity, liability or simply the contradiction of allowing an avoidable environmental-health concern to persist inside the City’s own health department.
There was no press conference.
There was no ribbon cutting.
Most New Yorkers would never know anything had changed.
But the employees working in that garage knew.
I remember the experience because it demonstrated something government sometimes forgets: not every problem requires a multiyear study, a massive initiative or endless deliberation.
Sometimes the problem is identifiable, the remedy is affordable, the case is compelling and the right answer is simply to act.
Thirty days. Roughly $50,000. Problem addressed.
That is much closer to my preferred version of government.
“We Need It” Is Not an Argument
Of course, identifying a problem is only the beginning.
Someone still has to make the case for fixing it.
Later at DOHMH, I worked as a capital budget analyst helping manage an agency-wide public-health infrastructure and technology capital program involving hundreds of millions of dollars. I subsequently moved into the agency’s technology organization as a budget manager, working on IT budgeting, procurement, financial reporting and major technology acquisitions.
Those experiences taught me something that has remained true throughout my career:
The person requesting something almost always believes the need is obvious.
It rarely is to everyone else.
An engineer may know why equipment has reached the end of its useful life. An IT professional may understand why an aging system needs replacement. A program manager may know why a facility needs improvement.
But eventually the request reaches someone whose responsibility is to ask:
Why now?
Why this solution?
Why this amount?
What alternatives did you consider?
What happens if we don’t do it?
Those aren’t hostile questions. When government is spending taxpayer money, they are exactly the questions we should be asking.
“We need it” isn’t enough.
Good advocacy converts a need into a case.
Advocacy Can Mean Defending the Taxpayer
Today, I work in IT procurement and budget at the New York City Department of Correction.
The subject matter has changed considerably, but the underlying skill has not.
Technology requirements can be extraordinarily complicated. Vendors and engineers may speak in specifications, licenses, servers, storage, cybersecurity, service levels and implementation requirements.
Eventually somebody has to translate those requirements into another language:
Why should the City spend this money?
That can mean comparing prices, challenging a renewal increase, asking why government is paying for something it isn’t using, negotiating stronger service levels or questioning whether an expensive professional service is actually necessary.
And sometimes it means saying no.
I consider that advocacy too.
A public employee administering government money has at least two constituencies: the agency whose mission we are trying to accomplish and the taxpayer whose money makes accomplishing that mission possible.
Responsible public administration requires advocating for both.
The Cost of Doing Nothing Is Still a Cost
The garage experience reinforced another principle I use today.
Government is generally very good at identifying the cost of doing something.
We are not always as good at quantifying the cost of doing nothing.
The ventilation project had a visible price: approximately $50,000.
Inaction did not arrive with a purchase order attached to it.
That didn’t make it free.
The same principle applies throughout government.
Suppose replacing an aging technology platform costs $2 million.
Two million dollars sounds expensive.
But what happens if we don’t replace it?
Perhaps maintenance costs continue increasing. Perhaps the manufacturer stops supporting it. Perhaps obsolete technology creates cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Perhaps a failure interrupts an essential operation. Perhaps an emergency replacement ultimately costs considerably more.
Now the decision isn’t $2 million versus zero.
It is the cost of replacement versus the cost and risk of maintaining the status quo.
The same reasoning applies to staffing.
Don’t merely tell leadership that you need another employee.
What work isn’t being completed? How large is the backlog? What controls aren’t receiving adequate attention? What new responsibilities have accumulated? What is the operational or financial consequence of leaving the position vacant?
Good advocacy makes the invisible cost visible.
Know Who You Are Talking To
I began learning this lesson even before my City career.
As an undergraduate at the University at Albany, I accumulated substantial academic credit through legislative internships and related government experience.
I learned early that the same argument does not work on every audience.
An engineer may care primarily about technical performance.
A budget professional wants to understand cost.
A procurement professional considers competition and contractual risk.
An attorney sees liability.
An operational executive wants to know whether something will work.
An elected official may reasonably focus on the effect on constituents.
None is necessarily wrong.
They are looking at the same problem through different responsibilities.
Effective advocates learn to translate.
That ability has probably been more valuable during my career than I appreciated when I was younger.
Government Loves Paperwork. I Prefer “Just Do It.”
Government loves documentation.
I say that as someone who has spent more than two decades producing an enormous amount of it.
Personally, I’m more partial to Nike’s famous slogan: “Just Do It.”
Government, unfortunately, has rarely encountered a problem that couldn’t potentially benefit from another form.
We are addicted to paperwork.
Sometimes it is literal paper. Increasingly it is digital paperwork—PDFs, spreadsheets, electronic approvals, workflow systems, attachments, checklists and forms uploaded into systems so another person can download them and occasionally upload them somewhere else.
Digitizing bureaucracy doesn’t necessarily eliminate bureaucracy.
Sometimes it just converts the paper into pixels.
I understand why documentation exists. When government spends public money, makes consequential decisions or exercises public authority, there should be a record explaining what happened and why.
Accountability requires documentation.
But documentation is supposed to support action.
It should not become a substitute for action.
There is a point at which another memorandum, spreadsheet, meeting, approval or revision stops improving the decision and simply delays the outcome.
A 70-page presentation can contain tremendous amounts of information and still fail to answer the most important question:
What are you asking me to approve, and why should I approve it?
The best advocacy should make five things readily understandable:
Here is the problem.
Here is our recommendation.
Here is the cost.
Here are the alternatives.
Here is what happens if we do nothing.
Then provide whatever supporting analysis is necessary for accountability.
My preferred sequence is simple:
Understand it. Document it. Decide it. Do it.
Government will probably never adopt “Just Do It” as its administrative philosophy—and perhaps taxpayers should be grateful for that.
But we can get much better at recognizing when we have enough information to make a responsible decision and move.
Credibility Matters More Than Winning
There is one more lesson I wish more young public servants were taught.
The objective of advocacy isn’t to win every argument.
It is to become someone whose arguments are trusted.
If an estimate is preliminary, say so.
If projected savings depend on assumptions, identify them.
If you haven’t fully evaluated an alternative, don’t pretend you have.
And if the evidence ultimately demonstrates that the solution you originally supported isn’t the best one, change your recommendation.
We should be advocates for outcomes, not prisoners of our original positions.
Don’t Walk Past It
More than two decades into my government career, I still think about that garage.
Not because ventilation fans were the largest or most important project I have worked on.
They weren’t.
I remember it because the lesson was so simple.
Something didn’t seem right.
I said something.
Government acted.
Within about 30 days, a roughly $50,000 investment addressed the problem.
That is a form of public service that doesn’t receive much attention.
You don’t need to be an elected official to advocate.
You don’t need a microphone.
You don’t need a lobbying organization.
Sometimes you simply need to understand a problem well enough to explain why it should be fixed—and care enough to keep making the case.
So my advice to younger public servants is simple:
Pay attention.
When something doesn’t make sense, ask why.
If something will save taxpayers money, prove it.
If a position will reduce a backlog, quantify it.
If an investment will prevent a larger future expense, demonstrate it.
If a process is unnecessary, challenge it.
If employees are working in conditions that can reasonably be improved, speak up.
And if the evidence tells you government shouldn’t spend the money, be willing to say that too.
Because advocacy inside government isn’t fundamentally about getting to yes.
It is about getting to the right answer.
And once we have enough information to know the right answer, I remain a believer in some of the simplest management advice ever put on a T-shirt:
Just do it.
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