Special Bulletin

I interrupt normal programming to bring you this special bulletin.

I realise I’m on holidays and should be regaling you with tales of happy adventures, poignant stories of human courage and amusing anecdotes of cultures foreign, but people - I’m concerned. About three things specifically:
1) bugs
2) road behaviour
3) current fashions in the bureaucracy

It’s late Spring here in Poland. For those for whom the results of that statement are not self-evident, let me explain: Poland is quite far north and therefore experiences lengthy daylight ours in Spring and Summer. Not long past four this morning I was awoken (to broad daylight no less) by flying ants cavorting in my room. Luckily they weren’t flying, biting ants but nonetheless, they were irritating and I had to kill them all. You might then understand why I’m a little irritable and feel the need to vent my concerns today. While it was light at 4am and arguably light means getting up time, I was not amused. Since the sun is now rising and I can no longer sleep, I thought I’d put fingers to keyboard.

So, let’s start with bugs. Obviously, being woken up by a swarm of flying ants is quite disconcerting in it’s own right. What’s more alarming is the proliferation of insects that have never before been present in this country. Scientists are telling us that we are at risk of ecological collapse because bees are disappearing all over the world. This in itself is very worrying and I’m surprised more is not made of it. Then again, with the decay of journalism evident everywhere, perhaps I’m not really surprised at all. But I digress: let’s get back to bugs. I’ve only been here two and a half weeks and already I have been brutally wrenched from sleep by flying ants, bitten by evil midges every night at dusk if I have dared to be outside and had to help my dad remove an army of ticks from his dog, Cooper. You might wonder what I’m whining about - a couple of flying bugs and ticks aren’t as bad as, say, being in the outback in summer. Or not as bad as malarial mosquitos in the tropics. Or not even as bad as those flesh eating spiders that devour camels in the Middle East. And you may have a point. However, the reason I’m concerned is not just because these creatures are interrupting my enjoyment of the great outdoors but because until very recently (less than five years), they simply did not exist here. Or at least if they did, they were in such low numbers or in such locations that no one noticed. Now it seems that every house, garden and field has them. Coupled with the disappearance of bees, I’d say these are signs of fairly serious ecological imbalance. I’m sure there are some rationalists and economists and sundry other explanationists who will put it down to market forces or simply natural cycles. Whatever. I’m not arguing cause here - just making an observation about an outcome that I think could be indicator of bigger problems afoot.

Speaking of bigger problems, let’s talk about road behaviour. Poland currently has the highest accident rate in Europe. To hire a car here, you practically have to buy it due to the insurance premiums. If you bring back a hire car unscathed, they are genuinely surprised. I have a feeling the write it off the minute they hand over keys. If the accidents were merely fender-bender type bingles, it would concern the insurance companies a lot more than me. Sadly, most accidents are not of this variety. In an average weekend, Poland loses more of its citizens on the road than Australia does in an average year. Think about that for a moment. Even accounting for the smaller size of the country and larger population, it is still a deeply concerning statistic. Not the least of which because my dad is now regularly driving amongst it. The annoying thing is that its bleeding obvious why the statistics are as they are - people drive like maniacs.

For a country that was near enough to being a police-state in my lifetime, the pendulum has swung as far in the other direction as it can before returning upon itself. Road rules, speed restrictions, good sense and plain old courtesy are completely absent from the minds of road users. It would seems that signs and markings on roads are there purely for decoration.

There is always a proportion of people who do the wrong thing. No matter how many speed warnings and speed traps there are, some people are pathalogical speeders. No matter how many education campaigns and booze busts there are, some people will continue to drive drunk. Several taxi drivers have ignored the ‘left turn only’ sign on the Parade coming out of Sydenham Road in order to get me home. I think I may have done an illegal u-turn once in the middle of the night when no one was around (don’t listen dad). OK, none of us are perfect. And I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t point out that one of my favourite sayings is “obey all the rules, miss out on all the fun”. Can I just make it clear, I don’t think this applies to road rules. Maybe it does to parking restrictions but not road rules per se. As much as I love driving at 220km/hour, I understand that if not for myself, I shouldn’t do it simply because it’s not nice to maim or kill others. I’m not entirely clear why people here don’t seem to understand that road rules are there to protect them, not just to fill up statute books.

They may be excellent precision drivers that can handle a j-turn between two lanes of moving traffic at the speed of light but frankly, that doesn’t account for the fact that Aunt Agnes will choose the precise moment they’re planning to hit the apex to turn right into the pathway and stall her 1957 trabant. People: road rules are there to help minimise the risk of damage to all of us. I don’t care how good a driver you are - just think of Ayrton Senna. And be real, you’re not as good as you think you are.

That brings me to concern number three: current fashions in the bureaucracy - you're not as efficient or effective as you think you are and risk management is not best achieved through risk avoidance.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to organise some Polish documentation. Specifically, this all relates to my Polish passport, which has now expired. If I get it renewed by the Consulate in Australia, the amount of paperwork involved would harm the environment, so I thought I’d give it a go here. In theory, all I need for a passport to be issued here is a national identity card. These are free and are easy to obtain with a PESEL (a unique, personal identifying number issued by the government). While I can’t remember living here, I did and so I have one of these numbers. Should be easy right? Have number, get ID card, apply for passport. Yes, in a logical universe where bureaucrats don’t exist it would have been easy. Unfortunately, the whole thing has been so protracted, difficult and full of catch-22s that I (and my two assistants) have had to start taking medication to lower our blood pressure.

It would take many pages to fully explain the details and you wouldn’t believe the events as I described them anyway but let’s just say that between the “computer says no” attitude, an alarming lack of understanding amongst ‘expert’ staff of the statues they are administering and a phenomenal culture of risk aversion, getting anything done is near to impossible. Not everyone we met was an incompetent nincompoop but the shining lights of helpfulness were few and very far between. Three cheers for the man in the passport office who actually found evidence of my existence and two cheers for the kind lady in the ID office who agreed to accept my application for an ID in advance of a copy of birth certificate being provided. Some of my favourite interactions included the following (poetic license used sparingly but applied for brevity).

Scene: the regional office for citizens affairs (I wish it was all about citizens having affairs but alas, it’s not nearly as interesting). We were sent there by the local authority who insisted I had to prove that I was a Polish citizen in order to secure a minor amendment to some existing paperwork. We weren’t able to work out why exactly, but in the end decided that if they needed a document proving I was a citizen (evidently a local birth certificate and recently expired Polish passport and entire family locally registered were not sufficient evidence of citizenship) it was easier just to get it. So there we are, asking the lady about proof of citizenship once the very helpful man in the passport office suggested we may not need the document in question at all.

Us: So what exactly does a proof of citizenship give me? Why would I need it?
Lady: A proof of citizenship gives you evidence that you are a citizen. You need it to prove you’re a citizen - nothing else can substitute.
Us: So a birth certificate, passport and PESEL number aren’t sufficient proof?
Lady: None of those things prove citizenship.
(at this point we are confused - most normal people would assume you couldn’t get a passport or unique national identifier unless the issuing authority agreed you were actually a citizen and therefore entitled to one - to get either one of those things, the list of evidence does not require a proof of citizenship....go figure....)
Us: (sighing loudly) OK, so what exactly do those things do if not prove citizenship? In what circumstances would you have those things and not be a citizen?
Lady: (looking irritated) You don’t need to know such things. And I’m sure I don’t know all the possible circumstances. We take your application, search our files, write to the consulate in Sydney to check their files and then we issue you with a decision.
(right, excellent - I now have full faith in the system. Thanks for that.)

Scene: the local authority, responsible for most documentation relating to identity, residence etc. We are trying to find out what we need to do to get my documents issued. They insist that I do not exist. Bear in mind that the documents they need are the same documents they are supposed to hold.

Lady: No, I’m sorry, you don’t exist in our system.
Us: But that’s impossible - I appear in my mother’s passport, which could not have happened if I wasn’t written into her ID card, which had to have been done by the local authority. You must have a record somewhere in the archive.
Lady: No, we don’t.
Us: How can you explain the passport then?
Lady: I wouldn’t know, but obviously you did not register at birth and there is no record of your existence in this local authority.
Us: Given that both my parents are recorded and I am in my mother’s passport and you have all the evidence of our leaving date, can you not add the record to be correct now? Since it would have been impossible for me not to be registered given the circumstances of the day, it’s obviously an administrative error made at some stage by the authority. Can’t you correct it?
Lady: No, you’ll have to go to the central registry in Warsaw for that. They’ll look at your case and decide whether and where to register you.
(2 hours later after the helpful man in the passport office discovered that I did after all exist and was indeed registered, albeit at the wrong address)
Lady: Yes, well, you are registered but we can’t process the paperwork because I’m going home shortly.
Us: but it’s 3pm and the authority is open until 6pm - isn’t there someone else that can help us?
Lady: No, I’m afraid all the staff in this section leave at 3. You’ll have to come back another day.

This is obviously both a shortened version of events and edited dialogue but I hope you have a sense of the sheer lunacy. Now let me suggest some possible causes. There is a very real possibility, the women in question were incompetent and by their nature unhelpful. I think that's obviously true but since I like to theorise, let's play with another annoying current fashion in Polish bureacracy: risk management.

Risk management in Polish bureaucracy is front and centre at present. Unfortunately, it’s less about management and more about avoidance. Senior bureaucrats are held materially responsible for matters in their jurisdiction. This means that if something goes wrong on their watch, they can be personally fined enormous sums of money (not to mention obvious things like job loss, loss of reputation etc). I bet there are a bunch of people thinking "hoorah, finally the fat cats get their comeuppance and get held accountable". Perhaps. But consider this - in public policy, nothing is more certain than the fact that bureaucrats rarely control outcomes.

Even decisions made in accordance with statutes, well established policies and good sense sometimes have surprising consequences. Take the example of a waste tax. Several countries have introduced waste taxes - the more you throw away, the more you pay. This is consistent with the long established ‘polluter pays’ principle, rewards those who do the right thing in minimising their waste and should encourage a reduction in waste by everyone over time. We all know, people don’t like to pay tax and this scheme allows them not to pay. All they have to do is minimise their waste, which naturally, will have environmental benefits. Or will it? In several of those countries where it was introduced originally, the waste tax has now been scrapped as it led to some unexpected consequences. For example, a massive increase in food being disposed in drains (which created enormous costs for the waste-water management utilities) and backyard burning (which created enormous air pollution problems).

Most public policy decisions, even those designed to restrict or control, are made with the fundamental assumption that once the rule is put in place, people will do the ‘right’ thing. And often they do - I’m not battering the optimistic view that most people are good at their core. However, as economists tell us, people are creatures that react to incentives. The trouble with most public policy is that we don’t explore incentives sufficiently. In particular, we seem to ignore the need to thoroughly search out perverse incentives. Like my lovely ladies described above. Not only do they not have any incentives to actually be helpful (clearly no one told them they are working in customer service role and they continue to get paid whether they help me and I have a good experience or not), there are massive disincentives in place in the form of material responsibility for risk. I can argue that rectifying what is clearly an administrative mistake made some time during computerisation is low-risk but if it was my money and job on the line, would I feel the same? Hmmmm....something to think about.