A Case Study in Inefficient Bureaucracy

I glanced at my watch as I walked through the doors of the Paraguayan Ministry of Education and Culture in downtown Asuncion. My digital told me 8:49, which meant I was eleven minutes early for my appointment. I was quite pleased with my arrival time, given that it had been somewhat of a late night out with a couple of my favorite fellow peace corps volunteers that I hadn’t seen for a couple of months. In order to look professional I donned olive green khakis, a blue anti-wrinkle shirt, and the only tie I brought with me to Paraguay. A hot day but I didn’t want to take chances. Nothing was going to get between me and making sure my host community would qualify for the ministry’s program to build a new fully equipped kindergarten classroom of which it is in dire need. Oh, little did I know. 9 months in Paraguay and still naïve. I was about to get my first solid dose of old fashioned do-nothing, inefficient bureaucracy.

Strolling through the lobby on my way to the elevator I saw the first warning signs: 5 to 7 employees sitting around, doing absolutely nothing, obviously still on the clock. But when I made to Sr. Alfonso’s office is when the real fun began. I had the appointment with Sr. Alfonso, but evidently he was still out and would be back ‘soon.’ There were two ‘secretaries,’ at least I think that’s probably what their job title would be called. And I don’t have perfect gaydar, but I’m pretty sure the male secretary was hitting on me. He had curly black hair and was in his late thirties, and about 5 minutes through our conversation he proceeded to whip out a digital camera and take pictures of me which he said we ‘for the monthly publication.’ The middle aged lady sitting next to him rolled her eyes in a sort of smiling but obviously embarrassed way and said ‘He’s lying. He’s definitely not the photographer for our monthly.’ Walking past me a couple times he friendily patted me on the shoulder, the hand lingering juuust a bit too long. Luckily I became distracted by another office worker who used to be a kindergarten teacher who proceeded to amaze me by her knowledge of reading pedagogy and we talked about nerd teacher topics for a while.

Distracted by what someone so obviously adept at teaching was doing in bureaucracy, almost an hour passed. Finally around 1030 Mr. Alfonso finally saw me, but it turned out what he was really doing was talking me to see someone else more important who could actually help me. What? Why did I not just go directly to her office. Arrrgh.

We get to her office, which is a few blocks away, and low and behold she is not there. Mr. Alfonso talks to one of the lady’s two secretaries, who is sitting at a desk doing nothing, and obviously knows nothing as well. Mr. Alfonso is bumbling a little bit with what to do so I take the lead.

“Ok, when tell the director be back her and free?”

Turns out she is at a meeting right now, and, um, might be back around 1230 (this information took about 2 minutes of dialogue to squeeze out). Are you sure? Yes, he says. Ok, here is my name and number. Please call if anything changes.

Riiiiiight. Keep dreamin’ kid. I get back at 12:30. Same office, same two secretaries, still with literally nothing in front of their desks? What are you doing?

“The director is not here. Hmmm can you come back at 2:00? Or maybe 3:00?”

Anyone who knows me knows I am a patient person. Probably one of the most patient people around anywhere. But even I have my limits…I managed to filter myself, realizing that I, an American, have different cultural standards, quality standards, etc. I was beginning to fume, but what came out was a watered down version of what I was thinking:

“Listen, no, I can’t come back later. I have a lot of errands to run today. And I have a question for you all. What would you have done if some poor person from the boondocks spend his own money to get here after you SPECIFICALLY TOLD HIM TO COME on a certain date to talk about the possibility of a program request, and then he got here and you had organized NOTHING for him? Would you feel bad for making an already poor person pay for an expensive bus ticket in to Asuncion only to find out that he had wasted his money?”

I realize I was shooting at the messengers. The two ‘secretaries’ in that room are obviously not at fault for the inefficiency of Paraguayan Bureaucracy. But that’s precisely the problem: NO ONE is at fault. Almost everyone is just apathetic; the system is what it is.

My rant along with my obviously irritated mannerisms managed to get the female secretary moving out of the room, I wasn’t sure to where. I walked over to behind the desk of the other guy, and tried to make friendly conversation. “So, what do you do here?” “Not much.” At least he’s honest.

About five minutes later the female secretary comes back with another woman who she says will attend to my kindergarten room request. She tells me her title and it doesn’t sound like she is even close to the Director I actually wanted to see.
I state my case, show her the application, the pictures of the broken down school with no divider between kindergarten and 2nd grade. Have you ever tried to teach in a second grade class while you can hear screaming and singing kindergarteners all afternoon? I have. It sucks.

After listening to me for a solid 5 minutes. She looks at the application again and says to me: “Listen, this program is closed now. It’s been closed for a couple of years. Have you tried requesting money from the local government?”

Closed? And for 2 years. Well that’s fantastic. Why in god’s name did they invite me down here. Again, ready to burst but not wanted to come off as the jerk American, I try to come up with something not angry to say. “Have you ever tried requesting money from the local government at the end of the mayor’s term? I mean, he hasn’t even paid his own employees for 5 months.”

“Yea….I can take this folder and hang on to it if you like, just in case something comes up.”

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the whole reason I was here was because the Ministry had mysteriously lost the application from my school two years ago. No thank you, I’ll hang on to the app, which will probably be more useful as extra kindling if we have one more cold streak in November. Besides, the folder it’s in is quality.
Fuming angry at the Ministry after this encounter, I call my community contact to complain. He tells me, “Calm down Miguel. Remember, we’re in Paraguay.” And not one of the several to whom I retold this story found it surprising. Corruption is institutionalized here. And with corruption of course, comes its awkward cousin inefficiency, which runs wild in Paraguay.

I don’t mean for this account to show Paraguay in a negative light. At least not Paraguayans. They are all wonderful, nice people. But only 20 years removed from a dictatorship, it obviously has some ground to make up. But hey, we’ll get there, remember Chicago during prohibition? (Or right now.) C’mon.

Nonetheless, does anyone have the number of a reputed efficiency consulting firm? The Bobs are pretty good I hear.