“Jonathan Shepherd may be the most unlikely bureaucrat I have come across. A surgeon at the university of Cardiff, he persuaded local officials a few years ago to ask patients coming into A&E simple questions about where and how they had been attacked. Because violent assaults are hardly ever reported to the police, this was rare information. Once these had been processed by an official analyst – a bureaucrat – the authorities had a map of hot spots of violence, and could police them better. The result was a 30% drop in assaults within three years – thanks to bureaucracy.”

Thanks for the reply.

Nice meandering…. Best defence for a good bureaucrat (and that just sounds wrong) could be to make what they do visible, comprehensible to others, meaningful. Much like job of selling content strategy.

I guess being repeatedly compared with someone who directly saves lives is always going to be awkward. But being the person who helps people who save lives to save lives – there’s a story in there, somewhere (not by Kafka).