In addressing a crisis, should we prioritize speed or procedure?

Next up: L.A. fires. In times of crisis, bureaucracies often face a no-win situation.

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A hurricane inundates coastal communities. A tornado levels parts of a town. Fire consumes consumes thousands of homes. Illegal immigrants flood into the cities. A pandemic hollows out the economy.

What do these crises have in common: we expect the government to step in and expeditously help the thousands of people affected. Efficiently. Quickly, Economically. Translated, this means providing food, shelter, and sustenance right now. Butting up against these social expectations are bad actors who seem to let no disaster go to waste by taking advantage for their personal gains.

It also involves many quick decisions by overworked bureaucrats. They may be within agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and state agencies such as the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA).

Bureaucracies face a challenging dilemma during times of crisis, caught between the need for swift action and the importance of adhering to established procedures. This predicament often creates a "no-win situation" where institutions are criticized regardless of their chosen course of action.

Crisis 1: Feeding 1000 illegal immigrants

Here is a case study, as reported by the Boston Globe. In 2023, you will recall, there was a massive influx of immigrants crossing the Southern border. To cope with the numbers, busloads of immigrants were relocated to cities far from the border. Massachusetts has a “right-to-shelter law,” which calls for families with children and pregnant individuals to get emergency housing and food. With this unprecedented surge of migrants, the governor, Maura Healey, declared a state of emergency in August 2023 that allowed state officials to sign contracts without competitive bidding.

Under pressure to feed the growing number of immigrants in newly opened shelters, the state contracted with a large catering firm founded in 1983. It was already an approved vendor for the state and had been among a handful of caterers dispatched by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) during the COVID pandemic.

The contract quickly came in for criticism. One was for the cost: $747,301 for the first two weeks of food and $10 million for the seven-month contract. Then there were complaints about the food, particularly a batch of undercooked chicken about a month in. There followed grousing that the caterer leaned too heavily on Italian cuisine and fried food (the caterer was Spinelli’s). At the same time, half the immigrants were Haitian and came from a cuisine based on rice, beans, greens, chicken, and plantains.

Choosing Spinelli’s as a main caterer meant ditching some of the small ethnic vendors who had stepped up to help in the early days of the migrant crisis. Cristina Aguilera Sandoval, executive director of the state’s refugee agency, acknowledged in an email that the sudden activation of Spinelli’s was “very problematic,” and had antagonized small restaurants and volunteers from Haitian churches.

Meanwhile, a housing spokesman said officials did consider the two other caterers who had done work for MEMA, but that Spinelli’s was the only one that could handle daily food distribution across a wide area immediately. According to the Globe, “Expediency was crucial in the dash to provide food at emergency shelters. Contracting with several smaller ethnic caters would challenge the state’s ‘limited bandwidth’ according to an official. It would be too administratively cumbersome to oversee many small vendors.”

“This operation is unable to hold individual contracts with restaurants in each town,” wrote Heather Zuppa, the housing agency’s director of expansion and special initiatives. “That would be extremely difficult.”

Move fast and get it done or move deliberately, and maybe food doesn’t arrive.

Bueuracracies, by definition, function by crossing all t’s and dotting all i’s. When circumstances—such as a crisis—demand fast actions, t crossing and i dotting can get in the way. Blame is heaped on bureaucratic delay while people suffer. The Boston Globe’s headline for its story was

Should shelters have multiple caters to accommodate every taste? Haitian cuisine, Guatamaen dishes, perhaps vegetarian and vegan choices, distributed to multiple shelters? The single raw chicken incident notwithstanding¹

Crisis 2: Payments and fraud during the Covid-19 pandemic

The early days of the pandemic had overwhelming impacts. Most businesses were shut down for months, and businesses, large and small, suddenly had no income and could not pay employees. Livelihoods were threatened, and the economy risked sinking into a deep depression. The federal government responded with many new and expanded programs to help. However, the infrastructure to administer these programs was overwhelmed.

The pandemic-induced recession presented massive challenges in addition to the unprecedented number of applications. State agencies were tasked with implementing new programs like Pandemic Unemployment Siistance (PUA) that enrolled tens of millions more workers and changed the nature of their benefits.

The tension was in the need to get payments out quickly. In a report on pandemic-era unemployment insurance (UI) programs, The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank explained:

A one-month increase in the unemployment rate [at the start of the pandeic] from 4.4 percent to 14.8 percent, combined with legislation that dramatically expanded the reach of the UI system, sent caseloads to levels never seen before. As tens of millions of workers were submitting applications, policymakers directed UI agencies to fundamentally alter the way the system worked, setting up new programs and making a host of changes to typical operations.

State policymakers will have to balance cost, accuracy, timeliness, and accessibility to their UI programs in determining the level of overpayments that are acceptable². [italic added] Decreasing overpayments could improve state trust-fund balances, but if the method is to spend additional time verifying eligibility, it could reduce timeliness or discourage applications for UI.

There was considerable dissatisfaction with the plodding pace of approving the massive influx of UI applications. Computer systems for online submissions were overloaded, and call center lines wouldn’t even put calls in a queue for waiting for an agent.

And so the negative headlines:

June 29, 2020:“Lives on hold: Pandemic exposes failures of Wisconsin unemployment insurance system.” September 11, 2020: “At the risk of losing their home, health, and internet: 12 million Americans still waiting for unemployment benefits.”

Before the pandemic, states were uniformly quick to deliver UI, making nearly all initial payments within 21 days. However, that standard fell apart in Spring 2020. For example, in May 2020, Mississippi was making only 21% of first payments promptly, well below the 87% that the Department of Labor considers acceptable.

Almost all states had difficulty maintaining pre-pandemic levels of payment timeliness, By August 2020, only half of states made at least 54% of payments within 21 days.

In many cases, therefore, the states had to err on the side of timeliness at the expense of accuracy. There was both a social welfare component to this bias, as well as political pressure to get the job done.

Much as the recent food catering criticism in Massachusetts, getting the money flowing when it was most needed came at a cost. And by some measures, that bias proved successful. The U.S. economy experienced a very short downturn before snapping back to robust growth. According to the Minneapolis Fed,

The federal government reports that states made more than $1 trillion in UI payments in the second quarter of 2020, in contrast to less than $50 billion in the prior quarter (both at annualized rates). This spending, combined with direct payments to households, caused personal income to rise instead of fall in the second quarter of 2020, even as workers lost their jobs. The UI payments constituted vital support for families, for the overall economy, and for the public health mission of enabling workers to avoid COVID-19 exposure during some of the worst months of the pandemic.

However, once again, there is another side to the pancake. Addressing the “too slow” pressure created the “Biggest fraud in a generation.” According to NBC News, by some accounts, “as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP” was fraud or other overpayment. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the $900 billion Covid unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international fraudsters.”

The Pressure to Act Quickly

During a crisis, there is immense pressure on bureaucracies to provide immediate responses and solutions. This urgency is driven by several factors:

Acute Public Needs: Crises often create sudden and severe hardships for the public. As we’ve seen, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people faced unexpected financial difficulties, health concerns, and disruptions to daily life. In such situations, the public may require immediate assistance to avoid significant personal hardship.

Public Perception and Scrutiny: Bureaucracies that fail to respond quickly to public needs during a crisis may face severe criticism and damage to their reputation. In an age of rapid information sharing on social media, delays in providing aid or implementing solutions can be perceived as indifference or incompetence.

Political Pressure: Political leaders often demand quick action from bureaucracies during crises, adding to the pressure to bypass normal procedures. However, the bumps up against…

The Importance of Procedures and Regulations: Despite the pressure for speed, there are compelling reasons why bureaucracies should adhere to established procedures and regulations, including accountability and transparency, legal compliance, controls against fraud and abuse, and fairness and equity.

A No-Win Situation?

Given these competing pressures, bureaucracies find themselves in a no-win situation. They can choose to bypass procedures, thus risking accusations of favoritism or unfairness in resource distribution, increased risk of fraud or misallocation of funds, potential legal or regulatory violations, and difficulty in justifying decisions and demonstrating accountability

or

Adhere to procedures, in which case you can be sure they will be criticized for responding too slowly to public needs, face public backlash and reputational damage, risk losing public trust and support, and be perceived as inflexible or uncaring in the face of a crisis.

What to do?

I’m more in the description camp in the Pancake than in a prescriptive mode. But I will venture a few, not unique, suggestions. The most logical one would be to gear up for the worst-case scenario and have the resources available should it materialize. But applying resources for the worst one can imagine is highly inefficient and hugely costly—and in any event, the worst case will likely be even worse than imagined—think the current LA fires.

While there is no perfect solution to this dilemma, bureaucracies can take steps to mitigate the challenges:

They can develop crisis-specific procedures that are streamlined, but are still rigorous to apply to realistic crisis situations.

Anticipate and be prepared to explain the reasons for any delays and provide regular updates on the status of actions being taken. Think about the times you were told that a flight was delayed, followed only by “Thank you for your patience.” It would be better to explain, “The left engine is coming loose, and the maintenance guy is tightening the bolts.”

Determine in advance what technologies and systems would need to be employed and either have it on standby or have the protocols in place to quickly make the upgrades after a trip to Best Buy.

Ideally, top management would train leaders to balance bureaucratic norms with emergent needs during crises. These need to be an ongoing endeavor to cope with turnover in the ranks.

In a paper I co-authored years ago, my co-author and I observed how critical it is to build relationships and experience with key managers. In times of crisis, it is helpful to be familiar with colleagues with different backgrounds and who bring to the table different sources of information. For example, what is an unknown unknown to me might be well known to the IT manager.

However, running counter to this approach, a top decision maker may not want to have to translate an assortment of experts he or she doesn’t know well and who often speak different “languages,” e.g., IT, finance, systems, politics. In these crisis moments, the decision-maker may be best served by familiar aides who share his or her information sources and with whom he or she can speak without having it explained or risking being misunderstood. The danger, of course, lies in missing some unknown unknown that the expert could catch. However, this may be the lesser of the risk in a fast-breaking crisis.

Bureaucracies face a significant challenge in balancing speed and procedural integrity during crises. That’s a perspective that is frequently overlooked. While there is no perfect solution, it is rather glib to conclude that all we need is a balanced approach that prioritizes both rapid response and accountability. This may be readily observed after the fact, but it is much more challenging to realize at the moment.

1. I had raw chicken served to me at a McDonalds a while back. It can happen—so long as it is very rare.

2. Overpayments may be due to computational errors as well as fraud.