In my former agency, we had a long-running discussion over our responsibility to the people we served; a discussion that was never resolved in my time there.
One side said: "farmers" are mature, rational people, well able to calculate what's best for themselves. Our job is only to make information on alternatives available to them. Their job is to make the best decision. If they fail to meet deadlines or understand the rules, that's too bad. But we should not spend taxpayer money to spoon feed every farmer, to walk him or her through the ropes and make sure they sign up for the right program. If our bureaucrats make mistakes, fine, but we should only offer redress for mistakes of commission, not failure to nurse people along.
The other side said: Congress creates confusing programs and never worries about how program operations relate to farmer's schedules for planning their operations and planting their farms. We county-level bureaucrats are dealing with our friends and neighbors, people we go to church with and whose children attend school with ours. We need to do everything we can to help these people understand the programs and sign up for the best option available. And if we fail to do so, we should recognize it's not the farmer's fault if they don't ask the right questions, it's our fault.
While I'm exaggerating the clarity of the two sides for effect, the different perspectives were real. I remember one county director in Kansas who took it as a personal affront when a former ASCS employee set up a consulting firm to aid farmers in complying with (or evading, depending on one's perspective) payment limitation rules. The differences were sometimes based on political perspectives--some Republicans leaned more towards the first, some Democrats more towards the second. But sometimes it was just the individual case where someone was particularly inept.
I suspect this tension is common throughout bureaucracies. Consider the IRS. This story
examines their program for free electronic filing of tax returns. Should our tax laws and tax procedures be so simple that H&R Block goes out of business? How far should the IRS go in explaining and coaching taxpayers? Or should they contract out, in effect, to private purveyors of tax preparation software and CPA's?
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