In my opinion, it is regulation of government that drives bureaucracy; records management is a symptom.

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On Dec 3, 2012, at 1:28 PM, David Gaynon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I recently finished reading an interesting book - The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork," by Ben Kafka (Zone Books:2012).  It was reviewed in the New York Review of Books by Robert Darnton.  See
> 
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/06/chasing-paper/
> 
> Among the interesting tidbits I learned in this publication is that the concept of bureaucracy (which Kafka sees as closely aligned with record keeping) originated as a joke. The term was first used by the French economist and leader of the Physiocrat movement Vincent de Gournay who complained of "bureaumania".  He noted that in addition to monarchy (rule by one),  oligopoly (rule by few), and democracy (rule by many) we need a new category - bureaucracy (rule by desks).
> 
> After reading this book, I believe that an important question is to what degree (if any at all) electronic recordkeeping has or will have the capability to break the tight connection between bureaucracy and record keeping or does record keeping continue to be the gruel that the monster of bureaucracy demands of us all.  Kafka provides interesting examples of insufficient documentation and  not my department cases that leads one exasperated man to ask if justice and honesty has a department of its own.
> 
> 
> David B. Gaynon
> [log in to unmask]
> Huntington Beach CA, USA
> 
> 
> 
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