Public Administration Failure

The case study presents many failures of public administration. Among these are bureaucracy, communication failures, recruitment of unskilled officials, overlap of power between agencies, negligence and corruption. The bureaucratization and hierarchization of the government agencies linked in the case slowed down the processes and compliance with the norm. The flow of letters and reports between agencies took a long time to scale the case to agencies with superior power. It is important to highlight that, thanks to the action of the inspector and the group of workers, the case reached high-ranking agencies, but middle-ranking officials. Although they were human lives in danger, it was not enough to attract the attention of the institutions

Specifically, the agencies involved in the management of legislation and decision making in the mining sector delegated the actions to other agencies without taking any responsibility for the case. For example, the letter sent by the miners to the governor, with the objective of informing a higher-level instance, was forwarded by the governor's assistant to the mining department, agency for which the information had already passed. In this sense, it was to return to touch doors where they had not been interested. The politicians of high positions such as the governor, have many responsibilities and it is difficult to consider all the aspects and processes that go through their offices. They should rely on advisors and assistants, who intend to do their best work. However, many important issues are listed and never reach the highest authority. In this sense, determining priorities and cases that should come to the head is a responsibility and should be a careful decision for officials. Although there is a law, and a due process to be followed, decision-making and actions depend on the logic of the officials. This can represent serious errors, as it was for Centralia.

A high degree of negligence on the part of the Centralia Coal Company was another factor that led to the mine explosion. This company had a classic organizational approach,

However, negligence on the part of the mining company and corruption were the most influential factors in this case. Despite the high bureaucracy in the government system, without a doubt the ethics of the employees of the different agencies was a key factor in this process. As mentioned by Kettl (2015), the quality of government work depends on the bureaucratic ethics and responsibility that the employee has. In this case, the abuse of power led to the detriment of political processes and the breach of the law, to the point of ending