Cutting Red Tape as a Promise: What Actually Costs Time in Public Administration
Few political demands are as popular as the call for less red tape. A sober look at how time is actually distributed in administrative processes shows that the debate often misses the real time drain.
When a public authority complains about being overloaded, the call for cutting red tape follows almost reflexively. The phrase is politically appealing, it sounds like quick relief, and it fits into any speech. Rarely does anyone specify which actual work step is meant. This vagueness is exactly the problem. Anyone who wants to cut red tape across the board without knowing where the time actually disappears ends up changing things that cost almost nothing, while leaving the real time drains untouched.
The difference between perceived and measured effort
In consulting projects I encounter the same pattern again and again. When asked what costs the most time in their own authority, people first mention a particular form, a particular rule or a particular approval process. These answers are honestly meant, but they almost always rest on the irritation that is easiest to recall, not on what actually binds the most working time in total. A single, particularly annoying process stays in memory because it triggers frustration. A recurring, small friction loss that repeats ten times over the course of a day remains invisible, even though in total it costs considerably more.
This confusion between perceived annoyance and actual time spent is not a marginal problem. It shapes entire reform debates. Political initiatives to cut red tape tend to pick up the cases that are easiest to communicate publicly, such as particularly absurd-looking form requirements or applications that require multiple signatures. Such cases make excellent headlines. Whether removing them actually frees up noticeable time is a different question, one that is rarely asked in the public debate.
Where the time actually disappears
From my experience with process analyses across different levels of public administration, the largest measurable time loss is rarely tied to a single rule. It lies in the coordination between departments that should actually work together but are organisationally unable to. A request travels from one department to the next because responsibility has not been clearly assigned. Information is entered multiple times because two IT systems do not communicate with each other and nobody has built an interface. A decision waits for days for a signature because a deputisation arrangement is missing or unknown. None of these processes feel to those involved like a bureaucratic irritation. They simply feel like normal day-to-day administrative work. That is precisely why they are barely addressed in the public debate, even though in total they cost considerably more time than most legally required form steps.
Based on my consulting practice, I estimate that in a typical medium-sized local authority, considerably more working time flows into such organisational friction losses than into complying with individual, often criticised formal requirements. This assessment cannot be backed by a single robust study, but it matches what becomes visible in almost every process review as soon as things are actually measured rather than merely surveyed.
Why rhetoric addresses the symptom, not the cause
The political appeal of the call to cut red tape lies exactly in this confusion. Removing a single rule is visible, quick to implement and easy to sell as a success. Building an interface between two IT systems or reorganising a responsibility is less visible, takes longer and produces no announcement that looks good. That is why a large part of public reform rhetoric focuses on what communicates well, not on what actually costs the most time.
This observation is not a defence of existing rules. There are undoubtedly formal requirements that are genuinely unnecessarily complicated and could be scrapped outright. The point is a different one: anyone who believes that scrapping a few visible rules solves the problem of overload will be disappointed. The administration remains just as overloaded as before, because the real time drains lie within the organisation itself, not in the wording of the law.
What this means in practice
For a public authority that genuinely wants to gain time, several concrete consequences follow.
First, it is worth conducting an honest stocktake of where working time actually disappears before launching any initiative to cut red tape, rather than relying on perceived irritations. A simple survey in which staff document over two or three weeks where waiting times, follow-up queries and duplicate data entry occur often delivers more surprising results than any staff survey on perceived workload.
Second, a distinction should be made between requirements that are genuinely externally imposed and standards that the administration has imposed on itself over time. Many checking steps that are perceived as a statutory obligation are in reality home-grown precautionary measures that can be changed without the legislator having to act.
Third, the question of interfaces belongs firmly on the agenda. Where two departments regularly handle the same process without a clearly regulated handover, time loss occurs that can be fixed with comparatively little effort once it has been made visible.
Fourth, every reform initiative marketed as cutting red tape should be measured against a simple question: how many working hours does it actually free up, and for whom? Anyone who cannot answer that question has probably treated a symptom rather than the cause.
Cutting red tape remains a legitimate goal. But it only becomes effective when it is guided by the actual distribution of time rather than by what is easiest to criticise. Public authorities that take this distinction seriously end up changing things that are less visible, but genuinely felt.