Edward Paras 6/17

Today marks the start of my third week on the job, fourth week in Dublin – nearly at the halfway point. Time does fly. At the advice of my coworkers, I was able to make it out to the General Post Office Museum over the weekend, which details the story of the 1916 Dublin Uprising and its lasting effects on the Irish political landscape.

Ambiguity is an inevitable part of the workplace, unless, of course, you have a micromanager on your hands, which may well be worse. At the Department of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage, where a relatively small legal team handles all the litigatory needs of one of the State’s largest bureaucratic organizations, extensive one-on-one guidance is a luxury I can ill afford. Even as I write this, most of the team is away on company business. This means that instruction is slipped through the cracks in the schedule – an email sent before I arrive at the office, a quick lunchtime meeting, an exchange of Skype messages. In any case, you’re less likely to have a strict regimen imposed on you so much as a theme to improvise on.

Often, one will simply have to use their best judgment. When asked to create an index of Court of Justice of the European Union cases involving a few particular EU Directives, does that mean “every case in which the relevant directives were mentioned,” “every case in which case law was set on the directives” or “an outline of the most significant case law on these directives.” Knowing you may not get your questions answered until tomorrow or later, you have to infer which one would be most helpful to the unit based on the given instruction. Does this carry a risk of being wrong? Yes, but creating some kind of product is better than sitting on your hands all day. I’ve found that in government, where everything is based on interpretation, demands can be somewhat malleable. Maybe they wanted *this* kind of information, but *that* way of approaching it will do the job – the State moves slowly anyway, there’s time for another draft. This isn’t to admit or advocate laziness or dereliction, but an acknowledgement of the State’s massive bureaucracy and the slow pace thereof. Compare the State to a massive freighter being pulled by a tugboat. The tug takes some time, but once it’s in a certain direction, it will go that way.

In other cases, there really is nothing to do but hurry up and wait. Perhaps I’ve finished a task, or need instructions for the next stage of one, but whoever gives the instructions is occupied. Sitting in a holding pattern isn’t much fun, but it’s an unavoidable part of working in an organization with so many moving parts. The Department’s profile has expanded massively over the past decade – beyond constructing and administering public housing, the DHLGH has taken control of public water works, of architectural preservation efforts, and even Met Eireann; Ireland’s public metrological service.

There is almost an ambiguity within the Department itself, about how exactly to define such a broad and sweeping organization with its fingers in so many pies. Civil service is often very siloed, with members of a particular department having a strong sense of mission and purpose, as well as a distinct service culture. The DHLGH, which has absorbed a number of smaller departments in recent years, is an outlier in this regard, incorporating civil servants from a number of organizations, all of whom have diverse motivations for and perceptions of the work they do.

I’ve received some new guidance for the coming week, including the riveting task of reading through and summarizing a 256-page report from the Housing Commission on the possibility of enshrining a right to housing in Ireland’s constitution, or if such a right exists already. However, as I’ve previously mentioned, nearly the entire team is out for the week, so I will be taking the initiative on my own until Friday. I’ve been given broad freedom with this, but questions like “how long ought this summary to be” will be up to my best judgment.

In any organization, there is a balance to be struck between strong organizational doctrine and the ability of individuals to think and act for themselves. Good organizations give their people a framework, an approach to things, and let them play with it, rather than an instruction manual for every possible situation.