(Main Interior Building - where I work - Circa 1936)
I work in a big bureaucratic Department in a big bureaucratic Government, and I'm usually fine with that. Sure, applying for a job, getting your HR paperwork processed, and trying to do anything new is difficult, but what most people don't realize is that there was a purpose for compartmentalizing the government. When you are managing a workforce of 70,000, like Interior, it makes sense that there are rigid divisions and rules for what every piece has to do in order to make the whole things work. Even the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are called bureaus. But all this protocol and procedure can make doing actual work within the Government seem a little removed from what you really think you should be doing, which in my case is somehow making our planet and land a little better.
But sometimes a crack breaks through that big bureaucracy, and the most lucky and diligent employees can see the light, where abstract policy papers meet the real world. This week I got to take a peak through that crack and it was cool. Eventually I am sure I will get used to the idea that something that I produced might make a small difference, but for now it is new and fun. In this case it was a few words on a page that were based on a paper that I played a minor role in writing, but those words ended up being filtered up through Interior's chains of communication and were spit out the other side into the world of media, ending up in the New York Times. My small contribution in the form of a list of talking points on Oil and Gas Leasing at Interior showed up in THE major newspaper in the United States, of course after being packaged and refined by the actual communications experts, but still amazing and humbling. And this entire process took 2.5 days.
So I had a good week, where my little effort might have shed some light on how readers of that article view a very important issue. While not all of what I write on the variety things that Interior does to manage public lands, protect endangered species, and address climate change will make it outside of the well-intentioned bureaucracy, just knowing that it is possible, and I can be involved, is enough.
