"The delicate art of bureaucracy" & digital transformation

Bureaucracy isn’t unique to government. You’ll find it in every organization that has grown past a certain size. Some sectors have woven themselves more deeply into a bureaucratic web (older ones, typically) and some are just now figuring out how to do so. Bureaucracy is virtually required by many compliance frameworks, which insist on documented, enforced, auditable rules and signoffs by authorities.

But bureaucracy is often an impediment to digital transformation. It acts to slow down or prevent innovation and adaptation. In a digital economy, where speed is of the essence, bureaucracy is a sticky goo that makes rapid movement impossible.

In this Fireside Chat, FWD50 chair Alistair Croll sits down with AWS Enterprise Strategist Mark Schwartz, who served as CIO of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), to discuss his proposed model for making bureaucracy lean, learning, and enabling—the three characteristics of good, not evil, bureaucracies.