Bureaucratic Services
Bureaucratic Services
Assistance for dealing with all kinds of bureaucracy or red tape is offered by bureaucratic service providers. They will normally deal with all and any kind of authorities or bodies a person may require. These services are most sought after by foreign people moving to the Algarve or Portugal.
Bureaucracy
The purpose of a bureaucracy is to successfully implement the actions of an organization of any size (but often associated with large entities such as government, corporations, and non-governmental organizations), in achieving its purpose and mission, and the bureaucracy is tasked to determine how it can achieve its purpose and mission with the greatest possible efficiency and at the least cost of any resources.
Modern bureaucracies arose as the government of states grew larger during the modern period, and especially following the Industrial Revolution. As the authors David Osborne and Ted Gaebler pointed out in 1993: “It is hard to imagine today, but a hundred years ago bureaucracy meant something positive. It connoted a rational, efficient method of organization – something to take the place of the arbitrary exercise of power by authoritarian regimes. Bureaucracy brought the same logic to government work that the assembly line brought to the factory. With the hierarchical authority and functional a specialization, they made possible the efficient undertaking of large complex tasks.” – Osborne, David and Gaebler, Ted. Reinventing Government
Red tape
"Red tape" is a term for excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations and other large organizations.
One definition is the "collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming". Another definition is the "bureaucratic practice of hair splitting or foot dragging, blamed by its practitioners on the system that forces them to follow prescribed procedures to the letter".
Red tape generally includes the filling out of paperwork, obtaining of licenses, having multiple people or committees approve a decision and various low-level rules that make conducting one's affairs slower, more difficult, or both. Red tape can also include "filing and certification requirements, reporting, investigation, inspection and enforcement practices, and procedures".
Origins
The origins of the term are somewhat obscure, but it is first noted in historical records in the 16th century, when Henry VIII besieged Pope Clement VII with around eighty or so petitions for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. A photo of the petitions from Cardinal Wolsey and others; now stored in the Vatican archives, can be seen on page 160 of "Saints and Sinners, a history of The Popes", by Eamon Duffy (published by Yale University Press in 1997). The pile of documents can be viewed rolled and stacked in their original condition, each one sealed and bound with the obligatory red tape, as was the custom.
The tradition continued through to the 17th and 18th century. Although Charles Dickens is believed to have used the phrase before Thomas Carlyle, the English practice of binding documents and official papers with red tape was popularized in the writings of Carlyle protesting against official inertia with expressions like "Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence". To this day, most barristers' briefs are tied in a pink-coloured ribbon known as "pink tape" or "legal tape". Government briefs are usually bound with white tape, introduced as an economy measure, some maintain, to save the expense of dyeing the tape red. Traditionally, official Vatican documents were also bound in red cloth tape.
Red tape reduction
The "cutting of red tape" is a popular electoral and policy promise.
The European Commission has a competition that offers an award for the "Best Idea for Red Tape Reduction". The competition is "aimed at identifying innovative suggestions for reducing unnecessary bureaucracy stemming from European law". In 2008, the European Commission held a conference entitled 'Cutting Red Tape for Europe'. The goal of the conference was "reducing red tape and overbearing bureaucracy" to help "business people and entrepreneurs improve competitiveness".