Adding staff expands caseload coverage without raising per-client service time

Evidence

First, as mentioned earlier street-level bureaucracies usually must choose additional services rather than improvement in services if they have slack resources. Second, claims of qualitative improvements in the form of spending more time on each case are often spurious. Case loads are often informally divided into active and inactive categories. The inactive cases are often not truly inactive but represent cases to which the street-level bureaucrat is unable to attend in the ordinary course of the day. They are regarded as low priority for reasons having little to do with the client but a lot to do with the pressures on the workers. … More clients will be seen or served, but the amount of actual time spent with the average client will not have improved. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 299

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: More staff cannot fix client processing if core working conditions stay unchanged — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 303; Reducing caseload pressure alone rarely improves frontline bureaucratic practice — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 306; Budget increases barely alter client-processing routines absent other work changes — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 302

Broader Connections

• More staff cannot fix client processing if core working conditions stay unchanged #contradicts (0.90) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 303
• Reducing caseload pressure alone rarely improves frontline bureaucratic practice #complicates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 306
• Budget increases barely alter client-processing routines absent other work changes #contradicts (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 302