most significant administrative decisions. That many administrative officials worked on nothing except policy, Insofar as public policies were controversial, such work inevitably involved administrators in politics. The supposed independence of administration from policy and politics was seen to be illusory. Since the 1930s there has thus been increasing concern with policy formation and the development of techniques to improve policy decisions. It was with governmental efforts to combat the Depression that new informational devices were introduced, including: National income accounting The scrutiny of gross national product as a major index of economic health. The applied techniques of fiscal and monetary policy have become established specialization of public administrationResponses to incrementalismIncrementalism is the tendency of government to tinker with policies rather than to question the value of continuing them. A number of techniques have been introduced to make decisions more rational. One such technique, widely applied, is cost-benefit analysis. This involves: Identifying Quantifying Comparing the costs and benefits of alternative proposals. Quantitative economic measurement is useful up to a certain point. The value of human life, of freedom from sickness and pain, of safety on the streets, of clean air, and of opportunity for achievement are hardly measurable in monetary terms. Public administration has thus increasingly concerned itself with developing better social indicators, quantitative and qualitative--that is, better indexes of the effects of public programs and new techniques of social analysis.Another development has been an increasing emphasis on human relations. An experiment brought out the importance to productivity of social or informal organization, good communications, individual and group behavior, and attitudes (as distinct from aptitudes).Awareness of the importance of human relations influenced th...
