“Are you saying everything is better for the functionary with computers?” asked Konrad with a frown. “In what way?”

In his political administration course, Konrad’s prof had told the students never to use the words ‘better’ or ‘worse’ without a qualifier.

“Oh, in lots of ways,” said George, trying hard to keep an air of calm in face of a bold question.

“Computers have made a civil servant’s life better, in three main areas.”

“Primo, quality and variety of outputs. Secundo, the range of background analysis. And, now here’s one aspect that might not meet the eye, tertio, enhanced internal control systems.”

Konrad deepened his grimace.

“In the ERA, especially in its financial circuits, things are so much tighter than they were 30 years ago,” pronounced George.

“I’m not sure everyone would agree with you on the last one, George,” answered back Konrad. “I’ve heard a lot of colleagues say the internal controls just bog things down.”

“I don’t deny that internal control makes more work,” retorted George. “I’m just saying that, from the point of view of the quality of the final product, financial procedures have improved greatly. And that means we have fewer errors and none of the scandalous fraud we had in the nineties.”

Konrad began wondering how much more detailed George was going to get. Unlike the others, he didn’t have the excuse of a meeting to go to and time was passing. The dried-up stains of coffee in the bottom of his cup had told him so a while ago.

“Not to mention the fact that we carry out way more direct management nowadays – giving away grants, and subsidies for projects with SME’s, research centres, consultants, CSO’s, the lot.”

“I believe you, George,” interrupted Konrad. “But the internal financial management model of the ERA was not the sort of thing my teachers at university were into. They preferred to study the characteristics of the evolving discourse and the effectiveness of the ERA as an international institution.”

“Yeah, I know the academic types. Big Picture sort of people, eh?” replied George. “Focus on summits and high-level negotiations all the time. Less interest in the nitty gritty of policymaking,” he lamented.

“But, remember. I’m not talking here about the big, brilliant ideas of the cabinet or the ingenious masterplan of the Director-General. Who knows how smart any given top-down initiative really is”. George paused as another of his wry smiles appeared on his face. “You may have noticed I kept out of ‘little s for smart’, for good reason. On a bad day I even think we may even be getting dumber!”

“You mentioned background analysis,” said Konrad, in an attempt to bring the conversation back on track. “I can imagine that’s also where things have changed a lot.”

“A lot, you’re telling me,” rejoined George. “I remember, in 2005, the first time we hired what was only just beginning to be called a ‘quant’. Clever guy. Until then, we had only used external consultants for our number crunching. But seeing what else he could do, well, it was a real eye opener for lots of us.”

George’s expression took on a look of absolute honesty. “You have to realise that most of the preparations for introducing the Euro were done with what today we’d call a fag packet calculation. Talk about flying by the seat of our pants!”

Despite finding some of what George was saying as borderline confessional, Konrad was more than happy to sit back and take it all in.

“From then on, there was no going back on the modelling. And the hierarchy soon got used to asking for more and more simulations, with more parameters, more sensitivity analysis, more scenarios and sub-scenarios, the lot.”

“Yes, a third of my modules in my last year at uni’ were quantitative,” added Konrad.

“And remember,” butted in George, “the data we held in house was only a fraction of what we handle today!”

George hesitated for a moment. He was conscious he might be cramping Konrad’s chance to speak. Konrad took his opportunity.

“Another thing that struck me, was when we had to read old reports from the IMF and the World Bank,” he began. “How few figures and graphs they included,” he commented, keen to show the healthy sense of history he had.

“True. True,” answered back George. “You should have seen the time it took to tap data into a specialised graph maker or get a colleague to draw a graph with a pen and a ruler, just like school.” He smiled fondly. “But we had the advantage of asking the secretary to expertly type in the axes and the title!”

Konrad held back a giggle and thought back to his schooldays, with colouring pencils and graph paper.

“Won’t AI bring real gains there?” asked Konrad attentively. “And help us make much better graphic material and information maps?”

“I’ve no doubt. And that will all be very welcome,” confirmed George. “Because once the bosses get the idea that they can ask us – and receive very quickly – better quality supporting material in reports and notes, that’s when the workload starts rising again. And then we’ll need every time-saving device we can lay our hands on!”

George was enjoying the exchange with such a bright and willing lad.

“In the old days it was enough to write a note to Cabinet or simply publish a regulation. Nowadays a Commissioner can’t sneeze without provoking the need for a set of Power Point slides, a summary and images for the website and an extra text for the press release or a tagline for the social media site!

George, for one moment, was verging on the edge of complaint.

“And don’t forget to add the output to an internal control monitoring list to measure management performance!”

“I can’t always tell if you’re for or against all the new things a computer can do,” said Konrad, starting to show a degree of familiarity towards George.

George didn’t mind at all. In fact, he’d grown to see it as a sign of success that colleagues – especially the younger and less experienced – would tell him what they were really thinking, rather than holding off with their opinions, due to some misplaced sense of deference. Such was George’s unrelenting enthusiasm for the European project that the lowering level of engagement he experienced with many colleagues, he’d known for a lot longer, would often get him down.

George could never quite work out what brought on that level of ennui. Complacency? Disappointment? Cynicism? Or simply self-preservation? His only fear was that he himself could be contributing to their indifference – the last thing he ever wanted was to bore people with his bumbling on.

“I guess I wouldn’t like to think that AI would dumb us down,” replied George, after a pause that had made Konrad feel that his questions were getting out of place.

“On a bad day, I can sometimes feel a lot of the art of administration has died away. Pens and paper and people were more human.” George surprised Konrad with the tenderness of his expression.

“Do you know that scene in Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times?” George suddenly threw out. “The scene when he’s working on a production line, and has to work faster and faster to tighten the bolts?”

Konrad couldn’t resist a smile and a big “Oh yes!”

“Well, if we are not careful in the administration, our work will become no more than a production line. All tasks will be done through apps. And the functionary’s predilection to make forms to fill in – in which errors are not possible – will be his sole satisfaction.”

“Now, now George,” said Konrad. “Listening to you earlier, I’d swear you were describing the last 30 years as a Golden Age in EU administration. Even you said there’s no reason to believe AI will be a bad thing.”

“OK. OK. You’re right.  Maybe I’ve gone too far again,” confessed George. “I guess I have just one ‘Ask’ from our IT developers,” said George recomposing himself. “Have you noticed their annoying habit of giving our work applications classical Greek names?”

Konrad nodded. “Yes, but I have to say I wasn’t too surprised to see the messenger system is called Hermes,” he added.

“We had Apollo before that. And, for a long time, the registration of documents had to pass through Athena, which was most unwise,” George ribbed, reaching to collect the coffee cups to put them on the tray for the dishwashing team to pick them up.

“Just so long as they don’t become completely crass and choose Greek heroes for the names of the AI tools!” he guffawed, as Konrad collected up the paper with George’s scribbled calculations on, keen to have a second look at how he’d arrived at such telling figures.

[to be continued]