‘Knowing’ the system: Public administration and informality during COVID-19

This chapter examines the informal through the accounts of a public official who had a leading role in re-making the administration of community grants in her local authority during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter explores what happens when there is a rupture to public administration processes, and the rule book is ‘thrown out of the window’. The focus is on the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the weeks following the UK government announcement of the ‘stay-at-home’ order. The analysis draws on practice theory with its focus on the ways in which policy actors engage with concrete situations and negotiate institutional contexts and configurations (Bartels, 2018; Cook & Wagenaar, 2012; Wagenaar, 2004). The analytical framework applies Wagenaar’s (2004) four key elements of public administration practice: context, action, knowledge and interaction. This chapter builds on Wagenaar’s understanding and explores how the entanglement of [in]formal practices made it possible for public officials to keep administrative systems going during the pandemic crisis.