In large administrations, the committee system prevents the formulation of sound policy decisions. At the committee level, as at the national level, the assemblage of a group of constituents who not only possess different departmental interests but also differing bases of information as well as different individual approaches, results, after the benefits which certainly flow from the dialectical process have been obtained, not in an optimum decision in the light of processed facts, but in a compromise arrived at in the light of what different members of the group be. Thus many modern technical problems, instead of being solved or improved by a compromise, are merely aggravated by it. The committee, used in conjunction with existing 'vertically' structured administrative and decision-making machinery, is thus as much a hindrance as an aid.