Bureaucracies are staffed with humans who have the capacity to make a judgement call on how to interpret the rules, and bend their letter to serve their spirit, or the interests of pubic relations, or just common sense.
I disagree. Have you ever been to the CA DMV with a photo of your license (that you lost/had stolen)? I have. They told me I needed a copy of my lost license to get a new one, or else the man couldn't validate my identity.
Bureaucratic hell, as defined by Harry Harrison in the Stainless Steel Rat series, is the definition of humans as automata.