A key player in Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government initiative took a step back recently to reflect on the six-year effort to improve federal operations.
John Kamensky, deputy director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, wrote a brief history of reinvention last month. Kamensky chronicles the accomplishments that have helped reduce the size of the federal workforce, improve customer service at many agencies and led to acquisition reform, regulatory reform and new uses of technology in government.
"We started our work with a clear set of principles and an inspiring vision of what government should look like," Kamensky writes. "We said we would create a government that works better and costs less by putting customers first, empowering employees to allow them to put customers first, cutting the red tape that held back employees, and cutting back to basics."
About 250 federal employees staffed the National Performance Review. The group went about identifying improvements to individual agencies' operations and to governmentwide systems, such as personnel, procurement and budget rules. The report they developed, "Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less," along with accompanying reports, offered 1,250 specific actions that could improve government operations and save $108 billion in the process.
NPR initially expected to be in business just a few short months, Kamensky writes. But the numerous changes reinventors envisioned for the federal government could not be completed in such a brief time.
"Initially, we thought this would take three to six months," Kamensky recalls. "It soon became clear the Vice President was committed to a much longer involvement than any previous reform effort."
NPR spent 1994 acting on the recommendations from the group's initial report. In 1995, the group broadened its effort, focusing on regulatory reform, benchmarking studies, partnerships with state and local governments and helping agencies set customer service standards. In 1996, Gore introduced the concept of performance-based organizations-agencies that would receive more autonomy in exchange for stricter performance standards.
The Clinton administration's second term brought with it Gore's Blair House Papers, a collection of essays that distilled lessons from NPR's efforts to date. NPR also decided to focus its efforts on 32 high-impact agencies-agencies with the most impact on the public, including the Social Security Administration and the IRS.
The effort also got a new name: the National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
Kamensky highlighted several major accomplishments that reinventors can be proud of, including:
- The size of the federal civilian workforce has been cut by 351,000 positions.
- Agencies have completed about 58 percent of the actions NPR recommended in 1993 and 1995, while President Clinton has signed 46 reinvention-related directives and Congress has passed more than 85 reform laws.
- More than 1,200 federal teams have been recognized with Gore's Hammer Awards.
- NPR estimates reinvention has saved the government $137 billion.
- Agencies have eliminated 640,000 pages of internal rules and 16,000 pages of Federal Regulations.
- Public trust in the federal government is increasing after a 30-year decline. "While it is not clear this is directly linked to the results of reinvention, we believe reinvention has made an important contribution," Kamensky said.
The major challenge NPR now faces, Kamensky said, is to make the reinvention movement self-sustaining.
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