Barking orders from command central may be a well-recognized management approach, but federal agencies should consider following a bottom-up model like that used at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a recent grant-funded report.
A flat organizational structure and a collaborative decision-making process distinguish HHS from other federal agencies and are among the keys to the agency's success, scholar Beryl A. Radin, professor of public administration and policy at Rockefeller College in N.Y., said in her study, "Managing Decentralized Departments: The Case of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services." The study was funded by the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government.
According to Radin, Donna Shalala, secretary of HHS, manages a large and complex agency comprised of more than 300 decentralized programs with a unique management strategy that other federal managers could learn from. Shalala discussed the report at a recent luncheon in Washington.
"The experience of managing HHS as a largely decentralized department does attest to the possibility of adopting a management strategy that provides an alternative to a traditional, centralized command and control mode," Radin said.
Radin acknowledges that personality and a team of smart political appointees contribute to HHS' success, but points out other elements of the agency's management approach that can be replicated.
For example, Shalala views the program units as the heart of the agency and does not second-guess decisions made at the program level, the report said. One of Shalala's first moves as Secretary of the department was to remove layers of management that served only to impede the information flow between program units and the Secretary's office.
Collaboration is used to make decisions at HHS, even with highly structured processes, like the annual budget, Rabin said. Senior staff at the agency vote on how to allocate money in the budget and program-level requests are seldom contested.
"As such, budget conflict rarely occurs within the department and a unified position is submitted to [the Office of Management and Budget]," the report said.
Still, the autonomy provided to programs at HHS could undermine the department's unity, Radin said. "Despite the success of the Shalala strategy, an underlying certainty about the identity of the department does remain," the report said.
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