The Winners' Circle

The IRS and the Food and Drug Administration, two agencies blasted recently by Congress for mismanagement and inefficiency, are the only federal winners of this year's prestigious Innovations in American Government Awards.

IRS' TeleFile System and FDA's reform of the drug approval process earned the agencies $100,000 grants in addition to the honor of being chosen from more than 1,500 applicants as the most innovative government programs in the nation. Eight state and local programs also won the awards, which were announced Wednesday. The awards are sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the Council for Excellence in Government.

The awards have been given out since 1986, but this is only the third year that federal programs have been permitted to participate. There were 313 federal applicants this year; five were chosen as finalists.

Winners are supposed to use the $100,000 grants to encourage other government operations to duplicate their successes. According to the awards' sponsors, 85 percent of past winners' programs have been replicated by other governments.

The IRS won for its TeleFile Program, which allows people who use the 1040EZ tax form to file their taxes by telephone for free. The phone call takes 10 minutes. People can choose to have their refund deposited directly in their bank accounts. More than 4 million people used TeleFile this year.

The award comes at a time when the IRS has been scorched with criticism from Congress and the media over abuses in collection offices, which audit taxpayers and collect delinquent taxes. U.S. News & World Report editor-at-large David Gergen, who chaired the innovation awards' selection committee, said the judges were conscious of the beating the IRS has taken in the last few weeks. He said a few employees' transgressions should not "distort the record of the many people who serve the public well" at the agency.

Acting IRS Commissioner Michael Dolan praised the dedication of IRS employees who have worked on the TeleFile project.

The FDA won for streamlining the drug approval process, allowing drugs to get to the market quickly while still protecting the public health. By creating user fees for the pharmaceutical industry, FDA was able to raise money to increase its medical review staff. As a result, the average time for approving new drugs dropped from 30 months to 15 months. The average approval time for "breakthrough" drugs dropped to just under 8 months.

FDA has been the subject of heated debate on Capitol Hill in recent years. It has been targeted in several reform proposals, including one that would privatize portions of the agency.

Acting FDA Commissioner Michael Friedman said the award is an endorsement of the hard work the agency has put into the drug approval process, but added that FDA will continue to strive for improvement.

"The public has enormous expectations for FDA, but the agency has even greater expectations for itself," Friedman said. "This is an ongoing process; it's an interminable marathon. There's no particular moment at which you say you've done it."

Patricia McGinnis, president of the Council for Excellence in Government, said she was pleased to see the IRS and the FDA rewarded for their efforts "in the face of all the controversy and criticism."

McGinnis said federal agencies face two challenges their state and local counterparts don't when applying for the innovations awards. First, they often don't have the direct connection with customers that state and local offices have--although the IRS does, she noted. Second, it's more difficult to replicate the success of a program that is done at the national level.

Besides the IRS and FDA projects, three other federal programs were chosen as finalists for the awards and will receive $20,000 grants:

• The Miami International Airport's reinvention laboratory, made up of representatives of the Agriculture Department, the U.S. Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, local officials and private industry representatives, was honored for improving customer service at the airport.
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' Project Lead program was recognized for making it easier for law enforcement agencies to track down illegal firearms traffickers.
• The Environmental Protection Agency's 33/50 program was honored for getting more than 1,300 private chief executive officers to voluntarily reduce their companies' emissions.