Management: "Re" Words Rule

1997 has been brought to you by the letters "R" and "E" and the number "2000."

Everywhere you looked in 1997, public officials were talking about reforming, reengineering, restructuring, reinventing, rethinking, reviewing and revolutionizing some thing or another in the federal government, all in the name of preparing for the new millennium.

From the IRS to the Defense Department, from the FBI to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, officials tossed around "re" words to show that a government that works better and costs less is right around the reinvention corner and that Americans can look forward to a glorious reengineered future, where customers are at the top of the organizational pyramid and public trust in government is restored.

But in the fifth edition of his classic work Politics, Position and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization, published in November, long-time federal observer Harold Seidman reminds us that much of what we heard in 1997 was rehash, regurgitation and repetition.

"Reorganization has become almost a religion in Washington," Seidman says. "For the true believer, changes in structure and administrative systems can produce miracles. The emphasis is not on what the government does, but on how it does it. President Carter was going to reform the government by reorganizing it; President Reagan by privatizing it; and President Clinton by reinventing it."

But in 1997 a new "re" word took center-stage in government circles: Results. At the beginning of the year, many federal managers had little knowledge of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act. But by mid-year, as the Sept. 30 deadline for agencies' first five-year strategic plans under the law drew near, executives and managers across the government began to sit up and take notice of the Results Act. Increasing pressure from Republican congressional leaders and the Office of Management and Budget had agency heads pushing their staffs to turn out sound strategic plans.

In August and again in November, House leaders issued failing grades for most agencies' plans and hinted strongly that budgets will suffer if agencies don't take the Results Act seriously. But the real results of the Results Act won't be known until March 2000, when agencies will report on their progress toward meeting fiscal 1999 performance goals.

As Capitol Hill reverberated with the call for results, executive branch agencies were busy promising them.

The State Department, the U.S. Information Agency, Agency for International Development and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency got together for the most far-reaching reform of the foreign affairs establishment in decades. The Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a management reform plan to end its image as the "poster child" of wasteful government. The FBI, amid criticism of the work of its laboratory, revamped its management, while the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management touted their streamlining efforts and new customer service initiatives. The Commerce Department announced a restructuring of the National Weather Service. The Food and Drug Administration pushed ahead with a series of reforms. And the Agriculture and Interior Departments promised progress on racial diversity, while the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs pledged renewed emphasis on equality of the sexes.

But the Defense Department clearly led the way in restructuring plans in 1997. In May, Defense Secretary William Cohen likened himself to Captain Ahab, saying he was lashed to his own Moby Dick--the DoD bureaucracy. That month, his department unveiled its Quadrennial Defense Review, calling for a "revolution in military affairs."

Later in the year, Cohen pushed a "revolution in business affairs" after a Defense reform task force issued recommendations for cutting DoD fat. A wide-ranging personnel reform plan was also floated, but then shelved until 1998.

In December, the National Defense Panel issued its plan to transform the Pentagon, with a report recommending segregation of male and female service members in training close on its heels.

On the domestic side of government, the IRS was forced to get serious about its plans after taking a beating on Capitol Hill. The agency's public image, never good to begin with, hit a new low after Senate Finance Committee hearings in September exposed serious revenue collection problems. While Congress and the administration debated proposals to replace Treasury Department oversight of the IRS with an independent board, the agency itself ended several practices that led to taxpayer abuse and renewed its commitment to customer service.

IRS's hallmark effort was its new problem-solving initiative. In November, IRS employees in every district began meeting with taxpayers on Saturdays to help them work through their tax problems. The IRS also earned itself an Innovations in American Government Award from the Ford Foundation, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Council for Excellence in Government for its telephone tax filing system, which was used by millions of taxpayers this year.

Competition became the name of the game at agencies whose services are similar to those provided by private companies. In May, the Federal Aviation Administration awarded a contract worth up to $250 million to an Agriculture Department data center. The USDA center beat out IBM and Computer Sciences Corp. in the contract fight, boosting the hopes of franchise operations across the government and of Defense Department facilities destined for public-private competition for the Pentagon's business.

But while some federal operations were becoming business-savvy, others were trying to save face after embarrassing information technology failures. The FAA, the IRS, the National Weather Service and the Agency for International Development scrambled to explain multi-million and multi-billion dollar system flops.

The entire government may be facing humiliation at the turn of the century, when the year 2000 problem rears its ugly head. When that time comes, 1997 will likely be remembered as the year agencies, and especially the Office of Management and Budget, began to take the millennium bug seriously. Programmers across government are fixing codes and replacing products that would malfunction when the two-digit dates in older programs change from 12-31-99 to 01-01-00. But federal chief information officers won't know for sure until 20th century's end if the efforts they began this year did the trick or if they were too little, too late.

But the 21st century is still two years away. As 1997 draws to a close, federal managers and executives have fully absorbed a litany of "re" words into their business vocabulary. Managers are best off at evaluation time if they can couch their accomplishments in National-Performance-Review-public-relations-Hammer Award-winning lingo. However, the best managers know the measure of real success is results.

Everything else looks like tired reruns.