Gore to Feds: Look Outward

After five years of internal soul-searching, the National Performance Review, renamed the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, is turning outward to ask the public how to make federal agencies more responsive, Vice President Al Gore announced Tuesday at the fifth anniversary ceremony for the reinventing government initiative.

Gore pledged to make customer service the main focus of the reinvention initiative in the coming year, announcing that federal officials will meet with citizens around the country to find out what the public wants from the federal government. Gore said President Clinton has instructed the heads of departments and agencies to establish customer service goals and to hold "Conversations with America" sessions.

Officials' meetings with the public have been scheduled for March and April. Education Secretary Richard Riley will conduct a "town meeting" by satellite on March 17 to discuss college preparation. Health Care Financing Administration chief Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, who oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs, will meet with citizens in Nashville April 13 to discuss health care policy.

Gore also repeated his call, originally laid out in NPR's 1997 annual report, to make government operations more businesslike.

"Americans have a right to expect that all parts of the federal government can go through the same kind of reinvention" as businesses underwent in the early 1990s, Gore said. "We want a government that sees citizens as customers. The difference between businesses and government is that our customers are also our bosses."

The Vice President applauded the efforts of federal workers and agency heads who have improved government operations over the last five years. New IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti, outgoing-Postmaster General Marvin Runyon, and Social Security Commissioner Kenneth Apfel were among the administration brass in attendance at the NPR ceremony, held in the Old Executive Office Building in Washington.

The officials announced customer service goals for their agencies, which are to be met by September 2000, two months before the next presidential election. The Agriculture Department, for example, committed to provide benefits electronically to 65 percent of food stamp recipients. The Education Department vowed to process 3 million college student aid applications electronically. And the Social Security Administration pledged to begin accepting benefits claims over the phone the first time people call, Apfel said.

Reminding the audience that he has always said reinvention would take eight to 12 years to take full root in the bureaucracy, Gore claimed the results of the effort are already improving the public's trust in government. He highlighted cooperative arrangements federal regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have set up with private industry. He also argued that reinvention has allowed the government to save money without significantly cutting services.

"Because of reinventing government, the first balanced budget in a generation is also a progressive budget," Gore said.

The Vice President also repeated a commonly touted achievement of the Clinton administration: After 350,000 jobs have been eliminated, the federal workforce is smaller now, as a percentage of the entire U.S. workforce, than it has been since before the New Deal.

Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the federal workplace has improved under reinvention, but said he is concerned that downsizing has simply replaced federal workers with contractor employees. Harnage also argued that the large number of low-level federal managers prevents employees from better serving the public.

"It's a tough nut to crack," Harnage said. "The same old regimes are in there doing the same old things."

In an e-mail message to federal employees sent this week, Gore asked them to renew the reinvention movement.

"Today, the reinventing government initiative is the longest running and most successful government reform effort in history," Gore wrote. "We urge you to begin an ongoing dialogue with the American people to learn what they want and expect from their government. Our goal is to regain in fullest measure the confidence of the people we serve."