Gore: 'A few more years' of reinvention

Six years after he launched his reinventing government initiative, Vice President Al Gore says in an interview that it will take "a few more years" to instill businesslike behavior throughout the federal bureaucracy.

In an interview published in the fall 1999 edition of The Business of Government, a quarterly publication of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government, Gore said some agencies-the Social Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in particular-have reinvented themselves in the way he envisioned at the start of the National Performance Review (NPR) in 1993.

"Other agencies still have a lot of work to do," Gore said. "We know how much more remains to be done, and we're keenly aware that we're not there yet. But that day will come, I think, in a few more years."

Gore said reinvention has already produced numerous successes, from the best 1-800 phone service in the country at the Social Security Administration to the elimination of of 350,000 federal jobs to the establishment of customer service standards in government.

The greatest challenge facing the reinvention movement is "making reinvention a permanent part of our government's culture," Gore said. To achieve that goal, the government must conduct more of its business on the Internet and focus more on customer service, he said.

To see the full text of the Gore interview, click here.

The new edition of The Business of Government also provided critiques of Gore's reinvention efforts by leading scholars.

James Thompson, a public administration professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, criticized NPR for failing to enlist the support of middle managers in reinvention efforts.

The Gore team, Thompson said, failed "to mobilize middle managers and enlist their support and assistance in implementing those changes of which they were to be the primary beneficiaries. In the absence of such an initiative, supporters of the status quo, including most prominently those in staff units and at central office locations, appear to have prevailed in many key agencies."

The full fall 1999 edition of The Business of Government is available for download at endowment.pwcglobal.com.