Letters

Paul Light's column Requiem for Reinvention, (The Last Word, February)demonstrates a sad lack of understanding of the strategies the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) chose to achieve its mission of creating a government that costs less and works better and gets results Americans care about. I don't need to defend that record since NPR's accomplishments have been broadly acknowledged. But it is important that your readers, many of them who are still carrying the flame of reinvention, aren't confused by Mr. Light's inaccurate and inflammatory commentary.

The answer to his fundamental question of whether reinvention will live on is a resounding "yes." It will do so because we were able to begin an irreversible process of changing the culture of the federal government by embedding that change in the hearts and minds of those who work for it. Vice President Al Gore's strategy from the beginning was to focus on the ideas of front-line workers and gain their commitment to permanent change, agency-by-agency, bureau-by-bureau. That is a more powerful way to create permanent reform than Light's crusade for new laws and fewer layers of management.

The strategy required leadership at the highest levels of the executive branch to make sure every front-line worker was involved in the process and had a chance to influence results at their agencies. It embedded a new culture of a performance-based government dedicated to serving its customers by:

• Introducing the first federal customer satisfaction surveys in American history.
• Instituting employee feedback as part of upper management evaluations.
• Moving all of the SES ranks to an evaluation process that ties performance to 1993 Government Performance and Results Act goals as well as customer service and employee empowerment.
  

These are just some of the ideas and accomplishments Light regrettably failed to mention. There will always be disagreements over tactics that might be used to accomplish any given mission. But Light is wrong in using his own preferences to tarnish the record of real accomplishment produced by the interagency task force of dedicated civil servants at NPR.

To continue the work of creating American government at its best, we will need more, not less, leadership from the executive branch to encourage the involvement of everyone who works on the front lines. President Bush signaled his interest in this effort during the campaign, providing hope to all those who have worked so hard to change our government for the better that their work will not have been in vain. Now, rather than trying to minimize their very real achievements, we need everyone, regardless of party, to celebrate and reward the efforts of front-line workers to help make government work better and cost less. If we do that, we will be able to celebrate a renaissance of reinvention instead of delivering a requiem for reinvention.

Morley A. Winograd
Former Director, National Partnership for Reinventing Government Government's Disgrace

So, Barry White thinks agencies aren't making full use of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act ("Seizing the Moment on GPRA," Viewpoint, January).

Closer to home, what about the 1990 Pay Comparability Act? The shameful gap between federal salaries and those in the private sector is still about 25 percent because this law has been totally ignored. Many federal employees would like to see the executive and legislative branches start to make full use of this law.

Ed Prior
Aerospace Technologist
NASA