Reinventing government takes commitment, confidence and cooperation, a panel of Innovations in American Government Award winners told participants at the Reinvention Revolution conference Tuesday.
"It's a revolution in the beginning, but it's an evolution to sustain [reinvention]," Mae DeVincentis, acting executive director of the Defense Logistics Agency, told the crowd gathered to hear reinvention success stories.
The Defense Logistics Agency won an Innovations in American Government Award for its modernization of military procurement through electronic commerce.
The awards, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Council for Excellence in Government, recognize governmental initiatives that provide creative solutions to pressing social and economic problems. Winners receive grants of $100,000.
Daniel Beard, former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said confidence helped his agency complete a successful reorganization. As a result, the bureau reduced its regulations by 58 percent and eliminated 6,500 pages of rules.
"You have to be confident that what you're doing is sound," he said. "Because you'll certainly run into a lot of pebbles on the path."
Janet Woodcock, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said her agency was able to cut the average drug approval time in half by forming partnerships between the drug industry and her agency.
"It really brought previously hostile parties together," she said.
The new fast-track approval process is credited as a key factor in the nearly 20 percent decline in AIDS-related deaths in the past year.
Terence Lutes, national director of the IRS' Electronic Program Operations, said that the agency's Telefile system, which allows taxpayers to file tax returns over the phone, was born out of perseverance. What started as a research project has now become so popular that more than 6 million people are filing by phone, he said.
The biggest reinvention hurdle to overcome, the awards winners agreed, is employee cynicism and disbelief.
"It was getting over that initial cynicism that was difficult," Beard said. "It was like toothpaste out of a tube."
Woodcock said that an element of reinvention cynicism is risk aversion. "Our staff was used to doing things the way they were used to, so we had to revisit our mission and change the culture," she said. To help the staff understand the need for change, Woodcock developed a information session she and other managers presented to small groups of employees.
Beard suggested issuing "forgiveness coupons" to middle managers to encourage risk-taking. If a manager tries something innovative and fails, he or she simply presents the coupon and is forgiven.
DeVincentis said top executives should be focused on reassuring employees throughout the reinvention process.
"It's the job of the executive to change the employees' way of doing things and let them know it's OK," she said.
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