Federal management office debated--again

For more than a decade Congress has considered taking the M out of OMB. But although scholars and politicians alike have agreed that federal management issues have not been a priority of the Office of Management and Budget and would be better handled by a separate agency, very little has changed.

That didn't stop Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., from reexamining the idea at a hearing Tuesday of his House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology.

"There is little debate over whether the executive branch of the federal government needs better management. It does," Horn said. "The question is how to bring about substantial, enduring improvements."

Witnesses at the hearing all endorsed the idea of splitting OMB and creating a new Office of Federal Management.

"OFM would be a major player in setting the rules of the game for agency management," said Ronald Moe, a management specialist at the Congressional Research Service.

Moe argued that a separate management office would allow the executive branch to more effectively produce top-level managers and improve results.

"All too often a problem in an agency goes unaddressed by OMB," he said. "OFM will increase the capacity of a manager to manage agencies to produce."

Dwight Ink, president emeritus of the Institute of Public Administration and former assistant director of executive management at OMB, said the creation of OFM is "badly needed" and "long overdue."

"It would equip the President better than OMB can today," he said.

Paul Light, director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said he was reluctant to support the creation of OFM at first, but said he had "given in" because the idea's "time had come."

Light cited OMB's lack of attention to management issues and a marginalization of staff at OMB as reasons for his change of heart.

"We've tried just about everything," he said. "Let's give this a chance. We can always put it back together."

Despite wide support for the proposal, the subcommittee's ranking minority member, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, voiced his concern about it.

"You cannot divorce budget from management and management from budget," Kucinich said. "You can divide them, merge them, do whatever to them, but basically they're doing the same function."

Outgoing OMB Director Franklin Raines and other administration officials have testified before Horn's subcommittee and other panels that management and budget oversight should be kept together, arguing that without the budget stick, few agencies would follow the management carrot.

Under a reorganization which began in 1994, OMB examiners were given responsibility to review agencies' management and budget issues in tandem, Clinton administration officials note.