Perceptions and Performance

Back in 1997, the federal government was dominated by the letters "R" and "E." Reinvention, reengineering, reform, and results-based management ruled the year. "Re-" words still dot the federal management landscape, but 1998 was brought to you by the letter "P."

While politics reigned on the airwaves and in the newspapers, with President Clinton battling to keep his office, federal managers wrestled with the problems of perception and performance.

In poll after poll, the American public consistently upheld the perception that the federal government wastes money and performs poorly. According to a survey of 1,762 citizens released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in March, six of every ten Americans do not trust the federal government to do the right thing. Sixty-four percent agree that when something is run by the government, it is usually wasteful.

This year, Vice President Al Gore's reinvention team, which renamed itself the National Partnership for Reinventing Government in March, set higher public trust in government as its primary measure of success. Gore's reinventors selected 32 agencies to focus on, setting customer service goals for each one. The "high-impact" agencies administer the programs with the most direct impact on citizens, the reinventors say.

While Gore's team focused on perceived problems, agencies spent 1998 gearing up to improve their real performance. When fiscal 1999 began in October, federal managers officially became responsible for meeting goals laid out in their first annual agency-wide performance plans. The performance plans are required under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act.

In their performance plans, agencies described specific measures that will determine whether they are meeting their goals. For example, the Transportation Department will "reduce the number of transportation-related deaths to fewer than 44,407, even with a projected increase in miles traveled," the department's performance plan says.

More than any other agency, the IRS demonstrated the struggles federal managers face as they deal with perception and performance problems.

In July, Congress passed a sweeping IRS reform bill with a primary goal of making the service more taxpayer-friendly. Senate Finance Committee hearings into IRS abuses of taxpayers, begun in September 1997 and continued into 1998, strengthened the public belief that the IRS was a bully of an agency, mistreating small business owners and poor widows. That perception was founded in real cases of abuse, though it ignored the fact that most taxpayers have no problems with the IRS.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti embraced the reform bill and is trying to improve the IRS' image problem through regular problem-solving days with taxpayers, increased electronic filing options and more stringent procedures for tax collectors to follow before they can take punitive actions against delinquent taxpayers.

The IRS reform bill also gave the agency personnel and procurement flexibilities similar to those granted the Education Department's student financial aid office. The aid office became the government's first performance-based organization (PBO) as part of an education bill President Clinton signed in October.

Several other agencies, including the Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Mint, and the Defense Commissary Agency, have asked Congress for PBO status since Vice President Gore first proposed the model nearly three years ago. But so far, only the student aid office has become a PBO, which gives it exemptions from governmentwide personnel and procurement rules in exchange for tougher performance standards for the office's executives.

Other agencies have been opting to privatize or outsource activities to improve performance. In 1998, the privatization crown belonged to the Defense Department, which is using a series of public-private competitions to decide whether programs should be kept in-house or outsourced.

In its first full year under the Defense Reform Initiative, DoD targeted 237,000 civilian positions for public-private competitions over five years. That means nearly one in three DoD civilian employees could have their jobs on the line during public-private competitions through 2003.

Though the ink is still drying on agencies' performance plans, and DoD, the IRS and other agencies only began implementing their plans in 1998, new proposals for getting the government's act together sprang up this year. Primarily, those proposals focused on personnel reform.

The Defense Department worked through 1998 with its unions on a proposed package of personnel changes that would improve the department's ability to shape its workforce. The House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on the Civil Service pieced together a personnel reform package as well, while the Office of Personnel Management began work on its own reform proposals, including a reworking of the Senior Executive Service.

In the end, though, all of the proposals remained just that: proposals. Those itching for reform will have to wait until 1999 to see if the proposals make their way off paper into the real world.

The real world in 1998 was filled with talk of scandal and interns and impeachment, leaving some observers worrying that federal managers' efforts to improve perceptions and performance will be made much more difficult by citizens' frustration with politics.

But another political episode of the year offers learning points for federal managers. Few thought Jesse "The Body" Ventura could win the governorship of Minnesota. But he did by mobilizing segments of the voting public-particularly young men-who saw in Ventura the promise of a government that could relate to them, a government that could speak their language.

In an era of public distrust of institutions, it becomes increasingly important for leaders of public organizations to show why those organizations should exist. Organizations must show how their performance improves their constituents' lives.

Now that "The Body" (who wants to be known as "The Mind" since his election) is in the heart of a bureaucracy, he shares a challenge with federal managers. He must not only make government work, he must make it work in a way that results are easily understood and recognized by the public.

In an era when perception is as important as performance, federal managers cannot merely claim that their efforts are paying off-they must prove it.