The Clinton administration this year will conduct the first-ever governmentwide customer satisfaction survey, Vice President Al Gore announced Thursday at a gathering of government leaders from 40 countries.
The survey is one of three initiatives Gore unveiled at his "Global Forum on Reinventing Government," a two-day conference at the State Department designed to help world leaders share ideas on how to make their governments work better.
Gore said the results of the survey, which will measure customer satisfaction at 32 federal agencies, will be compared to private-sector customer service standards.
"We need to determine, from the people's perspective, how we are doing and how we can do better," Gore said.
The other two initiatives Gore announced were a civil service reform package and a "Results for Children" program that will give state and local governments more discretion over how they spend money on children's programs and help them better measure the results of those programs.
The conference is the first-ever international meeting devoted to the topic of reinventing government. Gore was joined by representatives of more than 40 countries, including the United Kingdom, Russia, Poland, Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, Thailand and Japan.
Gore said government reform, once considered purely a domestic issue, now must be considered on an international level because of the growing interdependency brought on by the global marketplace and the information age.
"Today, so many forward-thinking nations have realized that they cannot make the most of the information age with the creaking governmental machinery of the industrial age," Gore told attendees. "We cannot compete and thrive in the global marketplace if we are battling bureaucracy and apathy on our own shores."
Jenny Shipley, the prime minister of New Zealand, said that citizen expectations of government have never been higher.
"They don't like high taxes, yet they expect a comprehensive range of taxpayer-funded services," Shipley said. "Governments today are expected to provide sound social services and generate the conditions for economic growth, all the while being able to reduce taxes and balance the books. This presents a stern discipline for modern governments."
Donald Kettl, a public administration scholar at the Brookings Institution and the University of Wisconsin, said in a paper prepared for the conference that the United States' reinventing government effort mirrors similar, nearly simultaneous, movements around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Governments everywhere sought a new equilibrium; a new balance in the expectations their citizens placed on them; the tax resources they provided; the services they expected; the administrative mechanisms they used; and perhaps most important, the relationships between citizens and their governments," Kettl wrote. "Not since the dawn of the industrial age had such fundamental changes swept so far so fast through so many governments."
Kettl said nations' reinventing efforts shared similar characteristics:
- A search for a more efficient government without cutting programs.
- The use of new concepts-such as reengineering, outsourcing, performance management and accrual accounting-to promote efficiency.
- A focus on "transparency," or openness, in government operations.
- An emphasis on customer service.
Each nation also faced unique factors, Kettl said. The conference attendees echoed that sentiment. For example, South Africa has been rooting corruption out of its government since overturning its apartheid system. Poland is just beginning to develop a professional, non-political civil service. The United States' separation of powers makes legislative changes more difficult than in countries with parliamentary systems.
Nonetheless, Gore and his international counterparts said they have learned from each other's efforts. Bram Peper, the Netherlands' minister of interior and kingdom relations, praised Gore's reinvention effort as an inspiration to other nations. Gore, likewise, noted that he looked to reforms in the United Kingdom and New Zealand when the United States' effort began six years ago.
Graham Scott, one of the architects of New Zealand's efforts, said the world has learned that reinvention requires constant high-level leadership so that it takes on a life of its own. Successful efforts always span several political administrations, Scott said.
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