Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of occasional features in GovExec.com's Daily Briefing section on what the candidates for the presidency in 2000 are saying about the federal government and how they would manage it.
Vice President Al Gore officially announced his candidacy for the presidency Wednesday in his hometown of Carthage, Tenn.
In his speech, Gore, who has spent the last six years spearheading the Clinton administration's reinventing government crusade, made only one reference to that effort.
"I will balance the budget or better every year. I will search out every last dime of waste and bureaucratic excess," Gore said. "I know how to do that."
Through the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (originally called the National Performance Review), Gore claims credit for downsizing the federal workforce by about 350,000 people and saving taxpayers $137 billion since 1993. He has lent his time to getting agencies to communicate in plain English, eliminate unnecessary regulations, improve Web-based services and involve lower-level employees in management decisions.
But in his candidacy announcement, Gore focused on families and morality, saying that the booming economy has not solved all the nation's problems.
"These are our deficits now: the time deficit in family life; the decency deficit in our common culture; the care deficit for our little ones and our elderly parents," Gore said. Gore also pledged allegiance to the military and to veterans.
"I served my nation proudly in Vietnam," Gore said. "I have always, always been for a strong defense-above politics, above party, above partisanship. And I will always stand with America's veterans."
One of the thrusts of Gore's reinventing government movement is making agencies accountable for results and shifting managers' focus from process to outcomes. Several events between now and the November 2000 election will cast public light on the effectiveness of the reinventing government initiative.
Later this year, the administration will announce the results of the first-ever governmentwide customer survey, which will quantify how satisfied citizens are with the service they get from 30 federal agencies.
By March 2000, agencies must submit to Congress their first annual performance reports under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act. Those reports will tell Congress whether agencies met the performance goals they set for themselves in fiscal 1999. And in September 2000, 30 agencies will reveal whether they met goals set out in Gore's "high-impact" agency initiative.