Employees, agencies fail to waive internal rules

Few federal employees have tried to eliminate internal rules that make their jobs more difficult, despite an offer of rule waivers from Vice President Al Gore 20 months ago.

Gore made the offer in April 1998. In a memorandum that month to department and agency chiefs, President Clinton ordered agencies to develop systems through which employees could request waivers to bypass stifling rules that slow down their work. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Richard Rominger pledged that same month to issue a blanket waiver from internal rules for all of the department's reinvention laboratories-segments of the department that experiment with new ways of doing business.

But with the two-year anniversary of that announcement just four months away, the Agriculture Department's waiver process "is not yet functioning," according to a department official. And even in agencies where waivers are being trumpeted by managers, few employees have jumped on the waiver bandwagon.

"Senior management of the Department of Transportation is very supportive of waivers," said Patrice Blackman, who is heading up a waiver effort at DOT that is designed to be a model for the rest of government. "But employees are not coming on board as quickly as we would like."

DOT set up a Web site in the fall of 1998 (waiver.dot.gov) describing the initiative and tracking waiver requests. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater sent out a memorandum to employees in October 1998 encouraging them to request waivers.

The response has been so lackluster that DOT management has started issuing waivers even before people on the front lines ask for them, in an effort to inspire employees to get rid of useless rules.

Coast Guard employees have been the most responsive DOT workers to the effort.

In February, the Coast Guard granted a waiver to a station in Tawas, Mich., on Lake Huron. The station sought to bypass a rule that required anyone who commanded an ice rescue mission to have passed a test on water navigation rules. Because there's no boat traffic on ice-covered portions of the lake, the requirement seemed silly to the station's officers.

The rule also annoyed the three people at the station who had passed the navigation test, because it meant that one of them had to be on duty at all times for potential ice rescues. So they ended up working a lot of weekends and holidays. The waiver allows about seven of the station's 19 crew members to lead ice rescue missions, taking some of the load off the three workers who have passed the test.

The Coast Guard extended the waiver to all other stations on the Great Lakes.

"The stations generally have at least one ice rescue each season," said Dennis Brink, officer in charge at the Tawas station.

While the navigation rule was a good candidate for a waiver, many internal rules are necessary and important, said Brian Trout, an employee with the Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service in Ft. Collins, Colo., who educated other employees in his region on the waiver opportunity. Trout said the waiver process is a good way to get workers thinking about why rules exist.

"They start to question whether there's a better way to do business," Trout said.

Trout added that agencies need to could do a better job of informing employees that waivers are available. The National Partnership for Reinventing Government has set up a Web site about waivers.

DOT's Blackman said employees are often wary of putting themselves on the line by challenging an internal rule.

"It's surprising how much we restrict ourselves," said Denise Barnes, another APHIS employee who has trumpeted waivers.