Senators seek new commission on management reform

A Senate bill introduced Wednesday would set up a commission responsible for improving management at federal agencies through restructuring, privatization and streamlining.

One of the ultimate goals of the commission would be to improve public trust in government, a mission the National Partnership for Reinventing Government has laid claim to during the Clinton administration.

The "Government for the 21st Century Act" (S. 2306) was unveiled at a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on the major management challenges facing the government in the 21st century. The bill is sponsored by Sens. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., George Voinovich, R-Ohio, Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and William Roth, R-Del. Thompson is chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee.

Under the bill, nine presidentially appointed and congressionally approved commission members would study, and recommend in a report, ways to streamline government operations. The report would go to the President for approval and then to Congress, which would have to enact legislation to put the recommendations into law. The bill sets a deadline of December 1, 2002 for the commission to make its recommendations.

The commission's goal would be to find ways to restructure agencies and programs to prevent duplication, improve management and demand accountability for results.

According to Thompson, meaningful reform will not result from simply "reshuffling current organizational boxes and redistributing current programs." Rather, the commission would "conduct a fundamental review of what Washington does and why," he said.

Comptroller General David Walker, the hearing's only witness, forecast a bleak future for the nation given the current state of the economy, national defense, national demographics and socioeconomic conditions. Walker implored Congress to take steps to ensure agencies are prepared for the looming challenges.

"The challenge for policymakers will be to meet public expectations of government while maintaining the financial discipline necessary to avoid a return to deficits," he said.

Walker said the proposed legislation is one way to begin tackling the problems facing agencies in the future. Changing the way government does business will have a much greater return on investment than trying to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in governmental programs, he said.

A General Accounting Office report released in conjunction with the hearing, "Managing for Results: Barriers to Interagency Coordination" (GGD-00-106), concludes that in at least 12 critical areas-including efforts to help the homeless, prevent teen pregnancy and offer food and nutrition services-federal programs suffer from widespread duplication and overlap.

Recent laws aimed at improving federal management need to become more than just annual paperwork exercises, Walker said. Such laws include the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), which required agencies to write mission statements, set goals and measure performance; the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act, which established guidelines for reporting on agencies' finances; and the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, which mandated that federal agencies take an integrated approach to information technology.

"GPRA is more than a paperwork exercise, the CFO Act is a lot more than clean opinions [on financial audits], and IT is a lot more than Y2K," said Walker.

Lawmakers should concentrate their efforts on integrating cross-cutting government programs through continuous oversight, he said.

Thompson agreed that more needs to be done, saying lawmakers should spend less time on budget votes and more on oversight of agencies. "We need a mechanism to keep the spotlight on these challenges," he said.