No one from the executive branch showed up at a Senate hearing Thursday to defend the Clinton administration's effort to reinvent government. But Senators and outside experts showed up to question the reinvention effort-and look ahead to what the next administration will have to do to improve federal operations.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia, congratulated the Clinton administration for attempting to reinvent government, "now the federal government's longest running reform effort." But Voinovich said he was "deeply disappointed" that the Clinton administration chose not to send a representative to discuss reinvention at the hearing.
Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., criticized the administration as well, saying that reinvention "made some modest achievements, but they were overshadowed by [the administration's] wildly exaggerated claims."
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), which heads up the administration's reinvention effort, says that its efforts have led to $137 billion in savings.
Chris Mihm, associate director for federal management and workforce issues at the General Accounting Office, joined Thompson in questioning those savings figures. Mihm noted that the claim includes $7 billion in savings from the downsizing of the nuclear establishment at the Energy Department. That downsizing began before NPR issued recommendations for improving government, Mihm said.
"NPR's efforts were not undertaken in isolation from other management reforms," Mihm said. "Congress, the administration and federal agencies have all undertaken ambitious and largely consistent reforms in the last decade."
Ronald Moe, project coordinator in the Congressional Research Service's government and finance division, questioned the underpinning reinvention philosophy that government could be run like a private sector company. Moe said that the reinvention effort's focus on making government adopt private sector practices, such as customer service efforts and performance measurement has "eroded its core competencies" in carrying out the law.
"This is the government of the United States, not Harvard Business School aphorisms," Moe said.
Brookings Institution scholar Paul Light said the reinvention movement has done a good job in improving procurement practices and in encouraging government workers to take pride in public service. But he said the Clinton administration failed to systematically look at how it should structure the federal workforce to carry out the government's varied missions.
Light and Voinovich both said the government faces a pending "human capital crisis."
Light said he supports a bill recently introduced by Thompson (S. 2306) that would create a new commission to study whether the government is set up properly to handle its duties.
"It's been 50 years since we took a systematic look at the federal organization chart," Light said.
Morley Winograd, director of NPR, had been invited to appear at the hearing. The day before the hearing the Office of the Vice President sent Voinovich a letter saying that the White House has a policy not to allow presidential or vice presidential advisers who have not been confirmed by the Senate to testify before Congress.
An NPR spokesperson, however, said reinvention has focused on people issues, including gauging employees' satisfaction through a governmentwide survey, adding that NPR has focused on empowering employees and recognizing them for their achievements in customer service. The spokesperson also pointed to the IRS, the Social Security Administration and the National Park Service as places where NPR's focus on customer service has generated real improvements in service to citizens.
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