Time for a Federal Chief Operating Officer?

In the Washington Post today, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., and a couple of his partners at the law firm Cozen O'Connor make the case for creating the position of chief operating officer of the federal government.

"The country's chief executive officer needs a chief operating officer to run the day-to-day government, to cut through budget battles, political fiefdoms, parochialism and inertia to assist the president in keeping this country moving," they write. "Let the president's chief of staff manage the White House -- an enormous responsibility in itself. We need a chief operating officer to manage everything else."

Wht type of person should the COO be? The authors say he or she "should have significant business experience as well as sensitivity to the mechanics of government. That experience would serve him or her well in managing the government's vast moving parts. Bringing an accomplished business person into the Obama administration would have the added benefit of providing private-side perspective and experience."

They even have a candidate to recommend: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

I have a few thoughts about this notion. First, don't we already have a chief operating officer? Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management Jeff Zients (who also carries the title of chief performance officer), holds many of the responsibilities that Kerry et al would hand to the COO.

Of course, you could argue that an OMB deputy director simply doesn't have the same juice that a high-profile statutory COO would have. But Zients has just the kind of business background that Kerrey recommends the COO possess.

On that score, though, I'd make the case that Kerrey has it backwards: instead of saying a federal COO should have a business background first and a "sensititivity" to working in government second, wouldn't it make more sense to get someone with deep experience in government to run the show, with a "sensitivity" to private sector best practices? I don't understand why the default position is always that private sector executives know best how to make government organizations work effectively.

Why wouldn't, say, a Thad Allen, who has demonstrated an extraordinary degree of expertise in getting government organizations to work together to their fullest potential, be a more logical candidate to be a federal COO? At our Excellence in Government conference this week, he gave a ringing address on how to get government to achieve its goals in times of crisis. It was filled with terms like "memoranda of understanding," "doctrine," "statutory authority" and "whole of government unity of effort" that your average private sector CEO probably doesn't hear often.

But even someone like Allen would be hard-pressed to take on the task of serving as COO of the entire federal government. As Kerrey and company note, the executive branch includes millions of employees, purchases hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services every year, and occupies more than 1 billion square feet of office space. For better or for worse, it's a sector of the economy now, not a monolithic entity. Asking any one person to be responsible for its effectiveness may simply be a bridge too far.