The Tides of Reinvention

s the Clinton Administration prepares for a second term, Vice President Gore's reinvention effort can keep going pretty much as is-refining and celebrating a remarkably impressive mix of laboratories, pilots, and partnerships, almost all of which involve deregulation in the basic procedures that govern day-to-day life in government-or it can attempt to change the basic settings in which reinvention takes place.

There is plenty to argue for continuing as is, starting with the political climate. On Capitol Hill, House Republicans still are not particularly enthusiastic about reinvention and are likely to concentrate on waging the war on waste. In September, for example, the Government Reform and Oversight Committee released its first major assessment of federal management, concluding that "public perceptions of pervasive waste, fraud and mismanagement in the federal government are unfortunately accurate."

The House has long been the leader in the war on waste. It created the first modern statutory inspector general in 1976, expanded the concept to every corner of government over the next 20 years, and has been the prime consumer of IG products and testimony. Although the House also has significant capacity for more nuanced management analysis, the chamber's broader interest has been to sustain the hunt for fraud, waste and abuse.

The Senate is more of a question mark. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has yet another new chairman in Tennessee Republican Fred Thompson, who becomes the third chairman in as many years. Having been in the Senate just two years himself, it is not yet clear where his interests might head.

What is clear is that his committee has been historically the center of a great deal of management reform and innovation. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee authored the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, invented the chief financial officer concept, and pushed for a host of small innovations in regulatory negotiation. And it is the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that has been the most committed in recent years to the kind of experimentation that might help government learn what works and what does not by way of management reform.

No Shortage of Effort

Although continuing for another four years on reinvention's current course might seem like very good politics, it is not necessarily good reinvention. Wandering through the reinvention Web site (www.npr.gov), one is instantly struck by both the breadth of what is happening and the need for something more. The list of reinvention laboratories is so long that it comes with its own search engine for sorting the information by state, agency and subject. The Web site also contains pages upon pages of award winners, detailed lists of research papers, links upon links to the agencies and their sites, and a truly remarkable collection of every last press release, presidential order and speech ever given on the topic.

My personal favorite is a pithy document titled "Ten Things You Can Do Now That You Couldn't Do-or Didn't Do-Before Reinvention." You can get rid of sign-in sheets, survey your customers without coming under the Paperwork Reduction Act, submit receipts for most travel expenses under $75 (with certain exceptions), apply for a federal job using a resume, and reduce the paperwork on commercial items over $100,000 but under $5 million.

Therein lies both the strength and the frustration of continuing as is. On the one hand, the effort has sparked a remarkable amount of activity. On the other hand, the list of things you can do now suggests that so much more is to be done. Despite the NPR's impressive breadth, there are still substantial barriers to employee involvement, still substantial frustrations with the basic structure in which federal employees do their work.

Consider the flattening of the hierarchy as a prime example of the difficulties in changing the basic structure of federal organizations. Even as the number of federal jobs continues to decline, the basic structure of the federal hierarchy remains virtually unchanged. Far too much of the downsizing has involved simple attrition; far too much of the promised mid-level flattening has involved mere title changes; and almost all of the senior political and career layers have remained intact.

Much of this structure was the product of previous reform efforts. The 1950s brought the assistant secretaries for administration; the 1960s, the assistant secretaries for evaluation and analysis; the 1970s, the inspectors general; the 1980s, the chief financial officers; and the 1990s, the chief operating officers. Each of the four basic reform philosophies-the rational hierarchy of scientific management, the constant oversight of war on waste, the government in the sunshine of watchful eyes, or the empowerment of liberation management-brings its own structure and rules. Even reinventing government has its rules for getting rid of rules.

The Tides of Reform

No reinventor, no matter how gifted, can undo all the rules, layers, and managerial sediment that have piled up over the years as the aforementioned four reform philosophies have shaped the statute books. And shape the statute books they have. A good case can be made that there has not been too little management reform in government, but too much.

Contrary to conventional wisdom about how little Congress and the president cooperate, the two branches have actually had little trouble passing management reforms over the years, moving almost effortlessly from one philosophy to another and back again. If government is not getting better, it is not for a lack of trying.

The problem with having so many competing philosophies, or tides, is fourfold. First, the four reform philosophies have created cumulative effects over the years. The sun may set on the ocean, but not on most management reforms. Indeed, one of the great struggles of the reinvention effort is the body of ancient statutes that continue to shape government operations.

Second, the four philosophies have mostly produced comprehensive, not selective effects. Given a choice between implementing a reform governmentwide or in a single agency, Congress and the president usually go for governmentwide. Such may be the price of winning legislative passage in the first place. If it's good enough for a single agency, or so the notion goes, it should be good enough for all of government.

Third, the four philosophies often contradict each other. Congress and the President add hierarchy one year and prune it the next, open government to the sunshine one year and close the curtains the next. Those who do not like a given reform idea rarely have to wait long for Congress and the president to change their minds.

Fourth, the four philosophies appear to be accelerating-the amount of time between the last big reform statute and the next is shrinking. Reformers seem less patient; they are reforming past reforms more quickly. The more government is reformed, the more Congress and the president seem to think it needs further reforming.

These four patterns lead to a simple prediction: Just as surely as high tide follows low, today's effort to liberate government from endless rules and structure will surely be followed by an effort to enslave government once again. All it will likely take is one big scandal-say, a major procurement that goes bad.

The reason is also simple: Reformers have no overarching theory of when government and its employees can or cannot be trusted to do their jobs well. Lacking such a theory, government lurches back and forth from trust to distrust, from liberation to war on waste, scientific management to watchful eye. And the federal employees caught in the middle of this debate must stand at the seashore as one reform hurricane after another drives the latest fashion ashore.

Building Tidal Barriers

The ebb and flow of management reform confirms the risk of continuing with reinvention as is. Just as the tides erode the beach, so, too, do the tides threaten the positive contributions of reinvention. Even as reinventors struggle to clean government of unnecessary rules and structure, the competing tides continue to cast ashore new initiatives and reporting requirements.

The challenge is to insulate agencies against the constant battering of the seas, while reinventing the basic structure of government so that high performance is more natural. Consider two promising options for creating new settings for high performance.

A first involves a full pilot of NPR's performance-based organizations (PBOs). Although it is not yet clear just how the PBOs would work, their appeal is obvious. In return for a performance contract, a PBO would be cut free from at least some of the old regulations. Rather like moving a beach house back from the water's edge, PBOs offer some hope of protection against the re-regulation that will inevitably come with the passage of time.

A second involves a variation on the charter school concept. Instead of just moving an existing agency out of harm's way, why not permit the establishment of charter units within government? Such units would allow federal employees, private contractors and nonprofits, working together or separately, to design delivery units from scratch. They would have enormous freedom to structure their operations to meet specific performance targets.

Giving federal employees new structures in which to do their work is currently the missing link in converting the vast energy sparked by reinventing government into lasting progress.