Sweeping Reform

The new report was issued last month by the National Commission on the Public Service, chaired by Paul A. Volcker, whose long service in the federal government was capped by eight years as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Its membership included people who served in the Cabinets of several presidents.

The Volcker commission echoed concerns voiced by another recent commission-the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century-whose chairmen were former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H.

It was not surprising that the Hart-Rudman commission focused on the organization of the defense establishment, but it did come as a surprise that Volcker emphasized organizational issues as well. When his commission started under the auspices of the Brookings Institution, at the suggestion of Brookings scholar Paul Light, it was assumed that the group would focus on the government's human capital problems.

But Volcker became convinced, as he studied government 15 years after his departure, that staffing was just one problem and that government's ailments required a comprehensive attack on a broader scale.

As he told a National Press Club audience on Jan. 13, "the executive branch has inadvertently grown into an archipelago of agencies and departments . . . without logical structure. Reacting to particular perceived needs and pressures, they have been put together piecemeal with overlapping and conflicting responsibilities that deter intelligent policy-making."

The commission report said that as a result of this "organizational chaos . . . public servants often find themselves in doubt about the relevance and importance of their agency's mission while spending inordinate amounts of time coordinating or battling with their counterparts in other agencies. In energy policy, health care, environmental protection, resource management and scores of other important public policy matters, decisions are made and remade from different perspectives, while the need for coordination and for complementary policy approaches is neglected."

The problem of muddled, overlapping and conflicting missions in major federal agencies is one that Government Executive has covered in detail, especially in our work on the Federal Performance Project to grade agencies' capabilities (see www.govexec.com/fpp.) It is outlined in frightening detail in this month's issue by Matthew Weinstock in his article about efforts to protect against terrorist attack on the nation's chemical industry. A major release of toxic chemicals could be devastating, yet government has no clear system of safety and security regulation, and at least four different agencies claim pieces of jurisdiction.

As that example indicates, the Homeland Security Department hardly meets the test of careful design. And Volcker's commission believes that much more major reorganization is needed, to establish a few super-departments, run by a small cadre of political appointees providing policy guidance to an expanded corps of professional career managers.

A government of efficiently run agencies pursuing clear missions would help to restore the citizens' confidence in the public sector, Volcker believes. Such agencies would have an easier time recruiting staff than those whose flaws were laid bare by the events of Sept. 11. As Volcker describes them: "Some of our most elite agencies, hamstrung by their own bureaucracies and organizational boundaries, had failed to cooperate. Priorities were out of date. The reservoir of trained and dedicated manpower had been drained. Bureaucratic procedures were too rigid, often mired in old technologies and lacking key skills."

To produce the broad change the commission recommends is the work of a decade or more, Volcker concedes. But he urges a few short-term steps, including pay raises at the senior levels of government and an expedited process for congressional consideration of major reorganizations proposed by the president.

These and other steps to improve the federal government will require a campaign to build political consensus. That's never easy, but there is reason to believe that the new chairmen of the key congressional committees-Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine-will give the report a respectful hearing, and that would be an essential next step.