Agencies need to share resources, look beyond own performance, analysts say
Federal agencies need to focus on cooperating with one another even though certain procedures, including the annual budget process, tend to make them look inward, panelists at a 'good government' conference said Monday.
Interagency coordination is becoming increasingly important as the government moves to consolidate and eliminate duplicative programs, said John Kamensky, director of the Managing for Results Practice at IBM Business Consulting Services, during the Excellence in Government conference in Washington. The conference, which runs through Wednesday, July 2 is sponsored by the Council for Excellence in Government and Government Executive.
Collaboration is especially crucial for electronic government projects, designed to streamline agencies' administrative procedures and grant the public easy access to federal services, Kamensky said. For instance, the e-payroll project, one of the Office of Management and Budget's 24 e-government initiatives, fosters cooperation as agencies work to consolidate 22 separate systems for processing paychecks into four systems. Funding shortages may soon force agencies to cooperate on projects like e-payroll, Kamensky predicted. Without pooling resources, they will find themselves unable to meet the increasing demands of citizens.
But the budget process itself discourages collaboration, said Chris Mihm, director of strategic issues at the General Accounting Office. Congressional appropriators focus on funding specific programs or agencies, as opposed to cross-agency initiatives. In addition, management initiatives such as the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, which instructs agencies to develop performance goals and measure success in meeting these goals, and the Program Assessment Rating Tool, used by OMB to evaluate program performance and guide budget decisions, can distract agencies from seeking ways to cooperate.
Both GPRA and PART are invaluable management tools, Mihm said, but they focus on improving performance at the program or agency level and do not incorporate the type of "horizontal" transformations agencies will need to experience to be successful in the future. Just as companies are looking more toward forming partnerships and expanding their global network, federal agencies will need to partner with one another and with nonprofits, advocacy groups and even the private sector, Mihm predicted. Success in these partnerships is not emphasized in OMB's program evaluations or by GPRA, he explained.
Cultural barriers to interagency collaboration are also a concern, said Richard Best Jr., a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service. For instance, communications failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks highlight the need for the 15 or so federal agencies that gather intelligence to share information and cooperate, Best said. But it is difficult to get these agencies, used to performing separate missions and gathering specialized types of intelligence, to work together and with law enforcement officials, he said.
Top leadership at agencies will need to set the tone for encouraging more collaboration, and any other agency reforms, Mihm said. They will need to articulate clear reasons why changes are necessary, and relate changes to the agency's strategic goals. They should also make sure that they let employees help plan transformations and shape policy, he said. By doing so, agencies should be able to simultaneously improve their own performance and share their expertise with one another, resulting in better services to taxpayers, Mihm said.