Creating “National Strategies”

The Government Accountability Office, in an assessment of the implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act several years ago, said “Congress should consider amending GPRA to require the President to develop a governmentwide strategic plan.” The President’s Office of Management and Budget says the President’s annual budget serves as the government’s strategic plan. But in reality there are long-term, large-scale, multi-agency, and multi-sector challenges that need to be integrated.

Necessity created just such a process. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the White House recognized the criticality of developing a long-term national – not just a federal – approach to fighting terrorism and ensuring homeland security. President Bush used a relatively new policy vehicle – “national strategy” plans – as a way of creating an overarching strategic plan around a specific need or outcome, such as anti-terrorism.

The White House issued a 90-page National Strategy for Homeland Security, in July 2002. It addresses the threat of terrorism in the US and focuses on the domestic efforts of the federal, state, local and private sectors. It identifies major goals that are implemented via presidential directives. Since then, about a dozen other National Strategies have been issued, mainly dealing with national and homeland security issues – drug control, cyber-security, etc.

The debate is whether the Strategies have any teeth. GAO’s studies suggest there are no control or accountability mechanisms. Other countries that have attempted governmentwide strategic planning efforts have had mixed results for similar reasons. Still, some of the major challenges facing the nation suggest the need for a strategic, long-term approach.

Should the next President extend the use of National Strategies or come up with other ways to provide focus and leadership on issues of long-term national importance?

Four Models for Delivering Government Services

While the Presidential candidates are including government reform themes in their platforms, are any creating a coherent governing agenda? This was a question raised by Harvard professor Elaine Kamarck in a presentation I attended in April at the Progressive Policy Institute. Kamarck, a former Clinton-Gore White House lead for reinventing government, recently wrote a book: “The End of Government As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work” that offers candidates a way of thinking how they might approach governing.

Kamarck says the public is not so much concerned about limited government, but more about government getting results. “Getting results,” she thinks, will be an important emphasis by the next President. She notes there are four different models for policymakers to choose from, and the choice depends on what he or she is trying to do:

1. Traditional bureaucracy, which relies heavily on hierarchy and defined processes, is good when handling a lot of money and when standardized, routine processes are important. A good example is Social Security.

2. Reinvented government, which looks to private sector best practices and the use of technology, is useful in many agencies that have a lot of customer contact and need to be responsive. Examples include the Postal Service, Immigration, Veterans Health Care, and the Passport Office.

3. Network-based government — which links policymakers, funders, and service providers through a series of contracts or agreements – is useful when no one agency or level of government can deliver the full array of services needed to address a social problem. Examples include public education, social services, and environmental improvement.

4. Market-based government, which creates a market for public services, is used when the goal is to change public behavior and the changes are widely distributed in the population. Examples include the current campaign to reduce obesity, the sale of telecommunication spectrum by the Federal Communications Commission, and state “bottle bills” to encourage people to not litter.

Kamarck noted that no single approach works for all of what government does, but defining what works, under which circumstances, will be an important element for the next President’s team.

Managing the Development of Regulations

 The IBM Center for The Business of Government has just issued a nifty new report, “The Management of Regulation Development: Out of the Shadows,” by Cornelius M. Kerwin which has timely implications for the upcoming Presidential Transition.

            One of the ironies of contemporary public affair is that while government regulation receives so much attention during presidential campaigns, the processes used to create and implement regulations receive so little.  The purpose of Neil Kerwin’s report is to cast light into the shadows of regulation and urge that it be recognized as a core function of contemporary public management.

            I think you will find that this timely and information repot will be useful to all of those who play leading roles in the development of government regulation.

 

Presidential Campaign Updates

The usual assumption among the “good government” groups is that Presidential candidates focus on policy issues in their campaigns and don’t really talk much about how government should be run. Like everything else in the 2008 campaign, this seems to not be the case.

Each of the major candidates seems to have a government reform agenda of some sort. A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani had each made some announcements. Since then, Washington Post’s Steve Barr did a summary of where candidates stand on government jobs vs. contractors.

Giuliani expanded his platform in a speech in early June, saying that he would adopt some version of the New York City Police Department’s CompStat approach to major policy challenges, for example creating a BorderStat. Washington Post’s Perry Bacon reports that he also recommends a FedStat to monitor federal agencies, a TerrorStat, and a GapStat to reduce the number of federal employees. . . . It looks like the “Stat” approach has achieved bipartisan status, with differences in how it is applied.

Another bipartisan good government theme seems to be an emphasis on greater transparency in what government does. Traditional transparency has focused on how policy was made; now the light is shining on government performance and engaging citizens rather than auditors as the watchdogs. Clinton includes several transparency elements in her platform, such as publicizing agency budgets and tracking government effectiveness. John McCain’s transparency emphasis is on earmarks. Barak Obama is also emphasizing greater transparency, with a call to” empowering citizens to crack down on government waste.”

In another commitment to government reform, John Edwards has recommended a radical overhaul of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by decentralizing its operations and reducing its staff by 1,500.

CitiStat. StateStat. FedStat?

States have long been heralded as “laboratories of democracy.” A successful management innovation that began a decade ago seems to be percolating toward the federal level, to the point where it is now being promoted by think tanks.

In April, John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and now head of the Center for American Progress explored a federal version an award-winning management approach that started in the New York City Police Department as “CompStat,” spread to the city of Baltimore as “CitiStat,” and is now being adopted at the state level in Maryland as “StateStat.” Maybe a federal version might be named “FedStat!”

In any case, the approach brings together leaders and managers accountable for working together regularly to achieve results that generally reach across agency boundaries – in New York, it was across the different police and law enforcement agencies; in Baltimore, it was across different city departments that touched on a common problem such as lead paint poisoning. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley – who developed CitiStat when he was Baltimore’s mayor – recently signed a bill to create StateStat. He says he plans to use it to monitor the performance of state agencies addressing common goals.

Podesta’s think tank wrote a report recommending a data-driven decision-making approach something like CitiStat at the federal level. Similarly, the National Governor’s Association wrote a report on the applicability of CitiStat to states based on the experience of the State of Washington in adopting a similar approach more than a year ago. Some federal agencies have adopted it as well. For example, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has adopted it in its Los Angeles field office.

At what point does a management innovation originating in states and localities reach “prime time” and get adopted at the federal level?

Getting Reforms to Stick

In early May, Federal Times reported that Clay Johnson, Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, has begun to think of ways to ensure the elements of the President’s Management Agenda would continue in a future Administration. Like previous reformers, he wants to ensure a legacy.

The Agenda, created in 2001, focuses on improvements to core management functions in government agencies – human capital, financial management, budgeting, use of technology, and competition. Some elements have been more controversial than others, but for the most part there has been significant progress in creating a strong foundation of management capacity. For example, agencies are more likely to strategically plan for their future skill and talent needs than they were 6 years ago. For the most part, the elements of the Agenda are not partisan. In fact, more than half of them were part of Clinton-Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative as well.

The challenge is to get “good things” to stick. Oftentimes, when top leaders change or shift their attention, good things go by the wayside. So Johnson is developing plans to create some continuity. He says he wants to create a cross-agency “performance council” to ensure the emphasis on improved performance does not fade. He will ask agencies to define long-term management plans and performance goals by Fall 2008. And he wants agencies to sharpen their performance and budget reporting approaches to ensure they are clear (and relevant) to the next Administration. Taken together, he hopes these three actions will create momentum through the early days of the next Administration.

Many observers of the Reinventing Government effort said it faded quickly after President Bush took office. In fact, many of its efforts were absorbed and renamed, and claimed as “new” by the incoming Bush Administration. A case in point is the Human Capital Survey conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. It was annually administered governmentwide starting in 1998 and ending in 2000, but re-launched as a “new” Bush Administration initiative in 2002, and enacted into law a year later.

So, while the vaunted “traffic light” Scorecard may go away, many of its elements are likely to be absorbed by the new President. Renamed, but with origins conveniently forgotten. The momentum will be appreciated, but not necessarily recognized!

What elements of the President’s Management Agenda have the likeliest probability of being continued? Which would you encourage a new President to put at the top of his or her agenda?

Radical Transparency in Government Operations?

There has been a trend toward greater transparency in government operations over the past decade, fueled in part by the Internet. The trend started with the Government Performance and Results Act in 1993. Agencies had to publish strategic plans, annual plans, and annual reports. In 2001, the Office of Management and Budget launched its Program Assessment Rating Tool and has since rated each major government program as to how well it works. The results of those reviews are now available to the public via expectmore.gov.

The management capacity of agencies has been regularly rated by OMB since 2002 as well, via the President’s Management Agenda. The management scorecard is updated quarterly at results.gov. In addition, OMB has required all agencies to publish on the Web their detailed performance budget justifications, not just brief summaries of their budget proposals.

In addition to these administrative efforts, Congress has been involved. In 2003, it required agencies to biennially survey employees and report results. It recently required OMB to develop a Google-like database so people can search who gets what from the federal government in terms of grants, loans, and earmarks. This bill is now undergoing implementation, with OMB requesting public comments.

Now, another new form of transparency! Congress is considering legislation to require all agencies to develop and report on customer service standards. According to press reports, this legislation seems to be moving through Congress with little opposition.

How far will this transparency trend go? What will be the implications of it? How should the next President approach this trend?

Chief Operating Officers?

 

On April 24, 2007, I attended a forum sponsored by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) which generated ideas on when and how a chief operating officer (COO), chief management officer (CMO), or similar senior-level position in selected federal departments and agencies might effectively provide the continuing, focused attention essential to integrate key management functions and long-term transformational efforts.

 

The federal government is in a period of profound transition that will require agencies to embark on large-scale organizational change initiatives in order to address 21^st century challenges. GAO has documented that agencies are suffering from a range of long-standing management problems that are undermining their abilities to efficiently, economically, and effectively accomplish their missions and achieve results.

 

One proposed element of an overall strategy to address these systemic federal governance and management challenges involves the creation of a senior-level position and focus concerted attention on long-term transformational efforts. GAO believes there is general agreement on the importance of the following actions for organizational transformation and management reform:

• Elevate attention on management issues and transformational change. Top leadership attention is essential to overcome organizations’ natural resistance to change, marshal the resources needed to implement change, and build and maintain the organization-wide commitment to new ways of doing business.
• Integrate various key management and transformational efforts. There needs to be a single point within agencies with the perspective and responsibility – as well as authority – to ensure the successful implementation of functional management and, if appropriate, transformational change efforts.
• Institutionalize accountability for addressing management issues and leading transformational change. The management weaknesses in some agencies are deeply entrenched and long standing and will take years of sustained attention and continuity to resolve.

First Out of the Box

 

Senator Hillary Clinton seems to have been the first candidate to discuss government management on the campaign trail, with a speech at St. Anselm on April 13th (a Friday; hopefully no symbolism associated). She announced a 10-point agenda that she would follow if elected President. The media picked up on one of the points – to eliminate 500,000 contractors for a savings of $18 billion – but there were some other interesting items on the rest of her list. For example, she proposes an “America Results Initiative.” She says that with the technology we have today, we can get real-time data on just about anything – from the purity of our water to the health of our ecosystems to the condition of our roads and bridges. She says: “We’ll gather and analyze that data to see whether our government programs are effective. We’ll then post it online so that our citizens can have the most up-to-date knowledge about everything from the quality of their air to the traffic on their streets.”

She also proposes to more transparently report budget information, use e-government to transact government services, and create a public service academy.

A few weeks later, Rudy Guiliani also announced a management-related theme in a campaign event. He said that if elected he would only replace half of the feds who would retire during his term of office. Extrapolated, that would reduce the federal workforce by 20 percent between 2009 and 2017 and save $70 billion a year. Of course the skill balance would be affected randomly, so this would require some reshuffling of the workforce between occupations and agencies, but that’s the value of having a strategic workforce plan!

Learning to Blog

The IBM Center’s blog was first posted 10 weeks ago. We’ve learned a lot – both from your insights and about how to blog “properly” — and we appreciate your reading and contributing.The Center has a draft report on blogging in government and it contains some good advice that we’re now going to apply. That is – be more personal and be more frequent. So over the next few months, we’re going to do just that. . . . and we’ll post that report as soon as it is available!

We’ve had over 1,500 visitors to our blog, and more than a dozen thoughtful comments added. The comments are interesting. They reaffirm our authors’ insights that leadership and culture in government matter, and that better knowledge management and collaboration can help. They also point to specific challenges, such as the need for greater engagement by Congress in using performance measures.

Much has happened in the past 10 weeks that might influence the management agenda of the next President. We’ll be showcasing these tidbits, since they are not being picked up well in the mainstream media. Our goal will be to help connect the dots. Hopefully, you’ll find them interesting!