It's the red tape, stupid!

Gore report goes in search of government that "works better and costs less."

It's been widely reported that during the presidential campaign, then Governor Clinton had a sign hanging in his Little Rock, Ark., headquarters that read: It's the economy, stupid! The purpose of this less

than subtle slogan was to remind the Clinton team that the issue most on the minds of the American people was an apparently floundering national economy, characterized by a deepening deficit and rising unemployment. The road to the White House was custom-paved for a candidate who could demonstrate the competence and ingenuity to tackle this perceived problem. It was on a promise to control the economy that Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected.

The demand for more effective, more efficient government performance will be a recurring theme from now until November 1996. The new rallying cry will be: It's the red tape, stupid!

To that end, Vice President Gore, on Sept. 7, 1993, released the report of the National Performance Review, a study designed to create a government that "works better and costs less." Accepting with only healthy cynicism the fortuitous timing of this report - sandwiched between enactment of the tax law and announcement of the health care reform program - and giving credit for the hard work that went into this effort, one still cannot help but question whether changing the structure of government can overcome its most fundamental deficiency. The typical bureaucrat just doesn't think like a business person, and unless that attitude can be dramatically altered, Gore's 168-page report and the paper that it generates will become yet another example of the red tape it seeks to slash.

The six-month study leading up to the vice president's report supposedly drew upon the expertise of both the private and public sectors. Indeed, a large cadre of federal government career employees was detailed to the National Performance Review. In addition, most federal agencies commissioned their own "reinvention teams" to make suggestions for improving and making more efficient their agency operations. In total, thousands of federal employees teamed with corporate and consumer representatives to design the government overhaul plan.

Gore has estimated that, if enacted, the National Performance Review recommendations would produce savings of $108 billion over a five-year period. These savings would come from specific changes in existing government agencies and departments, streamlining the bureaucracy, improving and making government procurement more competitive, and consolidating and modernizing the government information infrastructure.

The vice president estimates the government work force could be reduced by 12% during the same five-year time frame, eliminating approximately 252,000 jobs and bringing the federal work force below 2 million employees for the first time since 1967. The report included hundreds of recommendations for accomplishing these objectives.

Focus on food agencies

Several of the recommendations focus on the regulation of food and agriculture. In particular, the USDA - which currently consists of 43 different agencies and has frequently been cited as the prototypical government "white elephant" - would be substantially overhauled. The number of USDA agencies would be reduced to 30; administrative services at the headquarters level would be consolidated; and approximately 1,200 field offices would be eliminated.

In one of the more controversial moves, the USDA's food safety responsibilities would be all but eliminated by transferring these functions to the FDA. It is unclear whether this would make the government more effective or more efficient in this area, or to what extent this proposal is simply symptomatic of interagency sibling rivalry. This proposal, like so many others embodied in the Gore report, undoubtedly will receive careful scrutiny on an agency-by-agency basis, as well it should.

Presumably, the merits of the various recommendations will be amply debated in legislative hearings and other forums for months and possibly even years. Quite likely, several of the recommendations will be adopted and will help streamline a bureaucracy that is becoming increasingly difficult to defend. But these changes, in and of themselves, win have only incremental impact. The real potential of the Gore report lies in those sections dedicated to teaching bureaucrats how to respond to their customers, the American people - something to which the report at least pays substantial lip service.

Bureaucrats all bound up

In one of many speeches Vice President Gore has delivered on "reinventing government," he explained: "One of the problems with a centralized bureaucracy is that people get placed in these rigid categories, regulations bind them, procedures bind them, the organizational chart binds them to the old ways of the past ... the message over time to ... employees becomes: Don't try to do something new. Don't try to change established procedures. Don't try to adapt to the new circumstances your office or agency confronts. Because you are going to get in trouble if you try to do things differently."

In other words, even the most diligent and devoted bureaucrat is ultimately bound to be infected with the culture of government - follow the rules as they are written and avoid making decisions that might engender criticism, even when such avoidance stands in the way of progress. This perhaps understandable self-preservation philosophy has many adverse consequences. In the case of the food industry, for example, it often delays or halts the introduction and marketing of innovative products.

Have you ever ... ?

Have you ever called a government office, left a message and never received a return call? Have you ever called a government office, left a message and called again at the end of the day, only to find that the person you'd been trying to reach had left for the day? Have you ever asked a government employee why the agency handles something in a particular manner, only to be told "that's just the way we do things'?

Significant portions of the Gore report focus on the need to change the way bureaucrats approach their work, to help rid them of an attitude the report desribes as one of "powerlessness and complacency." But this challenge is far more difficult than simply consolidating functions or closing field offices. It involves not just changing the way people think, but instilling in them the pride that comes from achieving concrete results quickly and cheaply.

"Our long-term goal," said Gore, "is to change the very culture of federal government ... a government that puts people first, puts its employees first, too. It empowers them, freeing them from mind-numbing rules and regulations. It delegates authority and responsibility. And it provides for them a dear sense of mission."