COMMON SENSE GOVERNMENT WORKS BETTER & COSTS LESS Vice President Al Gore THIRD REPORT OF THE NATIONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW 1995 ,,It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." Franklin D. Roosevelt1 “We are not asking people to spend their time, their money, and their resources fooling around with us if they don’t have to and there is no public purpose served by it." President Clinton’s message to federal agencies ,,YOU ARE OUR CUSTOMER. If you’ve felt a difference, let us know. If you haven’t, let us know that, too." Vice President Al Gore The National Performance Review is about change---historic change---in the way the government works. As the title makes clear, the National Performance Review is about moving from red tape to results to create a government that works better and costs less. This third report of the National Performance Review describes the impact of reinvention on the American people and their government and presents more than 300 new recommendations. The National Performance Review focused primarily on how government should work, not on what it should do. On September 7, 1995, Vice President Al Gore and the National Performance Review released their third report, two years after the first report, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less. Calling in the Real Experts If you want to make a real change, you have to engage the people most likely to be affected—the ones who are already involved and who have the most at stake in getting the job done right. You have to seek their advice and give them the power to fix what they—more than anyone else—know needs fixing. A well-managed government also ensures that it collects what’s owed it, in part to reduce the need for new revenue. Progress Report: Measuring and Benchmarking the Best in Business President Clinton directed federal agencies to examine and learn from “the highest quality of service delivered to customers by private organizations.” This process is called “benchmarking.” That’s the name industry uses for the process of continuously learning—“stealing shamelessly”—from the best, not just in your own industry, but in any industry that has functions like yours. Well-managed businesses measure. They measure their own performance and they measure themselves against the best in their business, a process called “benchmarking.” For years, as described elsewhere in this report, the federal government has measured the wrong things—typically inputs (time, personnel, and money, among others), rather than outcomes. Measurement matters not simply to answer the question “How am I doing?” but also to provide regular information to the government’s stockholders, the American people; to give managers the information they need to continuously improve and re-engineer what they do; and to ensure that the heads of agencies make informed “business decisions.” Measuring performance is essential for guaranteeing to Americans that our government is held accountable for the work it does on our behalf. Even more, it enables government to see just how well its services stack up to the best in business. More Measurement, More Accountability If we want the best-managed government, then that government must be enterprising. And, like any good enterprise that wants to do its job well, our government needs to measure what matters. Measurement tells managers where they’re succeeding and where they’re not, More importantly, it tells them what levers to pull to get back on track. If the essence of enterprise is risk-taking and experimentation, measurement tells us how the experiment is going. Measuring performance is also essential to morale. As President Clinton has said, “Most people who work for the federal government are like most people anywhere. Given a choice between being productive or unproductive, most choose being productive.”23 That means they need some way to know how they’re doing. Sure, they’d like to hear they’re doing a good job, but they also need to know when they’re not. If they have no way of knowing whether they’re succeeding—whether they’re being productive—they feel irrelevant, and they may stop trying at all. The public’s work is too important to permit that. We must have a government that is accountable—not just every four years at the voting booth, but every day. But if we are going to hold agencies and individuals accountable for accomplishing certain things, we must also ensure they have the kind of flexible authority they need in order to do what needs to be done. They can’t succeed with one (or both) hands behind their back. The Road Ahead When it comes to government’s management of our money, we need to be able to “take it to the bank.” We need to be sure that our government is managing professionally the work we expect it to do and, when it needs to spend our money, spending it wisely. We’re already there in some parts of the federal government, on our way in others, and only just beginning in still others. The job not only isn’t done, it never will be—it will always continue. And we’re pretty clear about what common-sense government means : • It means a government that focuses on results, that moves heaven and earth to make it easy for all of us––citizens, businesses, and state and local governments––to meet the nation’s common goals, instead of burying us in rules and punishing us when we can’t figure out how to comply. • It means a government that recognizes that we are its customers, works with us to understand our needs, and puts us first, not last. • And it means getting our money’s worth—a government that works better, faster, and cheaper than in the past, one that operates as well as, or better than, the best private businesses. A Matter of Trust The essential ingredient in bringing about so great a people-led change—indeed, the essential ingredient of self-government—is trusting the people involved.In this case, that means government employees and the people they serve. Democracy stands or falls on trust. Throughout our history, however, that trust has been tentative. Right from the start, our founding fathers made sure no single branch of government—neither executive, legislative, nor judicial—and no one group of citizens could, on its own, determine the course of the nation or, more importantly, abridge the rights of individuals. We call it our “system of checks and balances.” If our federal government seems fragmented, duplicative, and inefficient, one of the reasons is that we designed it that way from the start. On purpose—because we trusted the whole of the American people more than we trusted any part that claimed to represent us. In fact, we were the first large modern republic in which dispute, disagreement, and debate were defined as hallmarks of love of country. We didn’t believe—and still don’t—that any system of government is perfect, but we believed fervently that any system of government is perfectible. And we’ve been perfecting ever since.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:25:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015