I went yesterday to purchase guest parking passes for my street. The price is now $8, up from $5, a 60% increase! No vote, no parliamentary procedure or comment from the public on these matters. Timely, the NYT published an article pointing out the raising of fees by municipalities to shore up their budgets. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/business/11fees.html.

The extent of wasteful spending has gotten so out of control that it is a dangerous part of the fiscal problem in this country. A result of political squabbling, outdated economic theory and lack of real transparency, it is one of the problems that must be fixed. Unfortunately, the response to the current economic crisis is bigger government, which some liberals see as an opportunity to make permanent.

We don’t need bigger government; we need better government. We need government to focus on serving the public with national security, health and human services and modern infrastructure. Setting political bickering and divisiveness aside, this country had better find focus, or enriched, developing nations will seize the mantel to overtake a weak United States. We can no longer stand on laurels of the past.

I hope that what we are now experiencing, and the debate at hand on how to respond to the multitude of mistakes made by a capitalist system that cracked up and put the country on the brink, I hope that we focus on redefining and rebuilding America in the image of our founding fathers. Lincoln urged these ideas at Gettysburg that we “be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I would say that the “Partnership for a More Effective Government” (NPR) did attempt to do those things. I know I personally set up a database to share best practices at the Department of Defense and the the NPR folks wanted to share it for their efforts (I think it was the DoD NPR folks).

If you talked to the folks in NPR I think they would have said they were doing all three though they wished they had more buy in from the management structure inside agencies.

Trying to accomplish significant management change at the entire federal government level is extremely difficult. Doing it at the DoD level is extremely difficult. Even relatively small organizations (inside or outside the federal government) find it very difficult to coordinate across internal barriers. The challenge of management change across the federal government is many times greater (just in the one dimension of internal barriers and cultures) that I think most people have trouble even conceiving it.

The opportunities exist to improve. And there is no reason huge gains can’t be made. But one person is essentially meaningless, in my opinion. Even at OMB where “management policy” is supposedly set for the federal government.

I figure if there is to be significant success a year from now we will see changes and a huge activity in educating management leaders throughout government on specific management concepts. If there isn’t a huge effort on education I can’t see any realistic expectations of real change. And then of course policies, practices… all have to be changed too…

Significant change isn’t be made by someone in Washington saying lets reduce waste. There have been plenty of management edicts to do so including NPR and President Bush’s President’s Management Agenda – http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budintegration/pma_index.html

You mention that the theme of government accountability was important to Clinton. I remember some of this – in fact, I have a certificate in my office from Al Gore’s “Partnership for a More Effective Government” program in the late 1990′s where the Clinton Administration recognized government-sponsored projects that were cost effective. Although recognition is great, what wasn’t part of that program was 1) proactively helping teams identify and manage to appropriate metrics, 2) helping the government teams share best practices, and 3) aggressively prioritizing government programs.

I’m hoping that these latter functions will be part of the new administration’s emphasis on quality, efficiency and change. In particular, one of my opinions on prioritization is that we as a country try to be “the best” at everything, when in fact we should be identifying our core competencies and focusing our effort and budget on those. If that ever happens, there will be plenty of people who are offended – but I don’t think democracy involves trying to do everything a little bit to pacify people and groups with diverse interests. We need to pick what we (as a country) want to be good at, and what aligns best with the natural resources in our domain, and hit it hard. If other countries are better in some areas, and it’s not in our strategic best interest to invest in those areas, we should make some tough choices over the next few years.

In any case, I’ll be watching this new post with keen interest!

Is the new administration eliminating crazy plans to use corn ethanol? No. They might actual allow drug prices to be negotiated (instead of forcing government to pay more for drug than they could with negotiation as has been the case). Do you think this next ~$700 billion plan won’t be rife with huge amounts of wasteful spending targeted based on political pork rather than economic benefit to the country? I don’t, it will be port laden.

The Grace Commission in 1982 provide a report to the Regan Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grace_Commission

The Clinton administration had the National Performance Review
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/whoweare/historyofnpr.html
Which was the closest thing to an attempt to move toward ASQ type management improvement.

Radio Address to the Nation on the Management of the Federal Government by Ronald Reagan, October 29, 1988 “We also set up the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control led by Peter Grace — almost 200 top business executives. This Commission spent months looking at every part of the Government, finding out where modern business practices could eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the Government. When they were through, they’d come up with 2,478 suggestions. And almost every recommendation we could put into effect without congressional action has been implemented. And we’ve saved close to $80 billion. We’re hoping that the next Congress will pitch in and do its part.”

The current administration had their own President’s Management Agenda

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY:
EFFORTS TO IDENTIFY AND ELIMINATE WASTE AND MISMANAGEMENT HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
“President Bush has made right sizing the U.S. presence overseas a part of his management agenda, and we are working actively with the State Department, OMB and other international agencies to meet these objectives.

We are developing a comprehensive competitive sourcing plan to enable competition to generate savings and performance improvements in our administrative services. We are also collaborating with the State Department in this area in strategic planning and identification of opportunities for joint action.”

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa89171.000/hfa89171_0f.htm

And on and on I am sure. It would be wonderful if the new administration actually adopts management improvements to improve results. There will be improvement made I am sure. It is not very challenging to improve. The challenge is to improve significantly more quickly than others and to sustain that pace over the long term. There is nothing wrong with being optimistic that the new administration will set off a new long term significantly better than normal continual improvement effort. But what is valuable, in my opinion, is to critically examine strategies and results not pretty vague promises.

I was one of the founders of the ASQ Public Sector Network (now Government Division) and manage the Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site http://curiouscat.com/psci/