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Moving Boxes
by
John M. Kamensky
Like many states, Maryland is facing a severe fiscal crisis. In response, Governor Robert Ehrlich has formed a bipartisan reform commission to examine the structure and efficiency of the state government and report to him by December 1, 2003 on ways to better organize the state government. This will be a challenge.
Historically, “reforming government” is often seen as synonymous with reorganizing agencies and functions – also known as “moving the boxes” on the organization chart. At the federal level, this was a key thrust of the recommendations made by the 1949 Hoover Commission, the 1970 Ash Council, and the late 1970s Carter reform efforts. No matter how compelling or rational, these efforts generally faltered at the federal level because of the political difficulties commonly associated with any large-scale reorganization effort, such as congressional and agency stakeholder resistance to change. It may have a chance, though, in states facing severe fiscal pressures.
In the past decade, reform efforts at both the federal and state levels have largely focused on “fixing what’s inside the boxes,” as reflected in the federal Reinventing Government and President’s Management Agenda initiatives. These initiatives tended to be easier politically than large-scale restructuring. Many of these initiatives led to significant internal restructuring, but rarely did they result in cross-agency mergers, divestitures, etc. This hasn’t, however, deterred advocates of either large-scale or situation-specific “box moving” nor diminished the increasing urgencies they see in reshaping government – both in what it does and how it gets results.
Large-Scale Box Moving. If we want to reform government programs so they are better aligned to achieve intended results, does this mean the government needs to be reorganized? The January 2003 Volcker Commission report, Urgent Business for America, concludes the answer is “yes.” It recommends a large-scale rethinking of how the federal government is organized: “Fundamental reorganization of the federal government is urgently needed to improve the capacity for coherent design and efficient implementation of public policy.
Comptroller General David Walker testified in April on this and related proposals and agreed, saying: “The federal government cannot accept the status quo as a ‘given’ – we need to reexamine the base of government programs, policies, and operations.” He continued, saying: “Our work has documented the widespread existence of fragmentation and overlap from both the broad perspective of federal missions and from the more specific viewpoint of individual federal programs. . . We now have both an opportunity and an obligation to take a comprehensive look at what the government should be doing and how it should go about doing its work.”
While there have been some congressional hearings, only two bills have been introduced and neither seem to be in direct response to the Volcker recommendations. One, S. 837 by Sam Brownback and the other, H.R. 1632 by Edward Royce. The issues surrounding a large-scale reassessment of the organization of the federal government would be enormous. Traditionally, organizational structure has strongly influenced performance and results in different policy areas – just look at the effects of the different roles of the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation in water policy, or the implementation effects of land management policy as a results of the different responsibilities vested in the Forest Service, Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management. However, the role of organizational structure on program performance may be profoundly different than in past reorganization efforts because of the need to factor in the influence of technology on how organizations work today, as well as the increased roles of states, localities, non-profits, and contractors in the networked delivery of federal services. So, the work of any commission examining the structure of the federal government would be far more challenging than past efforts.
Situation-Specific Box Moving. While there hasn’t been much federal action on large-scale reorganization, there have been a large number of situation-specific reorganizations in the past decade that span the reorganization spectrum. These include: the abolishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission; the privatization of the Enrichment Corporation; the merger of different agencies resulting in the creation of the National Nuclear Security Agency and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency; the spin-off of Social Security from the Department of Health and Human Services to be an independent agency; the merger of 22 agencies into the Department of Homeland Security; the splitting up and recombination of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service; the transfer of the Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco Agency from Treasury to Justice; the creation of the Transportation Security Agency, and a number of other “box moving” actions. My personal favorite was the abolition of the Tea Tasting Board.
To facilitate these kinds of efforts in the future, Congressman Tom Davis, the new chair of the House Government Reform Committee, has proposed reauthorizing the Presidential Reorganization Act, which lapsed in the mid-1980s. Legislation, however, has not yet been introduced. In testimony before his committee in April 2003, National Academy for Public Administration member Dwight Ink observed that granting the President reorganization plan authority “. . . could be a useful tool to reduce the problems of structural fragmentation . . . .”
There have been several recent reports that highlight implementation lessons that – once a reorganization has been approved – may be helpful to agency managers in making a successful transition. The General Account Office (GAO) summarizes its observations on mergers and transformations in a July 2003 report. This report lays out nine lessons from both public and private sector mergers and transformations and highlights the importance of the “people” element in the transition. The IBM Center for The Business of Government also sponsored a “lessons learned” study by Peter Frumpkin in August 2003. This report urges implementers to move quickly and adjust over time. Like the GAO report, it also stresses the importance of the “people” dimension, especially in relation to the importance of communicating effectively.
While there are lots of lessons learned, the key lesson, voiced by Comptroller General Walker, seems to be: “. . . reorganizing government is an immensely complex and politically charged activity. Those who would reorganize government must make their rationale clear and must build a consensus for change. . . .”
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