Shortly after taking office in 1993, the Clinton Administration embarked upon what it advertised as a revolutionary initiative to "Reinvent Government", under the leadership of Vice President Gore. This initiative started with a National Performance Review (NPR) , and is still going strong at this writing.

The notion of "reinvention" was based on the concepts of Business Process Re-Engineering, which had only recently superceded Total Quality Management as the most fashionable management principle of the day.

Simply stated, "Business Process Re-Engineering" is based on the obvious, yet valid, idea that you can usually solve a problem more effectively and less expensively if you first look at the problem without taking into consideration, and without the consequent mind-set created by, any existing systems or processes that were intended to address the problem. Business Process Re-Engineering, then, stands in contrast to what its proponents claimed was the "traditional" approach to problem-solving, namely: focusing on how to change existing systems or processes to better solve the problem under consideration.

Of course, Business Process Re-Engineering is nothing more or less than the repackaging of management principles that have existed for at least 50 years and probably much longer. For example, its underlying concepts are the same as those of "Management By Objective" and "Zero-Based Budgeting", which were in vogue (albeit briefly) in the late 1970's, and identical to those of the formal "Programming, Planning and Budgeting" process initiated in the early 1960's under President Kennedy, which in turn was based on operations research and systems engineering practices developed in the 1940's.

But just because an idea is old, and just because entrepreneurial opportunists have made fortunes by repackaging and marketing this old idea, doesn't mean it's not a good idea. Unfortunately, hundreds of new organizations have been created, thousands of careers have been built, hundreds of thousands of meetings have been held, millions of man-hours have been consumed, tens of millions of pages have been written, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to date in this latest in a long series of attempts to make a government that "works better and costs less". (This, despite the fact that, with few exceptions, each of the previous efforts to streamline or otherwise improve government was proclaimed to be a complete success¹ by its advocates). An inkling of the magnitude (and the self-congratulatory nature) of the "Reinventing" initiative can be found at http://www.clearlake.ibm.com/Alliance/regodata.html.

But Gore's effort to reinvent government has violated the most fundamental tenet of Business Process Re-Engineering, as well as common sense. That is, instead of starting with a set of problems to be solved and attempting to identify the best solution to those problems, its starting point was the set of existing government organizations, and the broad set of functions that these organizations presently perform. Moreover, Gore's initiative limited the scope of its investigation to the Federal government, and further limited it only to the Executive branch of the Federal government².

This arbitrary narrowing of the scope and focus of Gore's reinvention initiative has ensured that it will not address the true, fundamental problems that plague all levels and segments of government within the Unitied States. These problems include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Legislative and judicial action over the years (and sometimes within the same year) has resulted in the creation of government organizations at every level whose responsbilities, authorities and functions overlap and/or are mutually inconsistent.

• There is unnecessary and wasteful duplication of function among the federal, state and local levels of government.

• To a large, unacceptable, and ever-increasing extent, government is in practice not held accountable for its actions and inactions³.

• Government at every level has increasingly acted as the willing servant of influential special interests.

• At every level, governments have continued to expand their authority into areas of national, community and personal life that only by the greatest stretch of the imagination can be construed as falling within the scope of activities that the US Constitution depicts as governmental.

How To Reinvent Government. Really.

To truly undertake the reinvention of government in the United States, we need merely follow the guidelines that Business Process Re-Engineering prescribes, namely:

1. Define the purposes and scope of government, i.e., what is it, exactly, that we want our government to accomplish.

2. Articulate units of measure for each of these governmental purposes, using which we can predict, and later assess, how well our government will accomplish (or has accomplished) its purposes.

3. Define any constraints or conditions to which government must conform while fulfilling its purposes.

4. Identify several distinct alternative designs, or approaches, through which government might accomplish its purposes without violating the defined constraints.

5. Assess each of the alternatives in terms of the units of measure defined in (2), above. Identify the strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits of each alternative.

6. Select the alternative that most fully accomplishes the specified purposes, without violating the defined constraints, and does so with the lowest cost and fewest adverse side effects.

7. Develop a plan for evolving from the current governmental process to the selected alternative form of government, while minimizing the cost and disruption resulting from the transition.

8. Execute the transition plan.

Where To Begin

I suggest we adopt the opening lines from the preamble of the US Constitution ⁴ as a starting point for defining the purpose of government in the United States. That is, the purpose of government is to:

• Establish justice;
• Insure (sic) domestic tranquility;
• Provide for the common defense;
• Promote the general welfare; and
• Secure the blessings of liberty
• to ourselves and our posterity.

Few, I think, would argue with these goals. But these goal statements alone are not sufficient to permit us to begin redesigning government. For one thing, these goals are often mutually contradictory. For example:

• the various (federal, state and local) governments' attempts to "promote the general welfare" by, e.g.,
  • imposing various forms of censorship,
  • jailing, or taking property belonging to, citizens for alleged failure to pay sufficient taxes,
  • arresting participants in sex acts between consenting adults,
  • etc.
  can justifiably be interpreted as breaching the "blessings of liberty";

• the governments' attempts to provide for the common defense are seen by many as being accomplished at the expense of its "promoting the general welfare";

• the governments' attempts to ensure "domestic tranquility" have frequently been viewed as conflicting with its responsibilities regarding both "securing the blessings of liberty" and "promoting the general welfare";

• the governments' efforts to secure these various blessing for "ourselves" (as manifest, for example, in its management of our natural resources) have been seen by many as being in conflict with its responsibility to secure those same blessings for "our posterity".

As a prerequisite to reinventing our government, therefore, it behooves us to prioritize, or establish an order of precedence for, these various governmental purposes⁵. Moreover, in order for us to choose among alternative designs for our government, it is incumbent upon us to define some cost-related qualifications associated with the accomplishment of these purposes, e.g., "...to accomplish the aforesaid purposes in the most efficient and least restrictive manner."

Only after:

• having established relative priorities or an order of precedence for governments' purposes, and

• having established a set of cost-related qualifications associated with these purposes,

should we begin the process of reinventing government.

What Next

To have much chance of success, any initiative to truly reinvent government in the United States must meet at least the following conditions:

• It must establish and maintain a level of objectivity, dedication, expertise and effort that is unlikely to be found in any single governmental or private institution.

• The organizations and individuals undertaking the initiative must be of unimpeachable integrity and highly respected by most segments of the political and social spectra.

• The initiative must actively seek, and its products must ultimately be based on, input from the entire citizenry of this country.

• The initiative must be launched with, and must maintain, a high level of public visibility and publicity.

One way to proceed, that is consistent with all of these requisites, is the following:

• A new, independent, organization should be established, the sole purpose of which is to plan and conduct the reinvention of the US government. (I'll refer to this organization as the "Reinvention Project").

• To avoid the appearance of undue influence by private interests, the Reinvention Project should be funded entirely by government grants.

• The Project should be given a reasonable timetable for accomplishing its mission: e.g., at least ten years, but not more than twenty years.

• The Project should have a board of directors consisting of intellectual and political leaders of the highest stature, including at a minimum, all surviving US presidents.

• The Reinvention Project Director should be an individual with great name recognition and a national reputation for objectivity and competence. The generals Powell and Schwartzkopf spring to mind as candidates for this position.

• The Project's subordinate task forces should each be led by a management team, the members of which are themselves widely recognized and respected individuals, representing diverse political and social viewpoints.

• The social scientists and systems analysts responsible for the gathering of data, and the identification, design, and evaluation of alternative approaches to government, must be limited to those of the highest caliber each of whom has established a national reputation for non-partisan, objective research.

Obstacles To Reinventing Government

It is not mere coincidence that Gore's reinvention initiative so narrowed the scope of its investigations. The forces arrayed against any real change in government in the United States are immense. Perhaps the two most powerful of these are:

Vested Interests

There are millions of organizations and individuals that stand to incur losses varying between significant and staggering if our government were made more efficient and more responsive to the citizenry. These range from people and groups whose incomes derive directly from the present political process and structure, to those who, by virtue of their resources or cleverness, have been able to exploit the present process to their private advantage.




Intrinsic Human Resistance To Change

Most people fear or otherwise resist substantial change, even if these same people are completely dissatisfied with the status quo. This is sometimes referred to as the "better the devil you do know than the devil you don't" syndrome.

These and other obstacles will need to be surmounted in order to reinvent government, and these and other obstacles need to be explicity addressed both in the promotion of the idea that government should be reinvented, and in the transition plan through which the reinvention will be reailized.

---

End of Article Body

---

Notes

1. There are two truly startling aspects to this continual series of "successes".
   1. Despite the seemingly endless stream of triumphant announcements, for which many senior government executives and a smattering of lower level employees are annually given substantial bonuses and prestigious awards, the size and cost of government, at all levels (Federal, state and local), has continued to increase dramatically over the past 30 years, while the efficiency of government has continued to decline.

   2. Most of these successes are declared by their proponents to be the direct result of the particular management approach (e.g., Management By Objective, Total Quality Management, etc.) espoused by the then-current administration, implying that there would have been few or no accomplishments if that specific management concept had not been employed. They have been able to do this with straight face only by ignoring the many virtual and actual successes and achievements claimed by their many predecessors, each of whom typically was employing a different, then-most-fashionable, set of management principles.

   
   

2. Of course, the investigation of ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Executive branch did sometimes include consideration of ways in which the Federal government could enhance its interactions with state and local governments.

   
   

3. Yes, every two, four, or six years, citizens are able to vote for their representatives in the legislative bodies of government. But:
   • For all practical purposes citizens may choose only between candidates nominated by either of the two major parties. These are the same parties that are responsible for the actions and inactions of the government, but which are rarely if ever displaced or displaceable because of: their high name recognition, elaborate fund-raising machinery, and their support by powerful interest groups.

   • There is no practical mechanism through which citizens can rid themselves of the entrenched bureaucracies and bureaucrats in the administrative branch of government, nor of most members of the judicial branch.

   • Most importantly, even if there were practical means available by which citizens could root out the entrenched political parties, politicians, administrators and judges, there is no practical means through which they can discover all, or even most, of what their government has done to them, and why it has done it.
     • Many, probably most, perhaps all, controversial decisions made by our governments at every level are the result of behind-the-scenes negotiating, persuasion, intimidation, and/or inducement. As has been made shockingly clear in recent months, even many of our elected representatives in Congress are not informed about what takes place in these "closed door" decision-making sessions held by their leadership and that leadership's political and fiscal allies.

     • Politicians and bureaucrats strive to obscure their mistakes and misdeeds to such an extent that it is now virtually unthinkable for any of them to simply announce: "I made a bad decision and we are worse off because of it.", or "I acknowledge and accept full responsibility for my illegal or immoral act, and consequently am submitting my resignation herewith".

     • Even if all of the decision-making process were brought into the sunshine, the vast majority of our citizenry has neither the time nor competence to understand the content, much less the significance, of many of the bills, laws, and regulations .

   
   

4. To the extent that they articulate or imply a goal for their respective governments, the constitutions of individual states tend to paraphrase the preamble of the Federal constitution, albeit with more ferverent references to god, and fewer references to the "general welfare". Here are some examples, taken from the preambles of various state constitutions:
   • We the people of Alaska, grateful to God and those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land, in order to secure and transmit to succeeding generations our heritage of political, civil, and religious liberty within the Union of States, do ordain and establish this constitution for the State of Alaska.

   • We, the people of the State of Florida, being grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, in order to secure its benefits, perfect our government, insure domestic tranquility, maintain public order, and guarantee equal civil and political rights to all, do ordain and establish this constitution.

   • To perpetuate the principles of free government, insure justice to all, preserve peace, promote the interest and happiness of the citizen and of the family, and transmit to posterity the enjoyment of liberty, we the people of Georgia, relying upon the protection and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish this Constitution.

   • We, the People of the State of Illinois -grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberty which He has permitted us to enjoy and seeking His blessing upon our endeavors-in order to provide for the health, safety and welfare of the people; maintain a representative and orderly government; eliminate poverty and inequality; assure legal, social and economic justice; provide opportunity for the fullest development of the individual; insure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of freedom and liberty to ourselves and our posterity - do ordain and establish this Constitution for the State of Illinois.

   • TO THE END, that justice be established, public order maintained, and liberty perpetuated; WE, the People of the State of Indiana, grateful to ALMIGHTY GOD for the free exercise of the right to choose our own form of government, do ordain this Constitution.

   • Grateful to Almighty God for life and liberty, we, the people of Utah, in order to secure and perpetuate the principle of free government, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION.

   
   

5. To illustrate what I mean by "order of precedence" for governmental purposes, I herewith present my personal order of precedence for the goals specified in the preamble of the US Constitution.

   Ranking Governmental Goals

   Goal	Rank
   Liberty For Ourselves	1
   Liberty For Posterity	2
   Establish Justice	3
   Common Defense	4
   Domestic Tranquility	5
   Promote General Welfare	6

   In the event that a conflict arose between any two or more of these governmental purposes, the purpose with the highest ranking (1=highest) would prevail.

   As anyone who has ever conducted, or thought much about, Business Process Re-Engineering (called by whatever name) will attest, this simple precedence ranking would need to be substantially elaborated and better quantified before it could be of much use as a tool in redesigning or "reinventing" government.

---

End of Notes

---