By 2000 the National Performance Review Had Succeeded in

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A Cursory History of the
National Performance Review

The National Performance Review is the Clinton-Gore Assistants's initiative to reform the way the federal government works. Its goal is to create a government that "works better and costs less." Begun in the early days of the Administration, and with Vice President Al Gore at its helm, the Review has operated the duration of the Assistants through several phases of initiatives.

Preparing the Original Written report

The National Operation Review was created by President Nib Clinton on March iii, 1993. He appointed Vice President Al Gore equally its leader. The President gave the review a 6-month deadline -- report results to him by September 7, 1993.

The review was largely staffed by about 250 career civil servants. In addition, some interns, land and local authorities employees on loan, and a few consultants were also engaged in the piece of work of this interagency task strength. The core leadership included Elaine Kamarck, a senior political advisor to the Vice President, Bob Stone, project manager, and four deputies: Billy Hamilton, who led a series of teams examining the 24 largest agencies (Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, etc.); John Kamensky, who led a serial of teams examining governmentwide systems (procurement, budget, personnel, etc.); Bob Knisely, who focused on special fiscal analyses; and Carolyn Lukensmeyer, who focused on internal staff dynamics and communication.

They launched the try with an initial training session for the newly formed staff on April 15, 1993. David Osborne, co-author of "Reinventing Regime" served as a key counselor and spoke at this kickoff session forth with the Vice President and the deputy managing director for direction at the Part of Direction and Budget (OMB), Phil Lader.

Vice President Gore visited a series of agencies during the next few months to larn first-mitt the problems facing these agencies. He as well hosted a June 1993 "Reinventing Regime Summit" in Philadelphia of corporate executives, government leaders, and consultants who were leaders in organizational change.

The President had also directed agencies to create their own internal reinvention teams that worked with the corresponding NPR teams (many of which, such as NPR, continued on beyond the end of the initial review to help in implementing the resulting recommendations). NPR worked closely with these teams in developing the recommendations presented to the Vice President.

Vice President Gore was heavily involved in the decisions being made and, before publishing the final report, met with each agency caput to ensure his or her support for his proposed recommendations. The final report was based on a series of "accompanying" reports prepared by the nearly two dozen teams of NPR staffers. The concluding report highlighted 119 of the 384 recommendations listed in an appendix. The 38 specific accompanying reports total well-nigh 2,000 pages and expanded on the 384 recommendations by detailing one,250 specific actions intended to save $108 billion, reduce the number of "overhead" positions, and amend government operations.

The terminal study, Creating a Government That Works Ameliorate and Costs Less, was presented to President Clinton in a anniversary on the White House lawn on September 7, 1993. Immediately after the White House result, the President and Vice President made a bout of the country to promote the study and to issue Presidential directives to begin implementing its recommendations. By December 1993, the President had signed 16 directives implementing specific recommendations, including cutting the piece of work force by 252,000 positions, cut internal regulations in one-half, and requiring agencies to set customer service standards.

Implementing Phase I Recommendations

Soon after NPR's 1993 report was released, most of the staff returned to their dwelling house agencies. About 50 staff remained on the task forcefulness to start implementation of a series of over-arching initiatives. These efforts included training federal employees about customer service, creating reinvention laboratories to pilot innovations, promoting the streamlining of headquarters functions, and staffing NPR-recommended cantankerous-agency councils such equally the National Partnership Quango, the President's Management Quango, and the Authorities Information technology Services Working Group.

NPR also created a tracking system to follow progress on each of the 1,250 private activeness items. Individual agencies were charged with following through on the two-thirds of the recommendations that were specifically targeted to them. The remaining 1-3rd -- mostly recommendations affecting all agencies, such equally upkeep reform or civil service reform -- became the responsibleness of interagency groups (such every bit the Chief Financial Officers Council and the Electronic Benefits Transfer Task Strength), OMB, or NPR. For example, OMB took the lead in implementing the Regime Performance and Results Human action and NPR took the lead on customer service standards.

NPR worked with OMB and White Business firm staffs to develop functioning agreements between major bureau heads and cabinet secretaries, and the President. As of the finish of 1995, the heads of 8 of the 24 largest agencies had piloted the signing of operation agreements with the President -- something never before washed. OMB and NPR are coordinating the evolution of additional agreements in 1996.

The biggest challenge facing NPR was communicating its message to the federal work strength. It developed a training video, which was shown by the Federal Executive Boards and Federal Executive Associations around the state. Information technology prepared an interactive CD-ROM disk of the original study, its accompanying reports, the customer service report, and the status report. Information technology worked with the Federal Quality Institute to develop training curricula. It as well created a newsletter for federal employees.

NPR besides sponsored the creation of a series of interagency initiatives under the umbrella of "Net Results," an electronic interchange of information and ideas amidst federal employees and the general public. This now includes this web site and a serial of other sites (get to Spider web Links). Information technology also sponsored an electronic forum on reinvention issues involving hundreds of people beyond the country in late 1994 and is helping pilot a rule making initiative on-line in early 1996.

NPR's biggest initiative in 1994 was helping agencies create their start sets of customer service standards. NPR held weekly training sessions during the summertime of 1994 to assistance agencies develop their standards. By October 1994, almost 150 agencies had prepared around 1,500 standards. The previous year, only 3 agencies had standards.

NPR also piloted a partnership with the State of Oregon to focus on jointly achieving plan results in children and family programs. The Vice President co-signed an agreement in December 1994 with the governor and local officials to work together in creating a results-oriented service delivery organisation.

The Vice President stayed personally involved in the reinvention initiative. In March 1994, he presented his first progress report to the President on the first ceremony of the President's creation of NPR. The Vice President also fabricated a major speech subsequently that month at Georgetown University outlining his vision of the new role of federal executives, in July he spoke at the annual Federal Quality Briefing, and throughout the year, he presented awards to teams of federal employees who had reinvented their part of the government. By early on 1996, his "Hammer Award" had been given to more than 250 teams of federal employees across the authorities.

By September 1994, the first anniversary of the release of the original report, NPR concluded that meaning progress was beingness fabricated in the implementation of its recommendations. It also institute that many agencies were making changes that went far beyond what NPR recommended and a number of these efforts were highlighted in its condition written report to the President.

Outside observers also examined the progress of NPR. The Full general Accounting Function issued an initial report on NPR'south recommendations in December 1993, and a one year status report in Dec 1994. The Brookings Establishment released its initial cess in August 1994, and a book in January 1995. Other observers besides offered their assessments.

During this year, Congress enacted about one-quarter of the recommendations needing legislative activeness. The most significant included the "buyout" bill, which immune agencies to offering financial incentives to selected employees to leave the regime. This bill, signed in March 1994, likewise raised the number of positions to exist reduced over five years from the 252,000 recommended past NPR to 272,900. The third, the "Federal Acquisition Streamlining Human activity of 1994" was ultimately signed into law in October 1994. By the end of the 103rd Congress in December 1994, 34 laws had been signed implementing about a quarter of those NPR recommendations requiring legislation.

Phase II of the Performance Review

NPR opened 1995 with the realization that the ballot of a new Congress meant that the Administration would accept an opportunity to aggrandize its agenda for governmental reform. President Clinton asked Vice President Gore on Dec 19, 1994 to launch a "2nd stage" of reinvention -- known as "Phase II."

Agencies were asked to look hard at their missions and determine what government should or should not be doing. Initial agencies reviewed, such as the Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development, proposed substantial changes. As the agency, OMB, and NPR teams completed their reviews, the President and Vice President made announcements regarding their decisions.

The Vice President also asked NPR to assistance lead a major reform of the regulatory system. A serial of initiatives was undertaken in early on 1995 to identify obsolete regulations that could be eliminated, create partnerships between regulators and those being regulated, and identify specific regulations that could be revised. The President and Vice President held a series of announcements during the Spring and Summer to release these new proposals.

By September 1995, NPR Phase 2 proposed about 200 new recommendations, with savings totaling virtually $70 billion over 5 years, agencies continued to implement more of the original recommendations. By September 1995, agencies claimed they had completed implementation of one-third of the 1,250 original recommendations with savings totaling $58 billion of the originally-recommended $108 billion in savings. Agencies also identified $28 billion a yr in reduced regulatory burdens and proposed eliminating sixteen,000 pages of regulations. They also proposed plans for changing the way they enforced regulations to increase the use of partnership arrangements and reduce historical emphases on identifying procedural violations unrelated to performance.

NPR continued the implementation of a number of initiatives from Phase I, successfully using benchmarking studies to encourage broad action across agencies on specific issues, such as tele-servicing. It also connected the Vice President's Hammer Awards and agencies expanded the number of reinvention labs. In addition, it expanded its work with country-local governments on the apply of performance agreements in place of restrictive grant programs. A number of these initiatives were detailed in the President's Feb 1995 budget proposals.

Agencies likewise revised their customer service standards. The October 1995 Customer Service Standards study shows 214 agencies with over 3,000 standards of service to the public.

Congress held numerous hearings on NPR-related recommendations and acted upon several during the form of the year, including the elimination of "unfunded mandates" on states and localities, reducing the number of congressionally mandated reports prepared by federal agencies, and new flexibilities for the Federal Aviation Administration. Several congressional committees explored the need for a major reorganization of the federal government, merely took no activity.

Governing in a Counterbalanced Budget World: New Initiatives for 1996

Past early on 1996, it became clear to most agencies that they would face up declining fiscal resources for the foreseeable future. The President's financial year 1997 upkeep projected a balance for the starting time time in several decades and proposed cutting domestic agencies on boilerplate by 22 percent over a half-dozen-year period. The Republican Congress had proposed cuts equivalent to a 35-percent cutting over the same menstruum.

Vice President Gore recognized that, nether either scenario, agencies needed a blueprint for how they could approach these cuts and proposed a series of new initiatives intended to show how the Administration would responsibly govern in a balanced upkeep globe. He observed that agencies needed to focus on the ends, not the means, of what government does and must delegate more authority to managers on the forepart line. He too saw it assuasive a shift away from the traditional "one size fits all" arroyo to a more than tailored "custom fit" approach to the missions of individual agencies. Building on the successes of NPR'southward reinvention labs and other initiatives, he proposed agencies:

Convert to Performance-Based Organizations. Agencies would have functions that deliver measurable services and grant them greater autonomy from government-broad rules in commutation for greater accountability for results. This includes separating policy making out from these organizations and hiring a chief executive on a performance contract for a fixed term. This approach is used successfully in the United Kingdom to amend services and reduce costs.

Meliorate Client Service Dramatically. All agencies would be challenged to set service goals that were significantly meliorate and then anybody in American would see regime service was getting better. The heads of the 11 agencies with the greatest customer contact made public commitments to amend selected services during 1996, and other activities were announced to improve government services.

Increase the Use of Regulatory Partnerships. During the previous two years, the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory agencies had piloted approaches to non-coercive partnerships that focus on meeting environmental goals rather than on complying with regulatory processes. Gore announced that these approaches would become the mainstream strategy for federal regulatory agencies.

Create Functioning-Based Partnership Grants. Gore proposed converting the existing 600 grant system to federal-state-local partnerships based on achieving results rather than focus on procedure. Past jointly developing goals and objectives for major programmatic areas, states and localities would be given greater flexibility in using and accounting for federal grant funds.

Establish Single Points of Contact for Communities. A major challenge for communities dealing with the federal authorities is untangling the complication of its programs to determine who is responsible for what. Gore recommended that a single signal of contact be designated for the nation'south larger communities to create integrated accountability for the federal government's actions in those communities.

Transform the Federal Workforce. The existing ceremonious service system, largely crafted in 1883, can no longer reply chop-chop to change or the varying needs of unlike organizations in the federal government. Gore proposed major overhauls in 1993 and 1994 that had not received congressional support. While not backing abroad from his support for these changes, he recommended quick action on issues where at that place was bipartisan support, such as expanding existing authorities for agencies to tailor the nowadays system to their individual needs. He also reiterated earlier recommendations to increase preparation investments in the workforce and hold senior executives more answerable for achieving results.

Like the Phase Two initiatives, these initiatives were also included in the President'south fiscal twelvemonth 1997 budget. NPR created selected teams to lead the implementation of these initiatives during Summertime 1996.

In addition, NPR conducted an informal self assessment. Information technology institute hundreds of examples of success and a change in the environment that employees were starting time to believe that widespread change would be possible. But it also found front line employees were non hearing enough about reinvention initiatives and they felt senior managers were not supportive of their efforts to reinvent.

Starting time of the Second Term: 1997

Rather than launching new initiatives, NPR has called to build on the successes of the first term and accost the challenges of NPR's self cess. NPR's goal is to shift its strategy from encouraging scattered examples to transforming unabridged agencies. It is get-go by changing how it interacts with federal employees by shifting from targeting information at the departmental level to targeting it at the agency level within departments. For instance, it has created a network amid most 300 newsletter editors in agencies and an Internet Homepage world wide web.npr.gov with a great deal of "hands on" tools for utilise past front line employees.

As a vehicle for communicating "the rules of reinvention" to new political leaders, the President and Vice President met with the Cabinet in January 1997 to hash out practical tools for running agencies. These tools, called "The Blair House Papers," take been shared with all senior leaders in the federal government and are existence used equally a check list for measuring modify. To support reinvention closer to the front lines, NPR is working closely with about thirty agencies to assistance them develop specific strategies for dramatically transforming their performance, even in the face of reduced budgets. These agencies were selected based on their impact on the public, business organization, or the operation of other federal agencies.

NPR is also working with these agencies to help them integrate their reinvention strategies into their overall strategic planning, as required under the Regime Performance and Results Human action into their daily operations. NPR is too planning a governmentwide employee survey to assess the progress of reinvention's civilization changes on the front line so it can better target its time to come efforts.

Resources for Further Report

NPR staff have begun a bibliography of materials, beyond those published by the NPR itself and those items posted on this Web Site. There are besides a number of other Spider web sites that are heavily involved in reinventing regime, including at the state and local levels. The NPR web site address is: http://www.npr.gov.

NPR's primary reports and accompanying reports are available from the Government Printing Office. The primary reports include:

From Blood-red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less (September 1993)
Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less: Status Study (September 1994)
By the People (video, September 1994)
Common Sense Regime: Works Improve and Costs Less (September 1995)
Reinvention's Next Steps: Governing in a Balanced Budget World (March 1996)
The Best Kept Secrets in Government (September 1996)
The Blair Business firm Papers (January 1997)
ACCESS AMERICA (Feb 1997)