James Q. Wilson - Bureaucracy : what government agencies do and why they do it

O NE OF THE CENTRAL THEMES of this book is that the management of government agencies is powerfully constrained by limitations on the ability of managers to buy and sell products or hire and fire people on the basis of what best serves the efficiency or productivity of the organization. Laws and regulations limit how people can be hired, greatly reduce the chances of firing anyone, and surround the buying and selling of buildings and equipment with countless rules about fairness and procedure.

There have been efforts over the last decade to alter these constraints. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore sought at the start of their first term to convert federal agencies into a government that works better and costs less by reducing red tape, inducing bureaus to put customers (that is, citizens dealing with the government) first, and empowering employees to get results. This effort was officially known as the National Performance Review (NPR) and popularly known as Reinventing Government, or REGO.

The NPR effort marked a sharp departure from past reorganization plans. Of the seventeen presidents to take office between 1904 and 1992, eleven created reorganization task forces that were chiefly devoted to expanding accountability, increasing efficiency, and enlarging presidential authority. (By accountability I mean increasing policy implementers responsiveness to higher officials who must take responsibility for that policy.) This effort had some successesfor example, it equipped the president with more staff assistants and made more rational the way in which budgets were drawn upbut it did little about red tape.

The NPR began with very different assumptions. Where earlier reforms had stressed the accountability of officials to higher authority, the NPR emphasized agency responsiveness to the public. Where earlier reports relied on appeals to business efficiency, the NPR drew inspiration from the concept of entrepreneurial culture. And where preceding efforts urged an expansion of the power of the president, the NPR called for empowering government employees and restoring public confidence in government.

The dominant theme of the NPR was to solve the root problem of modern governmentits excessive reliance on large, top-down, centralized bureaucracies. This solution necessitated the creation of entrepreneurial organizations that have constantly learned, innovated, and improved. The NPR meant, in effect, marrying the youthful spirit of Silicon Valley to the old traditions of official Washington.

The main reason for this startling shift in federal reorganization efforts, however, was not admiration for clever young people who made computer chips or invented Internet sales programs but, rather, a desire to reverse the sharp drop in the publics confidence in the federal government. In 1964, three-quarters of the American people said they trusted Washington officials to do the right thing; today, fewer than one-quarter feel that way. Perhaps, the NPR staff thought, these citizens would like officials better if they put people first and cut red tape. For that matter, government bureaucrats might like their own jobs better if they could put people first and cut red tape.

But putting people first is hard to do in a government that, ultimately, has the power to command people and even send them to prison. A business may put people first because businesses compete with each other in order to attract customers, but the government competes with nobody. And cutting red tape may be possible in a business firm that can tell whether it is doing a good job by looking at its sales and profits, but cutting it in a government agency is much harder because (ordinarily) government agencies deal with neither sales nor profits.

Changing government is difficult, but serious efforts have been made. Let me describe two important changes that should modify what you read in this book, which was written several years before the NPR had started.

At several places in this book, you will learn that it is hard for government to buy expensive items because it must follow an elaborate policy of describing in great, mind-numbing detail what it wants to purchase (often without any helpful contact with the firms that sell these items), and then it must advertise for bids. Usually it has to accept the lowest price it is offered, even if this bid comes from a firm that is less competent than one that charges more.

For example, when a public agency wants to buy a computer, it cannot do so in the same way that business firms do. The latter will discuss computers with their manufacturers and get help in finding or designing the right machine. Often they will buy what they need from a firm they know and trust without ever describing the computer they want, sometimes paying a higher price in order to get the right combination of product and service. But this is not an option for government agencies; indeed, even attempting to do so would invite legal action. In such circumstances, as discussed later in the book, an agencys purchasing agent may be accused of collusion, favoritism, unfairness, and sweetheart deals. Thus it has been next to impossible for the government purchaser to take into account its past experience with a supplier or that firms intangible qualities. Instead, the agency must produce an elaborate report describing what it wants and then accept sealed bids, with the sale going to the lowest bidder. It is hardly surprising that the government often winds up with second-rate computers sold by unhelpful firms.