Does America Want Efficient Government?
Why Taxpayers Should Care About Their Bureaucracy
Jul 5, 2007
Every four years, at least one of the major party candidates for President attacks the size and efficiency of the federal bureaucracy and promises to do something about it. Many of those elected to the office actually take steps aimed at trimming and streamlining the workforce, but none has been able to focus on this area long enough to bring about meaningful change.
International and domestic crises and challenges--and public demands for decisive action--inevitably come to dominate a President's time and attention. Citizens and their advocates will be clamoring for a vaccine to combat an epidemic or a recall of troops from a hot spot. Very few will be reminding the President of his plans for a smaller and better workforce. Even fewer make the connection between the quality of the workforce and the government's ability to respond to crises and challenges until, and only momentarily, there's a Hurricane Katrina, a lost database, or a rash of contract padding.
There are more than 2.5 million federal employees. They cost over $100 billion, or more than the total cost of the entire government and its programs in the Kennedy Administration. However, so much of the government's work is done nowadays under contracts and grants that one keen academic observer estimated last Fall that the "true size" of the government workforce is 14.6 million, at an added cost of half a trillion dollars.
These figures are meaningless to most of us who still deal in thousands in income and expenditure. But they should tell us one thing: there's enough substance to demand the sustained attention of us or our elected representatives. At the moment, largely because of the lack of sustained interest, we have no idea whether we have the correct number of employees to do the work of government, including supervising the contractors and grantees. Nor do we know if we have the right people and the rules and systems that enable them to get the job done without becoming mired in the proverbial red tape.
There are a few "interest groups" who care about a right-sized and effective corps of federal employees. None of them have the clout of those fronted by Washington's fabled K Street lobbyists. Not surprisingly, their studies and recommendations get little attention. Administration reform initiatives usually follow a political agenda: President Clinton tried to make it easier for unions to participate in management decision-making; President Bush's team tries to gut collective bargaining. Congress has given broad grants of change authority to two major departments and then backed off in the face of protests.
To become comparable to a successful private employer, the government needs as a minmum to fix its recruitment, pay, performance evaluation, and training systems. It won't unless it invests in the necessary research, development, and implementation and it won't do that unless there is a public demand. And there won't be that kind of demand unless there's a big improvement in the public's memory span for things like Katrina, $600 hammers, and six-month waits for passports.
