The mission of the government proliferated to such a degree the government couldnt accomplish all it had to do. We ask it to do it with a lot of restrictions on management, people, money, contracts, that make it almost impossible to get the job done so if you find someone who is getting something done in government, that is a true talent. It is also true as your boss said, the only thing we have close to eternal life on earth is a government program. Once in place, it is very difficult to repeal or eliminate the program. Davids work, rachels work document evaluated programs and though i wouldnt say the logical conclusion is eliminate everything, it is true when subjected to rigorous evaluation methodology, programs not having intended impact, enormous room for improvement. Every president until the 80s had the authority to organize the government and it is high time we reempower administrations with that authority because it is so hard to do it otherwise. Congress at least from the Oversight Committee, pretty supportive of this kind of authority where the authorizing committees and appropriations committees because those are the committees that have specific jurisdiction power, money assigned with specific agencies or programs under their jurisdiction. What tends to drive organizations and government are crises and the most recent example of that is the establishment of the department of Homeland Security. There had been a long discussion over time about whether Homeland Security could be strengthened if we consolidated the various programs littered throughout government responsible for securing the homeland and that was fought until after 9 11. The transportation security administration, contract workers couldnt adequately secure airlines, airplanes, commercial travel but fairly soon thereafter we created the department of Homeland Security, bringing all of these entities together and while it is true that terrorist attacks on american soil have been rare since then, i am not sure we can measurably say our security estrangement because of the chaos in the department of Homeland Security, an enormous struggle and very expensive to combine these entities to a cohesive, well owned organization. The big issue of course in giving the president the authority to do Something Like that is trust. Congress would need to trust an executive to use that authority responsibly and we have not had that kind of trusting relationship in a long time. Congress in the 90s passed a law called government performance and results act. It was my first job to oversee implementation of that act soon after it was enacted because no one gave it to him about it. Low man on the totem pole got that responsibility but there are folks for whom it is intuitive that we need to drive Government Agency programs to think more about outcomes. It is too easy to come to work and satisfy your self with just producing inputs or outputs, working really hard, doing activity, presumably towards an outcome but if you dont measure whether it is having an impact you will never know whether what you are doing is having a positive government has struggled before then but certainly since then identifying the outcome they are trying to accomplish and finding a way to measure that over time. A lot of the evaluations david has written about are just that, getting insight into whether or not we are accomplishing important outcomes, whether our programs are having the intended impact but if those evaluations show programs evaluated with those methodologies to be in effect of the vast majority of programs and investment by the federal government isnt subject to any of that evaluation. During the Bush Administration, it did not become institutionalized, we devised the Program Assessment rating tool. A simple set of 25 questions that ask of each program, is its purpose here, well designed to achieve its objective, does it have short and longterm outcome oriented goals, aggressive improvement targets, wellmanaged and ultimately is the program achieving its results . We established this tool because we wanted some basis with which to allocate funding and insisted through this tool that agencies and programs begin a process of subjecting programs to these evaluations, the beginning of what we call the evidence agenda that ultimately led to the commission on evidencebased policymaking that i am involved with today. I have to admit we didnt make a lot of progress integrating this data into the budget decisionmaking process. Policymakers dont have a huge appetite for listening to evidence when figuring out how to make funding decisions. A lot of those funding decisions are highly political so there is room for improvement as a matter of understatement in making more and more budget decisions and other policy decisions based on the evidence. As far as reorganizations are concerned we were able to say among Government Programs these share a similar mission, due to their common or conflicting measures of performance, one area we did a deep dive in was the Economic Development, dozens of programs throughout the government that are intended to address, to improve the economic condition of the poorest communities across government. We propose to make all those programs and consolidate them into the economic developer and administration at the department of commerce because many of the programs were found to be ineffective and it was hard to get an ineffective rating with this tool but because the community and Economic Development program, the Biggest Development of those programs was found to be moved to the Economic Development administration we felt was more result oriented. Overall funding levels combined was lower, we thought intellectually moving them to more outcome oriented entity would mean you get more with less. There were some people who disagreed with the president s propose all. Martin omalley as a result of this great proposal i recommended called the president the Osama Bin Laden of american cities. Not a highlight of my political career. It just goes to show you the need to be considered when you are developing and trying to enact these proposals, step back, i would say the lessons i take from my combined experience in driving these initiatives are leadership, the boss who was the president s best friend can clear out a lot of bureaucratic underbrush if you are trying to advance these initiatives but leadership that gets it, is willing to invest the time and energy, intellectual and Political Capital to get this done is absolutely critical because at lower levels to get it done, collaboration internally collaboration was very rough because agencies are not enthusiastic about giving up programs, funding, power to another. It is easier to get it done in the executive branch than it is outside. If you dont plow ground on the hill and among other stakeholders it will be very difficult to get these things enacted in the absence of a crisis like 9 11 so collaboration with a broad set of stakeholders, executive branch, legislative branch and externally, absolutely critical result. Perseverance, there are many bites of the apple and if youre unwilling to keep going at it you are not likely to make progress over time because there are so many things, so much easier to get things done. Just because you pass a law creating the development of Homeland Security doesnt make the homeland more secure, just because you consolidate programs in the Economic Development of the department of commerce is the beginning of the journey. You got to make sure these consolidated entities assume a singular culture, focused mission and measuring progress, insuring what you tried to do is working. We have an incredible roadmap in the annual inventory of overlap duplication across government. They will tell you consolidation of programs isnt always the right answer. There is a lot of room for improved collaboration with programs and agencies of similar mission and that is true, consolidation can give an enormous degree of efficiency, for those consolidations. I want to reiterate im delighted to be here with my fellow panelists. It is a great subject on a wet august afternoon. A question and answer period, follow up on anything said by the previous panel. I need a nickname. That is one thing i learned on this panel. Im going to take questions. If you will step up to the podium and pose your question i would greatly appreciate it. If you could say the name of the organization you are affiliated with we would appreciate that too. The founder of the center for accelerating innovation, former staffer in the nixon administration, worked for reagan in the commerce department, had the opportunity to work for ray ash and that was the last major attempt by an administration to do governmentwide organization. One of the proposals, some of the proposals were epa, noaa, domestic counsel, also proposals to a limited eight cabinet agencies, consolidate them into four major groupings. I have two questions, these proposals with the cabinet reorganization, were not successful primarily because of the way congress is organized. The structural nature of congress, committees, subcommittees and special interests, relationships, etc. Make it difficult to move these reorganizations through congress. One question i have is whether there should be a commission and reorganizing congress because even agencies like the department of Homeland Security report 15 subcommittees, it is all still fragmented regardless of the wonderful name that is over it and i am wondering if Something Like a bracket commission which was set up in order to close down defense facilities which was successful closing down 40 or 45 of the facilities might be an approach. I understand the reorganization makes a lot of sense, but i am not sure that is the best pathway forward. We have a good example, successful example of the defense Realignment Commission in which congress has taken up and down vote on proposals for a number of days or had to disapprove with a certain number of days. My question is what about reorganizing congress, secondly, what about strategies for implementing reorganization . Thank you. Those are great ideas. The former will be less popular than the latter because congress will be loath to give authority to its own reorganization to someone else but it is a major barrier, a major barrier to collaboration, consolidation of like programs. The latter idea is brilliant because i actually wrote a bill for george w. Bush the did just that modeled on the bracket commission, where you would submit a proposal that was considered under those procedures by congress, first. The only way to get around this jurisdiction, the Oversight Committee reform have authority over reorganization but nonetheless difficult to get around committees, authorizing committees will be reluctant to link relinquish that kind of decisionmaking to a broad oversight Type Committee but in february, with the president s budget you will have the most ambitious reorganization proposals in a long time submitted to congress. And i dont know if you read, you see just what happens without that kind of authority. Robert was involved in the best things that happened in my area, personnel management, in living memory since jimmy carters Civil Service reform act which i was lucky to walk into, was of this National Security personnel system. By a miracle, those guys got this thing through congress, was in the wake of 9 11 and to have a real personnel system again, evaluating peoples performance, giving pay based on performance, the reaction to 9 11 what they did at the department of defense and Homeland Security, half the civilian government really, they had this great thing gathered through congress, under the Obama Administration it is out. And voted out by congress, so rare to get congress to do something brave like that. The same happened with carters Civil Service reform act, started doubling away at it right from the day it took affect. I was there and was my fault we didnt get along too well. I got to tell you, one of the greatest stories that i always tell, giving a speech and chairman of intel or president of intel before going into the government, whatever it was, he goes in and is talking to chief executives in the private sector and you have to understand government is so different from the private sector. What would you do if your board of directors had on it your union leader, opposing business you are in a competitive with, bureaucracy you couldnt fire, goes through 7 or 8 things would you run your business different . Of course. The government we have, most of the Time Congress which is the board of directors controlled by the other party. Even when it is your own party as we are finding out it is very difficult to get things done. He made a wonderful analogy, going from the private sector into government isnt like going from the Minor Leagues to the major leagues in baseball. It is like going from softball to ice hockey. A whole different kind of ballgame and has to operate by different principles and jimmy carter, my former professor came in and wrote the Civil Service reform act in 1976. All the right performance to give the government political appointees the ability to run the government. Just go back and read my book, all about it, scotty campbell, Alan Campbell is my professor, he devised a way to do it. The problem isnt getting good ideas or even getting them past, the problem is once you put them in it is hard to get them done. Most of the problem is congress. Nine years ago i wrote the background of the Heritage Foundation about federal funds to states. I think the number is 2136, but i will throw a little bit of a wrench into this. You are going about this the wrong way. Let me take an example related to federal funds, the federal government takes money out of my paycheck, department of treasury sends it to the department of agriculture, the parent of agriculture sends it to the food and nutrition service, sending it back to the state of wyoming which then sends the money down to Laramie CountySchool District one which is to the east i school so my daughter can have milk with her lunch. To go through this. What about chocolate milk . Or something. I want to thank you for your service to the reagan administration, 60 billion in todays money is a lot of money but the federal agency is 10 times as big and if we could rehash the purpose of the federal government and rain it into only deal with federal matters and not state matters we would see major opportunities for reorganizing the federal government. If you look at the first prioritization report there is a consistent theme calling for downsizing agencies to not perform a core constitutional responsibility of the federal government. Ideas permeates throughout, one of the things we need to do when rethinking the executive branch, what activities should the federal government to uniquely situated to do. Today the federal government has its hand in every state and local matter is too cumbersome for the federal government to administer these programs effectively. A single point at which the question is asked, it was how much more or less, should it persist with federalism issues. I dont expect a dramatic change in the mission of the agency. I do think subtle introduction of that question in the policymaking process could make major positive improvements in certain areas. Not sure what those are but if you asked if this was an appropriate role of government, that is one of the questions in the draft of the rating tool we designed but it was thought to be too political so it was removed. Asking that question more and more, really useful. I just add one which i didnt make my point very clearly because my whole point was federalism, we are doing too much but i tell you something that is going to happen. As certain as we are sitting in this room, the real smart Big Government people are so worried. The entitlements are going to eat up Discretionary Spending period. Clearly you cant even raise the issue or you are hating old people or whatever. And it is happening already. Entitlements are growing more and more and you have to cut these things. The opportunity is when this is happening and it is happening and it is going to accelerate dramatically. Im too old to be around but most of this audience you are going to have to make these decisions. There is not enough money to be raised by the federal government to pay for the entitlements to do this. It is a marvelous opportunity to change the nature of government and it will happen whether congress once it or the people want it or anything. Looking at actuarial data, it is going to happen. I work for legislative exchange council, totally on board with all the federalism ultimate solution but i want to bring it back to Civil Service reform which we had a paper route on so federal Service Reform that could affect all the states having to deal with federal agencies so we had more than a century of Civil Service protection. Nearly impossible to fire career Civil Servants, 2. 8 Million People with definite political leanings who make decisions without any democratic accountability and we talk about lending teams as if it were a normal thing. Political officials elected by the people have to land like it is omaha beach to entrenched bureaucracy that have their opinions how to make government decisions which i recognize what you are saying about the fact it has gone back and forth, any advances on Civil Service hold back by congress but i was wondering if you have recommendations about carter reforms going back to that in terms of what your recommendations would be for the actual process by which Civil Servants are hired and fired. There are two theories of public administration. One is the experts run everything. The administrative state, wilson, back further, that is the theory we have been running on pretty much ever since especially franklin roosevelt. The other is cabinet or political government. That is what jimmy carters Civil Service reform act was all about, to give political appointees power over the bureaucracy, bureaucracy has a lot of expertise out there, cant let them roll off and do whatever they want, you have got to have someone to implement the ideas of the new administration and how it is supposed to ask whether it is liberal or conservative and it is important, the one who booked Civil Service reform act, literally they were working it out and got voted out and in my opinion and opinion of a lot of people, worked for four five years, even with congress putting appropriation, limiting one part or the other, put the political appointees in charge of the agencies, or the system that put in the Bush Administration for National Security personnel system, fine, solid plan. I dont think the problem is the plan. The problem is implementing with first a president who is determined to do that which means you have got to focus on making political appointees throughout the government and congress who give you a little room to operate for a while. Secrets for Civil Service reform. A couple to add. We have a background or the talks about federal Employee Compensation reforms and it has to do with the ability to hire and fire in the socalled performance Rating System we have whereby allegedly employees are given based on their performance but 99. 6 of all federal employees are performancebased increased every year so this is not truly a performancebased system. Some things you could do to give managers more ability to have the workforce as a knees, on the front end when people are hired instead of one year probationary period where you can hire and fire at will you could increase that to three years. Managers, if they want to give less than a successful rating they have to institute a performance plan. It is a long process that takes up a lot of time, they cant do their other jobs. In talking with federal managers their experiences, they dont do this which is why you have 99. 6 employees, they dont want to implement that plan. What you could do is only implement a Performance Improvement plan for an employee want to fire and on the firing side, it takes a year and a half to fire a federal employee because they can go through different appeals processes along the way, need to reduce that and give them one option, which appeal process they want to move. I fully endorse all of that, it is the central issue that impacts the ability, we cant recruit and retain a qualified workforce to do what we are asking the government to do. We recruit from a half dozen public administrations, we fly out to spf university of indiana and interview a dozen candidates and in the taxi run into the airport collaborate with my colleagues, make an offer too. Those kids have an offer for a job within 24 hours of being interviewed, the government cannot compete with that. Suggesting that is where we want to get to, we need to improve the hiring process. The appeals process for people to complain about adverse actions they are suffering from means managers are loath to even begin a discussion of Holding People accountable for their performance, it means in whatever facet of government operation you are talking about we dont have a workforce wellequipped to do what we are asking it to do so in my view the organization is important but there is no more important priorities and Civil Service reform. Just to not blow it all that pathway is super on this issue. Any other questions . I am an air force legislative fellow and you mentioned the catalyst to facilitate change in government structure. What do you see a crisis being to force the reorganization . External factor like another state actor, china, russia, north korea or something internal like budget crisis or the National Debt . I think it is the debt, the only thing. National security crisis could also but they are hard to predict. If you are talking about the organization the debt and deficit crisis will persist. A bridge will crumble, a plane will fall from the sky. A kid in a foster home will be mistreated. Human trafficking, one of those can bring a focus to duplication to the performance in a specific area, hard to predict. I am a reporter with government executive. You mentioned how you made a bunch of enemies out of the gate, riffs on christmas and that kind of thing. The importance of engaging with stakeholders and getting by with different groups of people. To what extent this administration goes through its reorganization process and what it can do internally, is it important to include the Civil Service itself . Is a critical federal employees who are possibly subject to these changes are themselves included in the deliberation and on board with some of the proposals that will be put forward . Yes, it is critical but there are two the problem with congress is critical if congress is not prepared to undertake the legislation, the real gap to reorganize the government. If you reorganize the government or try to reorganize the government civilian workforce is essential to your progress and ultimate success. Collaborating with the existing Civil Service can be accomplished directly or through the employees in my experience with the republican administration, federal employee unions for the most part are unwilling to even take a seat at the table and that is from my experience trying to engage them. We didnt engage in Civil Service reform but we tried diligently to engage them and they fought us to the nail throughout the process. Whether you are whether you are able to engage them through their unions or directly, engaging them is essential. I should probably just keep quiet. Unlikely. In theory you should. And interestingly, jimmy carters guy, real smart democrat, my professor at Syracuse University on the Democratic State central committee, new politics, he came up with the right idea to reform government, through the process, opening up to them. He got the thing through, got the approval through the executive branch the president signs off on. They take it to capitol hill. Day won, the unions come out and say we are not going to do this. We dont have a Civil Service system. We have two systems walking on top of each other in the federal government. We have Civil Service system to approvals through the merit system, we have a Union Collective bargaining system which goes to the federal Labor Relations board. When my predecessor put it he has the one with the civil servant. The second part, we have two systems working on top of each other. It doesnt make any sense. It is not answering your question but explaining the difficulty of doing it. John, robert and rachel. [inaudible conversations] sunday night on qa day, Washington Bureau chief carl cannon recounts events in us history that happened on specific dates throughout the year. On august 28th, the Martin Luther king story, i dont fight about the speech. I write about a kid who was railroaded for murder. An interesting role in him being exonerated. They went back and looked at it and the reason it checked out is theyll remember exactly where they were and he was with them. They were watching. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q and a. s teaching and cspans covered of the solar clip starts at 7 00 eastern with the washington journal live at Goddard Space Flight Center in greenbelt, maryland. A nasa Research Space scientist and jim garvin, chief scientist at goddard. At noon eastern we join nasa tv as they provide live views of the eclipse shadow in north america and at 4 00 eastern view her reaction to this Solar Eclipse over the continental united states. And starting at 7 00 eastern on cspan. Org. White house officials from the george w. Bush and Obama Administrations talk about recently enacted sanctions and us relations, from the center for the National Interests in washington. It run