Occasions for those in house we dd that courtesy to check that our various mobile devices have been silent or turned off as we to begin and those watching online youre welcome to send questions or comments at anytime. Simply emailing speaker at heritage. Org. Discussion this. Orning is doctor mullhausen frequently before ongress on the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs and hes been featured publications and frequently appears on National Television as well. His book do federal social programs work, reviews rigorous studies that almost unanimously find that they fail social problems they were designed to address. As adjunct es professor where he teaches evaluation and tatistical methods to graduate institutes. Please join me. David . Thank you. Good morning. Heritage e to the foundation. Online, of you welcome to, todays event. Federal ing the government and what needs to be done and how to do it. There are panelists of in of rience with the workings the federal government. Leading our discussion is rachael. She is our Research Fellow and conomics and budget and entitlements in the thomas Row Institute for economic policy. Leading Heritage Foundation blueprint for project the n subject for todays event. Efore joining she was a senior economists on the staff of the joint Economic Committee for congress. Donald divine. Donald is senior scholar at the for american studies in. C. He served as president reagans Civil Service director during the president s first term in office. Time the Washington Post labeled him reagans swift ward of the Civil Service. Bureaucratic accesses and reducing billions in spending. Management of the burocracy a guide to reforming and control was published and purchased online. This is my personal copy and i reading it. Ard to last is robert shae. In grant a principal 30 nton Public Sector with years of Public Service leads and is unication team member of the performance ransportation team and was appointed to statutory evidence based policy making committee. Dear my near and heart. Reviously he was associate director at the office of management and budget. Led president bushs Performance Improvement ministered the ad Program Assessment grading tool. Served asning, Robert Council to the Senate Committee on government affairs. Ill now turn this event to you. Thank you and its my pleasure to be here today. Ive had the opportunity to work on the production of all of our reform. T for for reorganization we begin with balance and for lueprint for reform and new sticks and now administration and this one. Blueprint for balance was first spelled out over 100 ifferent recommendations that lead to ten trillion less in federal spending and balancing 7 years. T within so what weve gotten here is a recommendations that we include in our blueprint of theance are also part blueprint reorganization but we pecified the pathways that you can achieve these reforms and noted whether or not the or ident that is authority what needs to be done whether congress or change in Authority Needs to be taking place to implement the recommendations here. Presented with 4 trillion in annual spending. Debt and n in public 22 different cabinet level agencies of federal government in need of a government wide reorganization. Knows few bounds both fiscally and administratively. We need the government to focus on core constitutional responsibilities. Need a government that is looking out for the interest instead of select groups and we need one thats ble to provide Efferent Services with accountability metric as attached those. Blueprint for reorganization the first one analysis of on federal Department Agencies we recommendations and in a moment ill give you examples of those but first i that not clarify everything thats in here is omething that the executive department has the authority to take on and do immediately. Probably most , of them require buy in from congress. Edition is pathways to reform and cross cutting specifies what executives can do and what changes can be to to clear the pathway reform and what things well need and we look at cross cutting issues. Document looks at the agencies but in the second one e have reforms such as modernizing the federal government. Changes to personnel policy that span across all agents. Roughly 110 recommendations here ill start with some of those for departments hole and functions. Such as the federal Housing Administration and the Financing Agency as well as the Consumer Financial protection bureau. We eliminate and propose to core ate theres often functions we hold there and transfer them to a more department or agency. There are also some functions nonfederal that should instead be transferred to such and local government as Fire Protection and low cost housing. State and local governments have better knowledge of their own local communities and theyre appropriately designed to service the needs. And s also certain offices departments that we recommend v. A. Nating for example the has 42 different offices. Specifically 4 related to health and these hings just create a bureaucratic nightmare for veterans seeking integrated ervice and one shop to go to all needs as apposed to 42 different offices theyre going having to nsible for take documentations from one to nother and coordinating services. Without shutting down entire recommend also closing physical offices such as the department of education 24 regional and field offices is. When these are first established there was a need for them and we have internet and technology that we have today but department of education and departments have these services. These offices throughout the long ernesto e no day. We also recommend functions agencies for example the four ment of justice has separate Criminal Divisions and located across these but also have their criminal group all could those into the Criminal Division have them not have to scattered across. In certain cases programs lack efficient is because theyre housed in the wrong agency so we recommend things like moving. Food and Nutrition Services that as well fair program from of Agriculture Program into the health and uman Services Department with other welfare or student aid programs taking them out of the department of education and in treasury as treasury that is information they have to determine who is ones le and theyre the distributing funds. Cuts e dont recommend overall to defense spending theres room to optimize and put the highest priorities first within the defense department. Suggest le we access ing infrastructure and we dont of defense partment should be spending money on Prostate Cancer research or on obama era initiatives for energy and environment. Now too many of the federal overnments Program Benefit a select few instead of looking broadly across allamericans so we recommend eliminating the programs such as the corporation for national and services. Corporation for public broadcasting and the national and ation of the Arts Humanities and export and import Minority Business Development agency and loan ment of energy programs. About ncy is not just eliminating moving programs around but making sure the its job is doing through oversight and accountability. Thats why we recommend making subject to meaningful review and not giving exemptions such as the irs and making them all subject reviews. Ame we also recommend within the office of management and budget. And then we do have places where theres plenty of accountability as the v. A. We identified 31 different ccountability and Program Management programs there and yet theyre scattered again so those programs into one place within the v. A. You better serve veterans as taxpayers and then inally because personnel has such a tremendous impact and the accountability of the federal we recommend a broad package to reward productivity essentially let federal managers do their jobs. Bring federal sector nt in line with so the government is in a better obtain to retract and the bright nest the workforce. Now don . Alright. My name is donald divine. Serious part of the program. I am the comic side. Want to say is, i of much recommend both these books. The cross cutting one is just super. Best things i ever looked at about government management. Im an academic by background. But in some crazy way after the 980 election, president Ronald Reagan called me up and said don said, a job for you and i what is it . And he said head of the office of Personnel Management . O pm. My son used to call it opium and funny job for conservative n like me and he said i had a good sense of humor. Do . You want me to i want you to cut back 100,000 and i want mployees you to reduce their bloated them work d make harder. Can make a like i lot of friends in that job. ll just remember what harry truman said about you want a tough job in washington, you washington when youre doing a tough job, buy a dog. I bought two of them to be on the safe side and the crazy do it. S we did nobody thought this was possible cut and reform government. Produce 100,000 nondefense employees and i try conservative no ones know that but we did . Benefits even my admitted i saved 6 billion dollars in todays dollars. 60 billion and we did make them work harder too. E went through performance appraisal and merit pay. It was a miracle. It happened. Introduction by called me reagans terrible Civil Servant that was things they cest said about me. , what lled me thes are a call getting rid of people and we were not that clever did the first ones and at christmas, not a good terms of this in Public Relations. New york times did a big rass n me, calling me a rassputen rassputen. The grin. In the pinstripe suit way we did that and nobody you know, introduced myself. Professor but nobody cared about that. Did knowknow is that i Ronald Reagan and what a guy he. S or was alright. Now what did i learn in this . The book that was mentioned. Nothing has changed very much. Hats a book i wrote almost 40 room ago and a by in this right now went to my publisher nd said this is still pretty much all true. Why dont you republish it . For that n blackwell and most of the reforms we did were gone. Most of them were gone in the republicanstration a administration i might say and government today simply doesnt dont take it from a ibertarian conservative and lets take it from paul light. Professor of Public Relations on serious reviews. Ome of them with congressional backgrounding. Government doesnt work anymore. Itsnt faithfully execute laws. Thats a basic fact. It cant. Average i think its he is a little high on this that there are 60 levels between the secretary and doing he policy something on the street. Impossible to run such an organization unless you have the great ement and social scientists and another ill recommend calls have cracy is they dont one in government. Thats the problem. You n the private sector can have 60 levels. Heres almost no private company that does that anymore and they did it back in the 30s we still run our government like in the 1930s but you can levels and you look and say is that division not . Ng a profit or it is . You keep it. Of it not, you get rid and the government you go down the 60 levels and they are means you spend more money on it. Thing in the Public Sector is different than the sector. How did we get this thing . Revolutionary st in the history is Woodrow Wilson we have to do is bring all power together in the and we can run everything with the experts in the whole country. Went to, he wrote a ph. D. And i went had to read it when i to graduate school saying how to administration he went over to prussia and said hey prussia works. High . It works because all power and red in the government when the chancellor says we do it, we do it and he came back wrote a book saying problem with American Government power rather ides than bringing power together to do good. Prussia it has a requirement system and got an system. Nal got a welfare state. We have none of that in america. Especially at the National Level right. T all mes back and convinces the intellectuals that the problem is dividing it an and bringing it together. The american Political Science changes on and he intellectual opinion in america from saying that divided power good. Is or g it together divideing is bad and bringing it together is good. Unfortunately every president since then except my reagan bought into that theory. Thats why paul is right. We cant run it. Ltimately we can only decentralize it back the way the founders created it. As Ronald Reagan said, the success of america is federalism. Contributions to the. Istory of freedom ive got a solution too. Relying on all these office ions having anagement and budget is having a big thing to go and reorganize have a simple solution. The first book i mentioned is pathways cutting thing i guess its called. He other one, divides up the agencies and the departments this and each one do that and that and i got a simple answer. Dont go with the commission. Just send these out to the agencies. Alright . Them to do it. Or if you dont like it have a it. D reason why you dont do these are serious ecommendations that david and rachael and robert have given a lot of thought. Put this through the robertprocess of omb and is a big exception here. Them. E he fought if you just turn it over to the careerists there this will go on year, two years or come halfwayhe end with some done thing. And itll never happen. Is go back anddo reinvent cabinet government. What we need. Turn it over to the agents. Thats their job. You guys did it and thats the solution and thats what i have say. Yeah . I wonder if i can ed it the and just alks associate myself with a couple of but lets in my panelist but wont. Im going to associate myself it. H most of talk to me late fair you want me to pick out what i disagree with much. E its not i mean its certainly true that he mission of the government have proliferated to the extent the government couldnt possibly it to do all we ask and we ask it to do with a lot restrictions on management of contracts y, systems that make it almost impossible get a job done so if you find someone whos getting something government, that is a true talent. Its also true thats a your boss said, the only thing we close to eternally life on earth is a Government Program so place its very or eliminaterepeal a program. Rachaels work document documents these evaluated i wouldnt though say the logical conclusion is to be inate everything to effective it is true that when subjected to rigorous evaluation methodologies we find programs not having their intended impact so theres an enormous room for improvement. Until the 80s had the authority to reorganize i think its and reempower the administrations with that authority. It use its so hard to do otherwise. Leastow, the congress, at from the oversight committees are pretty supportive of this authority where you trip p is in the authorizing committees and the appropriations committees because those are the ones that jurisdiction ower, money assigned with the specific agencies are programs jurisdiction. What tends to drive reorganizations of government are crisis and of course the that is nt example of the establishment of the department of Homeland Security. Theres been along discussion if strengthened if we consolidated the programs securing the r homeland . After t was fought until 9 11. Youll recall immediately after 9 11 we established the ransportation Security Administration because we thought contract workers could airplanes. Ely secure commercial travel, but fairly there after we created department of Homeland Security entities ll of these together and while its true attacks on sts american soil have been rare then, im not sure we can measurably say our security has strengthened because of the chaos of the department of security. Its been an enormous struggle expensive to combine these into a cohesive well honed organization. The big issue of course in president the authority to do Something Like that is trust. Would need to trust an xecutive to use that authority responsibly and weve nod had that kind of trusting a long time. In congress in the 90s passed a aw called the government performance and results and. That was my first job to ever implementation of that act oon after it was enacted because no one really gave a damn about it so i was low man poll and got that responsibility but theres folks intuitive we need to drive Government Agency programs to think more about outcomes. Too easy to come to work with just yourself producing inputs or outputs. Orking hard and doing activity presumably towards an outcome but if you dont measure if having an impact on that never e outcome youll know whether or not what youre doing is having a positive esult so government has struggled before then but certainly since then identifying theyre tryingat accomplish and finding a way to measure that over time. Lot of the evaluations are getting insight into whether or not were accomplishing important whether our programs are having intended impact but evaluations show programs evaluated with those effected the o be vast majority of programs and nvestment by the federal agencies are not subject to that all. Of evaluation at during the Bush Administration because the focus on outcomes really become institutionalized we devised a called the Program Assessment rating tool. Imple set of 25 questions that asked of each program, is its urpose clear and is it well designed to achieve its objective . Does it have short and longterm outcome oriented goals with aggressive improvement targets . And well managed ultimately is the program achieving its results . Because we ed it wanted to have some basis with funding, and cate we insisted through it that agencies and programs begin in a process of subjecting their programs to these evaluations it beginning of what we now call the evidence agenda that lit led to evidence olicy making im involved with today. I have to admit, we didnt make integrating ress this data into the budget decisionmaking process. Policy makers arent, dont have for listening to evidence when figuring out how decisions. Theres a lot of those funding decisions that are highly room for so theres improvement i would say as a statement in r making more and more of our budget decisions and other decisions based on the evidence. Far as reorganizations were concerned we were able to say Government Programs these are ones that share a similar mission these are the or conflicting measures area we mance, and one decided to deep dive in is Community Economic development. Dozens of programs hroughout the government that are intended to address to economic condition of the poorest communities across government. To take all of those rograms and consolidate them into the Economic Development administration at the department of commerce because many of the programs were found to be ineffective, it was hard to get rating with this tool. But because the community and program theelopment biggest of those programs of programs was found to be economic t to the Development Administration that we felt was more results oriented and while the overall level of these programs combined was lower, we thought moving them to a ore outcome oriented proven effected entity would mean you can get more with less. Well there were some people that disagreed with the president s proposal. Omalley, is rtin esult of this called the president , the osama bin ladin of american cities. Was a highlight, not a highlight of my political career. But it just goes to show you the interests need to be considered when youre developing and enact these kinds of proposals so if i step back i lessons that i take from my combined experience kinds of these initiatives are leadership. One of the advantageous i had was a boss who was the president s best friend and that clear out a lot of bureaucratic under brush if to advance these kinds of initiative but eadership that gets it that is willing to invest the time and nergy and intellectual and Political Capital to get these initiatives done is absolutely lower levelsuse at youll not have the juice to get it done. Internally was rough because agencies are not givingenthusiastic about up programs funding and power to can get it done and its easier than the executive branch than outside dont plow ground on the hill and among other stakeholders, it will be very to get these things enacted especially in absence of 9 11. Is like collaboration was a broad set of executive and d legislative branch and xternally absolutely critical, as difficult as that seems. Perseverance. There are many bites of the and if youre unwilling to keep going at it youre not likely to make progress overtime, because theres so many things its so much easier to kill things in washington it is to get things perseverance is essential as well. Then follow through. Just because you passed security of homeland doesnt make the homeland more secure. Consolidate you Community Economic developments thats really the beginning of the journey. To make sure that these onsolidated entities assume a singular culture and focused mission and that your measuring to make sure ime what youve tried to do being ore efficient and effective is actually working. Theres an incredible road map annual inventory of overlap and duplication across government. Theyll tell you that consolation of programs is not always the right answer. Theres a lot of room for improved collaboration across with programs and agencies with Similar Missions will say true but i onsolation can give you an enormous degree of efferent is and improve the focus on mission consolations. Reiterate im to delighted to be here and thank heritage for hosting. Subject on a wet august afternoon. For attending. L this time well move toward a period and answer anything said by previous panelist . A nickname. Thats one thing i learned by panel. On this were going to do is were going to take questions and if podium,d step up to the and pose your question there, it would be greatly appreciated. Say your name and organization youre affiliated with, wed greatly appreciate it to. Eagle, the founder for and erating innovation former staffer in the nixon administration. Orked with reagan at the commerce department. Heyed the opportunity after and l to work for roy ash it it was last major attempt by do a inistration to government wide type of reorganization. Proposals well some of the proposals that went noa, omb e e. P. A. And proposals to consolidate into four major functional groupings. Have two questions. For the cabinet reorganization were not successful primarily because of way congress is organized. The structural nature of committees and subcommittees and special et cetera they make it difficult to move any of the eorganizations through the congress, so one question i have is whether there really ought to a commission on reorganizing congress because even agencies like the department of homeland ecurity report to 15 different subcommittees and et cetera. Its all still fragmented of the wonderful name thats over it. Econdly, im wondering whether Something Like a brak commission to was set up in order close down defense facilities, in closing ccessful down i think 40 or 45 of these be an y facilities might approach. I understand the idea that Reorganization Authority for the makes at, which i think sure sense, but im not that would be the best pathway forward and it seems to me we example and successful example of the defense Realignment Commission has to the Congress Take an up and down vote on the certain number of days or had to disapprove with a certain number of days on the closed so my question is, what about reorganizing congress . Secondly what about strategies an actually reimplementing organization . Thank you i think both those are great ideas. Less rmer will be more, popular than the latter. Ecause i think that congress would be giving authority on reorganizations to someone else but its a major to collaborations programs. N of like brilliant. Idea is because i actually wrote a bill that did just that. Modeled on the brak commission you would submit a was considered under expedited procedures by the congress. Only way to s the get around the jurisdictional issues. Oversight he committee. This it will be nonetheless difficult to get around many of these authorizing committees will be reluctant to relinquish that kind of decisionmaking to a broad oversighttype committee. We will see. In february with the president s budget, you will have some of the most ambitious reorganizations proposed in a long time submitted to congress. I do not think congress is prepared for those. There is a lot on its plate. So we will see just what kind of Progress Congress can make on this kinds of things about that kind of authority, but i agree with you, in the absence of it, i am not optimistic we will get a lot of progress. Mr. Devine let me mention on Congress Something robert was involved in. The best thing that happened in my area of Personnel Management in living memory, at least since jimmy carters civilservice reform act, which i was so lucky to walk into and get all the benefits of, was this what do you call it the National Security mr. Shea personnel system. Mr. Devine personnel system. By a miracle, he and his guys got this thing through congress. It was in the wake of 9 11, and it was to have a real personnel system again of evaluating peoples performance and giving them pay based on their performance. And the reaction to 9 11, what they did at the department of defense and Homeland Security that is half the government, the civilian government, really. Oh, boy, had this great thing gone through congress, well, a couple years later under the obama administration, it is out. The unions did not like it and voted out by congress. It is so rare to get congress to do something so brave like that, and then the same thing happened with carters civilservice reform act. Nibbling away at it right from the day it took effect. I was there, and maybe it was my fault. We do not get along too well with congress. But you mentioned ash, and i get to tell one of the greatest stories about government management. I always tell it. He was giving a speech, and he was chairman of intel or the president of intel before he went into the government whatever it was. And he goes in and he is talking to these chief executives in the private sector, and he says, you have to understand the government is so different from your private sector. He said, what would you do if your board of directors had on it your union leader, your opposing business that you are competitive with, a bureaucracy you could not fire, and he goes through seven or eight things, and says, would you run your business different if you had that . Of course, in the government we have, and during most of his time, congress, which is your board of directors, was controlled by the other party. But even when it is your own party, as we find out, it is very difficult to get things done. He made a wonderful analogy. He said, going from the private sector into government is not like going from the minor leaks to the major leagues in baseball. It is like going from going from softball to ice hockey. It is a whole different kind of ballgame, and it has got to operate by different principles. And jimmy carter, god bless him, actually the guy was my former professor who came into rewrite the Civil Service reform, 1976, but all the right performance to give the government political appointees, the ability to run the government. If you want to know how to go at it, you can go back, read my book. With jimmy carter, a guy named scotty campbell, alan campbell, my professor. He devised a whole way to do it. The problem is not getting ideas or even getting the past getting them passed. The problem is once you put them in, it is so hard to get them done, and most of the problem is congress. Dr. Muhlhausen next, please. Hi. Nine years ago i wrote a backgrounder for the Heritage Foundation about federal funds to states. I think the number is 2136. But i am going to throw a bit of a wrench into this. I think you are going about this the wrong way. And hi let me take a special program. The federal government takes money out of my paycheck. The of treasury sends it to the department of agriculture. The department of agriculture sends it to the food and Nutrition Service. The food and Nutrition Service sends it back to wyoming, where i live, which then sends the money down to Laramie County School District one, which sends it to the East High School so my daughter can have milk with her lunch. I could just take money out of my pocket and give to her in the morning, but we have to go through this loop chocolate milk. Probably, or or coke or something. [laughter] i know, i know. I want to thank Donald Devine for your service to the reagan administration. 60 billion in todays money is a lot, but the federal desk is about 10 times as big. And if we could rehash the purpose of the federal government and rein it in to only deal with federal matters and not with state matters, i think you would see some major opportunities for reorganizing the federal government. Thank you. Dr. Muhlhausen i think this question is very good in that, if you look at the first blueprint for reorganization report, theres a consistent that calling for a downsizing or eliminating of agencies do not perform a core constitutional response ability of the federal government. While the idea has permeated throughout, but the idea one of the things we need to do when we are rethinking the executive branch and how should it be structured was what activities should the federal government do that it is uniquely situated to do. I think that today the federal government has its hands in every state and local matter, and it is too encumbersome for the federal government to administer these programs effectively. Mr. Shea i would just say that during my tenure, i do not recall a single point at which that question was asked. It was was how much more or less a program would get, maybe should it persist, but not because of federalism issues. Although i dont expect a dramatic change in the missions of the agencies, i do think just a subtle introduction of that question in the policymaking process could make major positive improvements in certain areas. Im not sure what those are, but if you simply asked, is this an appropriate role for the federal government, that was one of the questions that was in the draft of the Program Assessment rating tool that we designed, but we thought it was too political, so it was removed. Asking that question more and more, i think, would be really useful. Mr. Devine i will add one thing. I do not make my point very clearly. My whole point was federalism is the answer. We are doing too much. I will tell you some thing that is going to happen, as certain as we are sitting in this room. And why the real smart progressives, biggovernment people are so worried. The entitlements are going to eat up Discretionary Spending of the federal government, period. And clearly you cannot even raise the issue or you are hating old people or whatever. And it is happening already. Entitlements are growing more and more, and we are going to have to cut these things. The opportunity is when this is happening, and it is happening, and it is going to accelerate dramatically until i am too old to be around, but most of this audience looks like they can. You are going to have to make these kinds of decisions. There is simply not enough money possible to be raised by the federal government to pay for the entitlements and to do this. It is a marvelous opportunity to change the nature of government, and it is going to happen whether Congress Wants it, whether people want it, or anything. It is just straight table, looking at actuarial data. That is what is going to happen. Dr. Muhlhausen next, please. Hi. I work for a legislative exchange council. Im totally on board for the federalism sort of ultimate solution. I want to bring it back to federal Civil Service reforms that affect all the states having to deal with federal agencies. Weve had more than a century of Civil Service protections. It is nearly impossible, as mr. Devine pointed out, to fire career Civil Servants. 2. 8 Million People with definite political leanings, who make decisions without democratic accountability. And the political officials who were elected by the people have to land like it is omaha beach on to entrenched bureaucracies that have their own opinions about how to make government decisions. I recognize what you are saying about the fact that it has gone back and forth, and any advance has been rolled back by congress. I was wondering, especially mr. Devine, if you had recommendations. You spoke of the carter reforms. When you go back to that . What would be your recommendations by which Civil Servants are hired and fired . Mr. Devine there are two theories of Public Administration. One is this experts run everything theory. The Administrative State goes back to wilson and to max weber, and back further, and that is the theory we have been running it on pretty much since, especially, franklin roosevelt. The other is cabinet or political government. And that is what jimmy carters Civil Service reform act was all about. Lets give political appointees power over the bureaucracy, and bureaucracy has a lot of good expertise out there, but you cannot just let them run around and do whatever they want. You have to have somebody there to implement the ideas of the new administration and how it is supposed to act, whether liberal or conservative. And it is important. There was one who put this Civil Service reform act. Literally, they were working it out, all the bugs, and they got it voted out, and i am walking in and getting a new Civil Servant and in my opinion a lot of people who work for four or five years, even with congress putting in appropriation riders, eliminating what part or the other of it. So there is a model to use. You put the political appointees in charge of the agencies. Or the system that is put in the Bush Administration for National Security personnel system. A fine, solid plan. I do not think the problem is the plans. Implementing, both with a president , which means you have to focus on making political appointees throughout the government, and a congress who will give you a little room to operate for a while. Those are the two secrets of Civil Service reform, in my opinion. Ms. Greszler we have a backgrounder that talks about comprehensive federal Employee Compensation reforms, and a lot of it has to do with the ability to hire and fire properly. In the socalled performance Rating System we have, whereby allegedly employees are given raises based on their performance, that you have 99. 6 of federal employees receiving their increase every year, so this is not truly a performancebased system. The thing you can do to give managers more ability to manage the workforce they need, on the front end, when people are hired, instead of having a oneyear probationary period, where you can hire and fire at will, you could could change that to three years. And managers, if they want to give an employee any less than a fully successful rating, they have to institute a Performance Improvement program. It is a long process. It takes a lot of their time. They cant do their other jobs. In talking with federal managers, their experience is they just dont do this. That is why you have 99. 6 of employees rated fully successful, because they do not want to implement that plan. What you can do is only implement a performanceimprovement plan for an employee you want to fire. On the firing side, it takes a year and a half on average to fire a federal employee. This is because they can go through three different venues of appeals process along the way. You need to reduce that and give them one option. They can take which appeal process they want to go through with. Mr. Shea i fully endorse all of that. But i want to emphasize the severity of this issue. It is the central issue that impacts the ability of the federal government to congress its mission. We cannot recruit and retain a qualified workforce to do what were asking the government to do. We recruit from a half a dozen Public Administration schools across the country. In a few weeks, i will fly out to indiana. I will interview a dozen candidates. In the taxi ride to the airport, i will collaborate with my colleagues on the halfdozen so we will make an offer to. Those kids will have a job within 24 hours of being interviewed by my firm. The government cannot compete with that. Im not suggesting that is where we want to get to, but we need to improve the hiring process. The appeals process, too many avenues for people to complain about adverse actions that they are suffering from. It means that managers are loath to even begin a discussion of holding employs a couple. Accountable. It means in whatever facet of government operation youre talking about, we do not have a workforce well equipped to do what we are asking it to do. In my view, reorganization is important, but there is no more important priority than Civil Service reform. Mr. Devine i would say just to rachels, not to blow her horn, her chapter in the book is super fantastic. Dr. Muhlhausen any other questions . Hi, i am an air force legislative fellow. A crisismentioned that can be a catalyst to facilitate change in government structure. What do you see the crisis being in the future in that reorganization . Is it an extra factor, like china, north korea, or something internal like the budget crisis or the National Debt . Mr. Devine i gave my opinion. I think it is the debt. I think it is the only thing that will force of course, a National Security crisis could also, but pretty hard to protect ms. Greszler if youre talking about the reorganization, the deficit crisis will force this. Mr. Shea but a bridge will crumble, a plane will fall from the sky, a kid in a foster home will be mistreated, Human Trafficking will skyrocket. Any of those can bring a focus to overlap or duplication that is impeding performance. It is hard to predict where that will fall. Dr. Muhlhausen next . I am a reporter with government executive. Donald, you mentioned how you made a bunch of enemies out of the gate, the rifts on christmas, that kind of thing, and we talked about the importance of engaging the stakeholders and getting buyin from different groups. To what extent, as this administration goes through its reorganization process and the proposal that it will put forth to congress and what it can do internally, is it important to include the Civil Service itself in that buyin . Is it critical that the federal employees who are possibly going to be subject to these changes are themselves included in the deliberations and onboard with some of the proposals that are going to be put forward . Mr. Shea yes, it is critical, the collaboration with congress is critical. If congress is not prepared to undertake the legislation required to make these reorganizations, they will not happen. That is a real cap in the initiative to reorganizing government. If you reorganize the government, or if you try to reorganize the government, the civilian workforce is essential to your progress and ultimate success. Collaborating with the existing Civil Service can be accomplished directly or through the employee unions. In my experience, with a republican administration, the 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. They will tell you that we did not engage in Civil Service reform, but we tried pretty diligently to engage them, and they were unwilling to do that and fought us tooth and nail throughout the entire process. So, whether you are able to engage them through their unions or directly, engaging them is essential. Does that answer your question . Mr. Devine i should probably just keep quiet. Mr. Shea unlikely. Mr. Devine yeah, in theory, you should, all right . And interestingly, jimmy carters guy, real smart democrat he was my professor at syracuse university. He was on the Democratic State central committee, new politics. He came up with the right ideas to reform government. He met with the unions through the process, but he did not really open everything up to them. He got the things through, got the approval for all the executive branch. The president signs off on it. They take it up to capitol hill. They won. The unions come out and say, hey, we are not going to do this. We dont have a Civil Service system. We have two systems working on top of each other in the federal government. Weve got a Civil Service system that works up to approvals through the merit system protection board, and we have a Union Collective bargaining system that goes up to the federal Labor Relations board. When my predecessor put it, he just has the one with the Civil Servants. The unions is the whole second part. That is why there are so many delays, because we have two systems working on top of each other. This does not make any sense. Thats not answering your question, but it explains the difficulty in doing it. Dr. Muhlhausen i would like to thank everybodys time. Id like to thank don, robert, and rachel for attending, and thank you all for attending as well. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] yo tonight, at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, an indepth look at the opioid academic, including Ohio Attorney general mike dewine, suing several Drug Companies for marketing opioid painkillers. What is difficult about this problem is how pervasive it is. It is in our smallest communities, in our cities, in our most affluent suburbs. 00uncer friday at eight p. M. , an interview with secretary of health and Human Services tom price. Myhink my prescient passion for trying to help people and my passion for a healthy society, this feels like the culmination of a life best work. A lifes work. It overlapped with the 20 plus years i had in the. Epresentative light to have the opportunity at this pivotal time in our nations history in the Health System that we have, to lead this Remarkable Department is as fulfilling as anything. P. M. Ncer followed at 8 30 buy a conversation with Supreme Court Justice Elena kagan. You said at the beginning, we are not take your democracy, we are a constitutional democracy. That means the judiciary has an Important Role to play in policing the boundaries of the other branches, and i can make that can make the judiciary and on proper set of people, when they say to a governor or president or congress, no, you cant do that, because it is just not within your constitutional powers. Announcer watch on cspan or cspan. Org, and listen using the free cspan radio app. Cspans washington journal, life everyday, with news and policy issues that impact you. Noel strobing, discusses the trump administrations review of more than 200 National Monument designations made by the obama administration. Then, rancher mike noel talks about federal Land Ownership and secretary zinke es proposal to scare just to scale back the borders of the National Monument in southeast utah. Also, Ranking Member of the National Resources committee on public land policy and National Monument reservation preservation. , a discussion on the oil in gas industrys interests federal land. Watch live at 7 30 a. M. Eastern friday. Next, secretary of state Rex Tillerson and defense secretary next, a News Conference with the
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