Results-based career transition and revitalization at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Abstract

At a meeting we attended in the Rose Garden of the White House on September 7, 1993, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore stood in front of two forklifts holding huge stacks of government documents. "Mr. President," the vice president said, "if you want to know why government doesn't work, look behind you. The answer is at least partly on those forklifts." The forklifts, the vice president explained, bore copies of budget rules, procurement rules, and the personnel code. "The personnel code alone weighs in at over 1,000 pounds," Vice President Gore said. "That code and the regulations stacked up there no longer help government work: they hurt it; they hurt it badly. And we recommend getting rid of it." The vice president then presented to President Clinton the results of a 6-month review of the federal government known as the National Performance Review (NPR). The NPR report, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less (Gore, 1993), called for major changes throughout government.Conducted by a team of experienced federal employees under the direction of Vice President Gore, the NPR began on March 3,1993. The review focused primarily on how government should work, not on what it should do. Four key objectives guided the review: (a) cutting red tape; (b) putting customers first; (c) empowering employees to get results; and (d) cutting back to basics-producing better government for less. What the reviewersfound was a government that does not work as well as it should, but not because the government has bad workers. "The problem is not lazy or incompetent people," the report stated. "It is red tape and regulation so suffocating that they stifle everyone of creativity." Federal employees are "good people trapped in bad systems." The "bad systems" named in the report were procurement, financial management, information, and personnel. Simplifying and decentralizing personnel policy were the keys to cutting red tape. The report stated that "managers should be given the tools they need to manage effectively-the authority to hire, promote, reward, and fire." This meant reforming "virtually the entire personnel system: recruitment, hiring, classification, promotion, pay, and reward systems" 143

Lessons Learned

“…Although AT&T had considerable experience in downsizing and restructuring, Graddick and Cairo noted that one of the "lessons learned" from the trivestiture was the applicability of the broad organizational change models to the restructuring process. Grant and Kraft (1998) also supported this point in their study of the successful downsizing and revitalization of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. They articulated the need to see the exercise in terms of cultural change.…”

Hospital Restructuring and Nursing Staff Well Being: The Role of Personal Resources1

“…In this context, employees need to develop skills, abilities and competencies t o ensure their marketability. This activity is more pro-active than merely perceiving that one has job mobility options (Grant & Kraft, 1998;Jaffe & Scott, 1998).…”