In Pursuit of Public Excellence
KELMAN, STEVEN
Perspectives IN PURSUIT OF PUBLIC EXCELLENCE BY STEVEN KELMAN Some academics and officials who are concerned about government effectiveness and efficiency have embarked upon what might be called...
...As for victory in the war, it may not have been a supremely impressive achievement, since (to paraphrase Lord Keynes) our government merely had its counterparts abroad to fight...
...Stories in the mass mediaand extravaganzas like the Grace Commission—with its infamous claim that the budget deficit could virtually be eliminated by reducing waste—have generated images of official laziness, incapacity, even venality...
...The Harvard Business School attracts around 1,200 executives annually to its training programs...
...Robert Kiley, chairman of New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority...
...In the past, though, the efficient and effective provision of services often has not ranked high on the political system's list of priorities...
...Efforts are being made to develop analogous techniques for assessing the activities of bureaucrats, and to instill service-minded attitudes in those who deal with the man in the street...
...True, quite a few citizens do regard government agencies as extremely wasteful, but a stupendous amount of hyperbole is built into their notions...
...And it diminishes an organization's capacity to respond to changing circumstances...
...in the search for public excellence know that in the main it has not been achieved...
...Some of these bodies—notably the Pentagon when purchasing weapons or the Veterans Administration when building health-care facilities—want the best and will spend to get it...
...This brought professors together with such executives as Peter C. Goldmark Jr., the departing head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey...
...The first is teaching agencies and departments that generally focus either on quality or on costs to be concerned about both...
...Whatever the merits of its intentions, this "top-down" system is an obstacle to superior performance...
...A mid-1970s survey showed that 69 per cent of the respondents who had actually used the government service organizations they were being asked to rate— Social Security, job training programs, unemployment compensation bureaus, and so on—reported themselves "very satisfied" or "fairly well satisfied...
...Thecampaign for public excellence is an effort to develop a similar culture in the public sector...
...The reason for their predicament is that Federal agencies have been designed to minimize scandal and are thus awash in formal guidelines and checks intended to frustrate potential wrongdoers...
...A final cause for optimism is the fact that, contrary to a widespread misconception, public managers are by no means protected monopolists who can easily goof off because no pressures bear down upon them...
...This goal cannot be realized overnight, to be sure, but steps arealready being taken to bring it closer...
...That dour view ignores several promising factors...
...Indeed, they have an agenda as well as a vision...
...By a margin of 61 -28 per cent, the total sample agreed that "most government offices do a good job...
...In short, rigidity may help minimize the downside, but at the expense of stifling the upside...
...It reduces the incentive for innovation and initiative among section heads by forcing all new ideas through an excruciating process of review, and among those below them by promoting a " leave it to thechief" attitude...
...oj Regulating America, Regulating Sweden...
...and Roscoe Egger, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service...
...They work under enormous pressures from politicians and the mass media...
...A more helpful mentality on their part might not cost much, yet it could have a big effect on popular perceptions of the state and its functionaries...
...One survey revealed that on average Americans think that more than $53 of every $100 in the Social Security budget goes to support administrative costs...
...Forest Service (1898-1910...
...amongotherbooks...
...This was the theme of a report issued last year by the National Academy of Public Administration, aprofession-al honorary society...
...The Civil Service almost certainly performs better, in fact, than its reputation suggests...
...To many, the subject of the Kennedy School gathering may sound almost ox-vmoronic...
...Government supervisors are much more restricted by internal rules and regulations than their counterparts in business...
...David Lilienthal, first director of the Tennessee Valley Authority (1933-46...
...Two items on that agenda in particular reflect its thrust...
...At a recent Brookings Institution conference, for example, a group of scholars reported on research funded by the Sloan Foundation that is examining the careers of 20th-century government managers who made a difference...
...In addition, officials vulnerable to attack from the press and politicians feel a greater sense of security if they can at least say they have adhered to stipulated procedures...
...a long-time New-Leader contributor, is associate professor of public pohev at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and theauthor...
...At Brookings, for instance, Jameson Doig of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School noted that he had investigated the accomplishments of significant government managers partly in hopes of giving students of public policy who are thinking of public careers some role models, much as business school case studies do...
...and Gordon Chase, the force behind the innovative metha-done-maintenance and lead paint-control programs established in New York City during the 1960s...
...No less than their colleagues in the private sector, government managers must be made to realize that the attractiveness of a product or of a service depends on the relationship between its price and its quality...
...the real figure is $1.30...
...That appears to be changing, and the new mood is creating incentives for improved performance...
...Their ability to make decisions is severely limited not only in areas involving Civil Service codes but also in practically everything from computer procurement to organizing production...
...The men and women engaged Steven Kelman...
...James Webb, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1961-68...
...Western Europe might have rebuilt itself, they say, and the huge World War II expenditures, rather than the New Deal, may have ended the Depression...
...Many recent studies of business have stressed the importance of "corporate culture"—attitudes toward work, fellow-workers, customers, and so forth—in motivating employees to perform well...
...At the Harvard conference, Alan Campbell, head of the Office of Personnel Management under Jimmy Carter and now a vice president of ARA Services, noted that his company and public authorities deliver many similar kinds of assistance...
...None of this is meant to imply that government should be given a clean bill of health...
...Indeed, the drive for public excellence can increase the likelihood of ultimately achieving its objectives simply by pressing for them— vigorously...
...By contrast, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (whose dealings with customers have been examined by the Kennedy School's Robert Leone) seeks only to keep expenses down...
...Is the vision of excellence in public management a mere Utopian fantasy...
...Perspectives IN PURSUIT OF PUBLIC EXCELLENCE BY STEVEN KELMAN Some academics and officials who are concerned about government effectiveness and efficiency have embarked upon what might be called a "search for public excellence...
...The Kennedy School is currently preaching the gospel, too, in programs for some 450 senior and 250 midlevel government managers a year...
...There thesimilarity stops, for his present employer has worked out techniques to evaluate the quality of its services, and after long years of government experience he found this impressive...
...After all, it could be argued that without the discipline of the marketplace, government simply lacks the competitive pressures that force private firms to strive for distinction...
...A week after the Brookings event, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School held a conference on excellence in public management...
...Current impressions of ineptitude, however, are exaggerated too...
...But Harvard's Richard Neustadt, who believes the situation is reversible, points to the 1930s and '40s when Washington apparently vanquished a depression, won a world war, and got a devastated Europe back on its feet...
...The second item on the agenda for excellence in public management is establishing the need to set its practitioners free...
...It places too many decisions in the hands of high-ranking administrators with little first-hand knowledge of day-to-day operations...
...Skeptics counter that those accomplishments are somewhat exaggerated...
...The men discussed included Gifford Pinchot, head of the U.S...
...Furthermore, official salary structures make it difficult to attract the best people to top public jobs offering a fraction of the rewards available in industry and the professions...
Vol. 68 • October 1985 • No. 13
