ON POLITICAL BOOKS: Paradigm Glossed

...So he turned not to the small donors who funded his campaign but to several wealthy Florida executives...

...The difference is that in the U.S., market forces are not destroying state power...

...They zealously embrace public school choice, for instance, characterizing skeptics as unimaginative nostalgics...

...Occasionally a government agency can be transformed with a few savvy adjustments of the organizational structure...

...The Orlando Sentinel picked up on this“Study Attracts Big Bucks, Big Interests” ran the headline-giving the impression that Osborne’s work was somehow compromised...

...They oppose voucher programs for private schools, fearing vouchers would lead to further income and race segregation...

...surements, however...

...By doing less “rowing” (delivering services), government managers can do a better job of “steering” (setting policy goals, picking service providers, monitoring their performance...

...He even had the With this book, goals...

...For in- sector...

...And it replaced trucks requiring two-man crews with new vehicles a single worker can operate...

...This strikes me as a great idea...

...Such advice normally leads to “cost controls” that bind bureaucracies with even more red tape...

...Consider the savings and loan system...

...Better to develop rather than spend...

...Too often, they portray policies that fit their theory but that are also open to serious criticism-school choice, tenant ownership of public housing-as if they were proven solutions...

...Not all work, of course...

...Sunnyvale bureaucrats measure everything from “the percentage of participants in a recreation program who rank it as ‘good’ or above” to “the percentage of trees needing replacement that are replaced within two months...

...Osborne and Gaebler could argue that jobs in a reinvented government will be so interesting that ambitious people will once again flock to the public sector...

...Our council does not know how many people work for the city, nor do they really care,” says Sunnyvale City Manager Tom Lewcock: The essential thing the council does is set policy: what level of service, how many units are going to be produced, and at what unit cost...

...But the authors soft-pedal the pain this will cause, especially to the black middle class, which depends heavily on government jobs...

...But government agencies today are generally so overstaffed that some permanent layoffs will probably be inevitable...

...The need for more control over how government money was being spent led reformers to place more and more public tasks inside government bureaucracies...

...But the same assumption is behind compulsory education statutes, which only crank libertarians would abolish...

...David Osborne, Ted Gaebler...

...Government can also do a great serpoverty...

...Phoenix’s trash tale is one of hundreds of government success stories in this ambitious and long-awaited book.* Journalist David Osborne and former city manager Ted Gaebler argue that a revolutionary restructuring of the public sector is under way-an “American Perestroika...

...Bum steer The authors see privatization not as a way to reduce government influence, but to ‘‘leverage’’ it...

...Some of the book’s best examples, like General Creech’s restructuring of TAC, come from the Defense Department...

...Their prose style tends to be promotional when it should be measured, which leaves even a sympathetic reader wondering what land mines lie hidden on the path the authors are suggesting...

...These writers recognize that corporations suffer from bureaucratic rigidities just like governments, and that the structures of both are rooted in bygone eras...

...ers-the glass-enclosed ones?’ We checked, and they When J. Edgar Hoover pressured his FBI to catch cost $2,500...

...Fairfield bureaucrats now see money-saving vice by measuring the performance of the private opportunities they might not have noticed...

...The idea that parents might not insist on the best possible education for their children strikes most peopleespecially choice advocates-as patronizing...

...Ideally, politicians would base budgeting deciTo reverse this incentive, a few municipalities al- sions on performance, the better to create incentives low agencies to keep all or part of any money they to perform...

...Reinventing Governmenr...

...But the mere act of measuring results is save-money that can be used for anything from sometimes enough to change behavior...

...News and World Report and a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...

...They boost user fees on public more and better measures, a task made infinitely easgolf courses and marinas so that the golfers and yacht ier by the computer revolution...

...Then it started publishing error tion 13...

...What they have done is given us the freedom over the management of city affairs, in return for them getting true policy control...

...When General W.L...

...A decade later, Fairfield was running budget rates of individual supervisors...

...When teachers are forced to “So somebody said, ‘What about these bus stop cov- give standardized tests, they often “teach to the test...

...For “proof’ the authors rely heavily on the theory- and statistics-driven work of John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, who never studied the kind of public school choice programs Osborne and Gaebler have in mind...

...Rethinking shrinking The authors have distilled their ideas into 10 jargony principles that, taken together, amount to what they call a “New Paradigm” for the collective action of democracies...

...no additional cost...

...Their book is richer for it...

...No surprise, then, that in his speeches on the campaign trail Clinton occasionally slips in a line about the need to “reinvent government...

...With good performance measures and enough bidders (including, as in Phoenix, the government’s own agencies) to keep prices competitive, government managers can more safely farm work out...

...That said, Washington would do well to adopt some New Paradigm ideas, especially those aimed at making bureaucracies function better-as opposed to eliminating bureaucracies entirely...

...Only by seeking 1978, only 58 percent of its fighter jets were mission new sources of revenue, they say, can governments capable at any one time...

...But that’s a long way from saying, as the authors do, that “empowerment” programs are the best way to help the poor...

...We put one of those up, and it works more fugitives, agents began pursuing easy-to-locate fine...

...Osborne and Gaebler do try to address some of the criticisms that have been heaped on choice, but they fail to blunt the toughest ones...

...ON POLITICAL BOOKS: Paradigm Glossed Reinventing Government ’s on the right track, but its prescriptions aren’t always realistic by Paul Glastris In 1978, the city of Phoenix began contracting its garbage collection out in phases to private companies . This “privatization” policy-radical at the time but more and more common today-has been hailed by the right as an illustration of the superiority of the free market and as a way to shrink the one thing conservatives despise above all else: governmerit bureaucracies...

...Osborne and Gaebler are certainly right that governance need not always involve civil servants...

...So the department went on a self-improvement binge...

...Mistakes dropped ansurpluses while other California towns were crying other 25 percent...

...Over the next six years fulfill their new public mandate of increased services Creech boosted that readiness figure to 85 percent, at without increased taxes...

...To the now-common charge that the few tenant-managementJownership success stories have behind them women of rare energy and intelligence-women such as Kimi Gray in Washington, D.C., and Bertha Gilkey in St...

...It makes you wonder what might be accomplished by an administration that cared as much about the rest of government...

...Not coincidentally, DOD is the one arm of federal government that has received a steady flow of resources and support from the White House over the last 12 years...

...Like reformers everywhere, Osborne and Gaebler sometimes push their ideas past their natural limits...

...One of the virtues of public education is that it forces kids whose families don’t stress education, or who are simply not bright, into classes with the smart kids from academic-minded homes...

...Perhaps the pain can be minimized by letting attrition reduce employment and requiring contractors to hire ex-civil servants...

...I’m not sure which kind of kid learns more from the other, but the lessons stick with you the rest of your life...

...Try to apply these state and local reforms to the federal government and you run into a curious difficulty: Washington is already structured to a great extent on New Paradigm lines...

...Armed with thousands of such performance statistics, members of the Sunnyvale city council no longer debate operational details such as what kind of tree-trimming trucks to buy or how many park employees to hire...

...For men who put such stock in measuring performance, Osborne and Gaebler are quick to explain away troublesome aspects of programs that happen to fit their paradigm...

...This is a very different message from that of corporate dilettantes like Peter Grace who are forever admonishing government to act “more like a business...

...But some congressional meddling can be a good thing...

...That this definitively Osbornean system eventually collapsed is not necessarily an argument against governments that steer rather than row-having civil servants running S&Ls would hardly be an improvement...

...But the spread of computers and information technologies, say the authors, has given today’s better-educated line employees the ability to coordinate themselves...

...military deserters rather than dangerous, hard-to-find When governments let agencies keep at least part criminals...

...say, “Well, you didn’t even need what we gave you rather than “outcomes” (are additional cops lowering last time, so...

...The internal pressure to “use it or the crime rates...

...The authors also build on the work of the handful of political scientists who have studied bureaucratic reform efforts, especially that of James Q. Wilson, whose 1989 book Bureaucracy laid out key elements of the paradigm...

...Louisthe authors respond: “Why not create more opportunities in poor communities and see how many leaders emerge...

...AddisonWesley, $22.95...

...Like the Soviet version, they say, this one is being driven largely by politicians and bureaucrats who, under extreme fiscal pressure, are applying market forces to monopolistic government enterprises...

...Yet it’s entirely possible that public school choice will decrease diversity if, as would be natural, parents put their children in schools with other children of their own class and race...

...As a consultant to Lawton Chiles, Osborne agreed to be paid by specially raised private funds...

...But that’s no excuse to give up on perforof what they save, bureaucrats can learn to “earn mance measures, say the authors...

...They use taxes, regulations, and grants to “steer” third parties -individuals, state and local governments, private and nonprofit organizations...

...The same can be said for another of their favorite reforms: tenant ownership of public housing...

...By making schools “consumer-driven,” the authors assert, choice produces better-educated students...

...Airlines became far more punctual after stance, an architect gave the Fairfeld police depart- Washington started publishing comparative on-time ment a $13,000 plan to build a rain cover over the records...

...But a funny thing happened in Phoenix: The Hght trackJ but itspresc@ions bureaucracy didn’t wither away, it got stronger...

...You have to alter the incentives within government that make bureaucrats future place in the kinds of mischief that bureaucrabehave as they do...

...The authors worry about diversity, too...

...My favorite example is Visalia, California, which bought an about-to-be-moved minor names of lead mechanics stenciled next to those of the pilots on the nose of each aircraft...

...Organizations run under the command model, they say, are too inflexible to meet the fast-changing demands of contemporary voters and customers, who tolerate neither drab, sluggish cars nor long waits in line at the department of motor Suffering the same rigidities, government and business must transform themselves in essentially the same way: by flattening hierarchies, decentralizing decisionmaking, pursuing productivity-enhancing technologies, and stressing quality and customer satisfaction...

...Well, fine, let’s try...

...Outcome or performance measures lose it” leads to one of the Monthly’s favorite bureau- help bureaucrats and elected officials get a handle on cratic perversions: The End-of-the-Year Spending their goals and effectiveness...

...rewriting government accounting standards to force lawmakers to be more “anticipatory...

...The few programs that come closest to their ideal are either too new to judge or were put in place by the kind of autocratic administrators from whom, under choice, schools are supposed to be set free...

...But they argue that better technologies and techniques for monitoring contract performance are now available...

...Soon the department’s costs were lower than the private sector’s...

...While there are some bright, vital individuals in every agency, there are plenty who have no wish to be creative except when decorating their offices...

...But on balance, Osborne and Gaebler have tried diligently to subject their ideas to the test of reality...

...Such tight hierarchical control made some sense 50 or 75 years ago, when only upper-level managers had access to enough information to coordinate an agency’s activities...

...pump where department vehicles are gassed up...

...Steering also means creatively restructuring the marketplace, using everything from tax codes and regulations to public-private partnerships...

...It’s worth pointing out that the tenants most capable of leading such efforts are also the most likely to leave public housing for greener pastures...

...The biggest influence on their thinking, however, comes not from government but from management gurus like Thomas Peters, Edward Deming, and especially Peter Drucker...

...Osborne has been a consultant to Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida and to Republican Governor William Weld of Massachusetts...

...Unfortunately, the governor ran into trouble getting the money together...

...They are enhancing it...

...Paul Glastris is the Midwest correspondent for U.S...

...In fact, there is no solid proof that choice programs improve student achievement...

...So too are human services (drug rehab, low-income housing construction) at which the nonprofit sector excels...

...It makes no sense to privatize, say, diplomacy-as Oliver North demonstrated...

...Choice won’t create incentives for schools to improve their academics, for instance, if parents choose schools because they are conveniently located or have fine sports programs...

...They have assured themselves a future place in the Wonk Hall of Fame...

...keep a grip on bureaucratic action out ways of doing their jobs more efficiently because the traditional budget process punishes them for without stifling agency creativity is their trouble...

...All this is not to say that school choice can’t work or shouldn’t be experimented with, only that it is far from the sure bet Osborne and Gaebler tout it as...

...But where Wilson is a neoconservative skeptic-the concluding section of Bureaucracy is entitled “A Few Modest Suggestions that May Make a Small Difference”4sborne and Gaebler are messianic...

...They bill A case in point is Sunnyvale, California, a commotorists who knock down city-owned trees...

...And he is one of several liberal New Paradigmers advising Bill Clinton...

...At first, the city’s sleepy public aren’t always realistic works department tried to bid for the trash business but lost section after section of its territory to the lower-cost contractors...

...Readers who haven’t lost their faith in government will find their optimism infectious...

...One that immediately strikes me, as I read about aggressive, creative civil servants transfonning their organizations, is the authors’ seeming innocence about the quality of most of today’s government employeeswhich is marginal...

...Not Osborne and Gaebler...

...I’m just not sure it’s possible to transform the public sector without having more dynamic people to start with...

...Traditional governments next year, when appropriations committee members focus on “inputs” (how many cops should we hire...

...And it’s worth considering the possibility that the billions required to “sell” public housing to tenants might be better spent creating more low-income housing, or making existing buildings secure, as Vince Lane has done at the Chicago Housing Authority...

...But routine tasks like street sweeping and check processing, where efficiency and effectiveness can be readily quantified, are good candidates for privatization...

...Towns such as Fairfield, California, paperwork error rates of each office, the statewide adopted this policy in 1978, in the wake of Proposi- rate dropped by half...

...The point is that the authors’ reforms are not quite as revolutionary or troublefree as they sometimes present them to be...

...Here again, the idea fits a key paradigm principle-the need to “empower” communities rather than “serving” them into dependence...

...and tapping the spirit of volunteerism...

...It let drivers redesign their routes and work schedules and gave bonuses to employees who suggested other ways to improve efficiency...

...We There are plenty of dangers to performance meathought that was outrageous,” says the police chief...

...Reinventing Govemment is mostly convincing precisely because the authors have not let standard ideology cloud their view of how government works, at its worst and at its best...

...The puter-happy municipality located in the heart of Silicon Valley...

...making government programs “resultsoriented” by toughening evaluations...

...The results-oriented approach can help break another legacy of the Progressive era: the belief that all public functions must be carried out by civil servants...

...For example, cies with this much autonomy government managers seldom seek Wonk Hall of might cause...

...Creech took idea of governments making money puts some peoover the Air Force Tactical Air Command (TAC) in ple off...

...Again, the authors argue, this notion made sense 80 years ago, when local bosses routinely funnelled contracts to their patrons and friends, indifferent to whether those cronies would actually deliver any public goods...

...Private sector institutions (S&Ls) provide the service (processing mortgage loans), while government limits its role to structuring the marketplace (with deposit insurance) and monitoring contractor performance (with S&L examiners...

...Spree...

...They include scrapping civil service rules to make bureaucracies more “mission-driven...

...He is a charter member of the “New Paradigm Society” in Washington, a loose group of policy intellectuals that includes Bush aide James Pinkerton...

...The way for the public, through its elected officials, to Fame...

...By 1988 it had won back in competitive bidding all the territory it had lost...

...If they don’t spend what they’ve been to substitute “performance measures” for most rules allocated this year, they open themselves to big cuts and regulations, they say...

...Government at all levels could probably do more with less-and do it better-by privatizing aggressively and carefully as the book suggests...

...Likewise, most government agencies are bound by civil service rules and other Progressive era reforms designed to control costs, eliminate patronage, and ensure uniform (Le., fair) service to the public...

...Yet “all the evidence from existing choice programs suggests that academic excellence is seldom what parents chiefly value in a school,” writes education analyst Abigail Thernstrom in The Public Interest...

...He did it largely by assigning me- Indeed, for all their admiration of privatization, chanics-who had previously worked out of central- the authors happily applaud the opposite: governized pools-to individual squadrons ments that take over profit-making in order to cut paperwork and build enterprises to accomplish public team cohesion...

...There’s currently a push on Capitol Hill and in OMB to subject all federal agencies to tighter performance measures, in return for less “micromanagement” from Congress...

...Too many corporations still bear the stamp of the Industrial Age, relying on strict work rules and centralized command to eliminate “human error” in the mass-production of uniform products...

...They have read mounds of academic case studies, visited scores of agencies, and talked to countless bureaucrats...

...Then again, there is no great virtue in overreliance on the private sector, a fact that the book and Osborne’s own experience make clear...

...But where this magazine has focused, naturally, on Washington, Osborne and Gaebler fanned out to state and local bureaucracies, where most of the policy action was in the eighties...

...But because governments aren’t like businesses, simple management themselves a Of course, one can imagine all changes are seldom enough...

...owners cover the costs of those services...

...Scottsdale, Arizona, saves money through “incentive zoning”: Developers who build their own infrastructure are given permission to erect taller buildings...

...That is, after all, what the money is there for...

...The authors admit this, but they fail to mention that such “steering” operations have produced some of government’s greatest disasters...

...Try to restrict such “wrong” choices, as the Cambridge, Massachusetts school district does, and you weaken the very instrument that is supposed to discipline the system...

...How much of this intellect-mixing would survive under choice is hard to say...

...Things would have worked better had Chiles paid Osborne the old fashioned way, by appropriating tax dollars...

...Actually, elements of the paradigm will be familiar to longtime Monthly readers...

...Most federal agencies don’t supply services directly to citizens...

...Osborne and Gaebler are well aware that plenty of bad contracting is still going on...

...Choice, they say, breaks the monopoly of public education by letting parents send their kids, and their tax dollars, to any existing public school-r to any experimental school teachers wish to start...

...It by Paul Glastris created labor-management quality circles...

...After Masboosting salaries for high-performers to increasing sachusetts’ welfare department began publishing the other services...

...Congress did more than any recent administration to reform the Pentagon with the GoldwaterNichols Act, which eliminated the high command’s crippling interservice rivalries...

...And then there is the dilemma of civil servant quality...

...This message, with its promise of fulfilling the public’s seemingly impossible demand for more government activism without more taxes, has proven enormously appealing to members of the policymaking class in both parties...

...Gaebler have league baseball franchise, made money running the team for six years, then sold it at a profit to new local owners...