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National Partnership for Reinventing Government

Implementing the Original Set of Recommendations -- 1994

Immediately after the original report was released, the President and Vice President toured the country to spread the word about their reinvention efforts in the government. Within days after the report was released, the President issued a series of directives to implement a number of the recommendations including: reducing the work force by 252,000 positions; cutting internal agency regulations in half; and requiring agencies to set customer service standards. Ultimately, President Clinton signed more than 50 directives implementing NPR actions (see appendix B for list).

Also in 1993, President Clinton signed the Government Performance and Results Act. The intent of this law is to transform government agencies into performance-based and results-oriented organizations. This law requires agencies to develop strategic plans describing their overall goals and objectives, and matches these plans with quantifiable measures of performance, and report annually on progress against these measures. GPRA provides a mechanism for agencies and legislators to gauge the progress of government operations per agency, and assess how each agency could improve its operations and service to the public to produce better results. The first reports from agencies were submitted to Congress in March 2000.

NPR approached the implementation of these actions at three levels: government-wide, agency-specific, and employee-focused. Among the most notable government-wide accomplishments in 1994 were:

• Working with Congress to pass laws that improved how the government did business. This included reforms such as giving agencies authority to reduce the size of the workforce (by offering bonuses for employees leaving voluntarily), simplifying the government’s procurement system, and requiring agencies to have audited financial statements. Ultimately Congress passed more than 90 laws based on recommendations made by NPR (see appendix C for list).
• Helping agencies create their first sets of customer service standards.
• Developing the Hammer Award so the Vice President could publicly recognize innovative teams of federal employees who had reinvented their part of the government.

Individual agencies were responsible for implementing two-thirds of the recommendations because they were specifically targeted to them. The remaining recommendations affecting all agencies (i.e. budget or civil service reforms) became the responsibility of interagency groups (such as the Chief Financial Officers Council), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), or NPR.

To assist in communicating the reinvention message to the federal work force, NPR developed a variety of materials including: a training video, an interactive CD-ROM disk of the original reports, an electronic forum on reinvention issues involving hundreds of people across the country, and created a newsletter for federal employees. The task force also sponsored “Net Results” – an electronic interchange of information and ideas among federal employees and the general public. This was adapted into the NPR main web site www.npr.gov with links to a series of other related sites. (see Appendix D for list).