Archive

- Last September, the President endorsed the NPR recommendation to cut the government's red tape jobs by half; that's well over 300,000 jobs. We can reinvest some of the savings in customer service jobs and still make the government-wide cut of 273,000 that's in law now.

- The cuts are aimed at headquarters, multiple layers of supervisors, auditors, and the offices that deal in the arcane rules of personnel, procurement, and finance.

- With a few exceptions, the streamlining plans we've gotten aren't big enough, fast enough, or on target.

- Take headquarters, for example. We need to cut headquarters because they are not only the biggest generator of red tape, they are also the greatest barrier to change. Yet, 12 of the agency plans don't even address headquarters. Only the Interior Department's plan meets the 50% goal.
- Now, I can understand why the plans are soft on headquarters. The bureaucracy has gone into its protective mode. I know of at least one person who tried to target his agency's headquarters and was taken aside and told, "Lay off. You're talking about us, pal."

- Of course, they won't take that approach with you. They'll tell you how overworked they are and that they even could use more people. They'll advise you to go slow so you don't break anything. If you watched the BBC comedy series "Yes Minister," you know the routine.

-We might have to go slower in some areas like personnel and procurement where the statutes have to be simplified and the processes reengineered. But headquarters can and should be cut quickly.

- We have some good examples to follow:
-- Interior's Bureau of Reclamation cut headquarters from 2000 to less than 100 virtually overnight. They removed the other 1900 jobs from the approval chain and put them on a fee-for-service basis, in competition with private consultants.
-- HUD quickly eliminated their entire layer of regional headquarters.
-- Customs Service plans to cut Washington headquarters by 1/3, to completely eliminate regional headquarters, and to close a lot of their district headquarters offices. They got their front-line, field people to help them develop that plan.
-- SBA is shifting 500 jobs from headquarters to the field where the customers live.
-- In the private sector, General Electric cut their headquarters size in half while doubling their economic size. In retrospect, Frank Doyle told me that GE didn't move fast enough or boldly enough.
-- AMOCO just announced they are cutting headquarters from 4,200 to 400 in a year.

- I want you all to plan big, dramatic headquarters cuts like that. And get your field people to help you do it; they know which headquarters elements interfere the most.

- I'm convinced that we will have a much better result if you and your field people design the big cut than if I have to have my staff design it.

- I want good streamlining plans by October, and I want the headquarters cuts finished by next September.

- My NPR staff will arrange workshops with people who have been through this and survived.

- This won't be easy. But, it is absolutely necessary. No organization I ever heard of has been able to achieve world-class service and efficiency under the burden of such a massive headquarters structure.

- The more we cut from headquarters and other red tape jobs, the more we can reinvest in improving customer service.