Bottom-up Procurement Reform

There has been flood of memos and guidance on procurement reform coming out of the White House and OMB in recent months.  But an open call for ideas was launched earlier this month via a collaborative project being undertaken by the General Service Administration, the National Academy of Public Administration, and a joint government/industry group called the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council.

This new initiative is called the “Better Buy Project” and it was launched via a website that uses a series of on-line forums to gain insight and ideas.

According to the website:  “The Better Buy Project is an experiment dedicated to the belief that there’s a lot of room for improvement in the way government buys products and services. We’re testing this hypothesis by asking for your ideas on how to make acquisition process more open, transparent and collaborative.”  They plan to do this around the three initial phases of the contracting cycle:

• Market Research and Requirements Definition Phase—Includes publicizing agency needs and requirements, and refining them based on further input and research about current capabilities.
• Pre-Solicitation Phase—Includes web-based research, discussions with other federal agencies, meetings and open discussion forums with the private sector to discuss potential solutions, and requests for information soliciting input and ideas. The requirements are also further refined at this stage in the process.
• Solicitation Phase—Includes the government notifying the private sector of the requirement through various channels such as E-Buy and FedBizOpps, holding open forums to discuss the requirement and answer questions (e.g., Industry Days), a review of the solicitation by interested companies, the written exchange between government and the private sector of questions, answers and clarifications on government requirements, and proposal submissions.

The sponsors are looking for feedback that makes the system more open, transparent, and collaborative. Visitors to the site can offer ideas and comments, or can vote for other ideas (and you are limited to a total of 20 votes in each phase, so use them judiciously!).  So far, two weeks into the effort, there are about 30 ideas/topic threads and a handful of comments and votes.  Where is the contracting community when you need them?  Probably recovering from the traditional end-of-the-fiscal year buying rush!

Lessons of Reinvention

Sixteen years ago today Vice President Gore presented the first report of the National Performance Review to President Clinton in a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House.  At the time, I was on the NPR staff and thought that the six-month review was over and that we’d all be going back to our home agencies.  But it turns out that ceremony was just the beginning.

The report contained nearly 400 recommendations with over 1,200 specific governmentwide and agency-specific action items.  Vice President Gore asked a small group of the more than 250 staff on the original reinvention team to remain behind.  I was one of the few to continue, being asked to help implement the recommendations. The effort extended to the end of the Clinton Administration and claimed a number of successes.

While I thought the purpose of the small group was to implement the recommendations, the project director, Bob Stone, thought its purpose was to change the culture of the government to be more customer-focused, help agency managers cut red tape, and to empower front-line employees to get their jobs done.  He taught us all quite a few things!

Put Customers First.  The Review recommended putting customers first.  President Clinton did this by directing agencies to set customer service standards for every government program and agency. It took almost a year, but thousands of specific standards were set (in fact, there is legislation pending today to reinstitute standard-setting, but it has not gone anywhere).  But this wasn’t culture-changing.  Bob encouraged agencies to create “reinvention labs” to try out new ways of improving customer service.  Agencies created hundreds.

Cut Red Tape.  The Review recommended cutting red tape.  The Labs tested out ways of doing this too.  The President directed agencies to cut the number of internal regulations.  Agency heads were encouraged to grant Labs waivers from agency-imposed internal rules so the Labs could try new ways of doing things.  But this wasn’t enough.  President Clinton issued a governmentwide memorandum that changed the burden of proof for those seeking waivers.  Instead of having to demonstrate why they wanted a waiver, their bosses instead had to demonstrate why they shouldn’t provide a waiver.  Talk about revolutionary!

Empower Employees.  The Review recommended empowering employees so they could get their work done, serving citizens.  President Clinton directed agencies to expand supervisor-to-employee ratios from 1:7 to 1:15, and to created labor-management partnership councils.  Bob went further.  He identified teams of employees that were living reinvention principles and convinced the Vice President to create a whimsical “Hammer” award (symbolizing breaking down bureaucracy).  Over 68,000 employees participated in teams receiving these awards.

Cut Back to  Basics.  The Review also recommended “cutting back to basics,” recommending more than $100 billion in savings (which seemed like a large number at the time!).  Doing work differently, cutting administrative overhead, and eliminating obsolete programs (like the Tea Tasting Board) resulted in savings totaling in the billions of dollars.  There was controversy about the sources of the savings (largely by streamlining the procurement process and reducing headcount) and how to count those savings.  But the public saw reductions.

The ultimate metric of success for the reinvention effort was increased citizen trust in the federal government to do the right thing most of the time.  That metric increased from 21 percent in 1994 to 44 percent by 2000, according to a biennial survey by the University of Michigan.

So in the end, reinvention wasn’t just about recommendations completed, laws enacted, or savings claimed.  It was about changing how citizens saw their government and how government employees saw themselves.

As President Obama sets out to “make government cool again,” maybe there are some opportunities to revisit some of the lessons of reinvention!

Launching the BizGov Blog

Welcome to the IBM Center’s latest step in Web 2.0!

John Kamensky, Senior Fellow

We’ve been sponsoring a blog on presidential transition for the past couple of years and are now ready to take the next step – serial blogging! I’ll be joined by colleagues over the next few weeks in providing insight, news, and context on a wide range of management challenges facing public sector executives. Please join us!

I’ll be the primary contributor to the BizGov Blog, much like I was the lead on the IBM Center’s Presidential Transition 2008-2009 Blog. I’ve worked for the Center for the past eight years, after a 24-year federal government career at the end of the Clinton Administration (my bio).

The focus and scope of this blog will continue many of the themes that evolved on the Transition blog over the past six months – what is happening in the management and implementation of government under the Obama Administration. My goal is to write shorter, more frequent (and therefore hopefully more interesting!) posts. My hope is that you find some inspiration and smarter ideas for getting the business of government done.

We hope you contribute your comments and insights as well.