"The Sequester Is an Overhaul Opportunity"
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal(3/21/13) this op-ed article is so much more articulately in line with one of my frequent rants in recent months. That is that Federal bureaucracies are bloated and inefficient, and anyone with a grain of common sense and a bit of experience knows that bureaucracies, unless checked, have an overwhelming tendency to expand beyond any sensible rationale. There is a fortune to be saved by dealing with this issue, and it could help in not compromising our defense or crippling our already committed entitlement systems. Those do need to be trimmed, examined, and restructured, but the issue in this article is another big answer to our spending dilemma.
The article is written by Paul C. Light, currently Professor of Public Service at Columbia, formerly the founding director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, and before that Director of Public Policy at Pew Research, in other words no lightweight. Unfortunately I cannot forward this opinion but as of now it can be Googled in full under the title of the article.
Absent the ability to forward, here are a few teasers from Professor Light's comments:
---"In theory, a new personnel system, a flatter hierarchy, and the elimination of duplication and overlap should increase federal productivity. But Congress and the president will never know the savings unless they order the Bureau of Labor Statistics to start measuring federal productivity again. The bureau shelved its long-running productivity project in 1994 and has not added a data point since."
---"Too few poor performers are ever fired, and too many managers play favorites throughout it all...According to the government's own 2012 survey of almost 700,000 employees barely a third believe that promotions are based on merit... just one fifth said pay raises are linked to performance."
---"Attack the duplication and overlap among programs with nearly identical missions but separate overhead, including the 53 designed to spur entrepreneurship, the 82 to improve teacher quality, the 160 to support housing, and the 209 to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics education."
---"Congress and the president can make all of the grand promises they wish, but Americans have almost no confidence that the bureaucracy will deliver their money's worth."
How can one possibly wonder why many Americans adamantly oppose tax increases, and want an overhaul of the tax system that leads to an understandable, clearly more fair system that does not subsidize these unmanaged political bureaucracies?
One example of bureacratic incompetence was a segment on last night's PBS new hour. It described how veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan routinely wait for at least a year, sometimes up to two years, to receive their earned and promised combat benefits. Many of these veterans served more than one tour in the war zones. While highlighting some personal stories, the report showed a huge warehouse of boxes in Atanta, so dense that one person commented that they were afraid that the floor of the warehouse could collapse.
Why is this? The veterans benefits programs are not computerized. It's all paper. The move to digital has just begun and the armed services program suggests that by 2015 the paper process will be history. Good luck on that. What this points out relative to the topic of this post and Light's op-ed is that there is obviously incompetent management "at work" here, and a bureacracy with minimal initiative. It's appalling, and this is obviously just one example that was coincidentally seen last night after reading Light's commentary. How many more situations are there like this across multiple areas of our government?
The article is obviously recommended.
Postscript 3/23 --- it should be noted that Federal employees generally have health benefits as employees and as retirees that far exceed what is available in most of the private sector. They also have inflation adjusted defined retirement benefit plans, a wonderfully reliable perk largely abandoned by the private sector in the 1990's. These are additional big costs associated with this bloated inefficient politically expedient bureaucracy.
The article is written by Paul C. Light, currently Professor of Public Service at Columbia, formerly the founding director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, and before that Director of Public Policy at Pew Research, in other words no lightweight. Unfortunately I cannot forward this opinion but as of now it can be Googled in full under the title of the article.
Absent the ability to forward, here are a few teasers from Professor Light's comments:
---"In theory, a new personnel system, a flatter hierarchy, and the elimination of duplication and overlap should increase federal productivity. But Congress and the president will never know the savings unless they order the Bureau of Labor Statistics to start measuring federal productivity again. The bureau shelved its long-running productivity project in 1994 and has not added a data point since."
---"Too few poor performers are ever fired, and too many managers play favorites throughout it all...According to the government's own 2012 survey of almost 700,000 employees barely a third believe that promotions are based on merit... just one fifth said pay raises are linked to performance."
---"Attack the duplication and overlap among programs with nearly identical missions but separate overhead, including the 53 designed to spur entrepreneurship, the 82 to improve teacher quality, the 160 to support housing, and the 209 to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics education."
---"Congress and the president can make all of the grand promises they wish, but Americans have almost no confidence that the bureaucracy will deliver their money's worth."
How can one possibly wonder why many Americans adamantly oppose tax increases, and want an overhaul of the tax system that leads to an understandable, clearly more fair system that does not subsidize these unmanaged political bureaucracies?
One example of bureacratic incompetence was a segment on last night's PBS new hour. It described how veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan routinely wait for at least a year, sometimes up to two years, to receive their earned and promised combat benefits. Many of these veterans served more than one tour in the war zones. While highlighting some personal stories, the report showed a huge warehouse of boxes in Atanta, so dense that one person commented that they were afraid that the floor of the warehouse could collapse.
Why is this? The veterans benefits programs are not computerized. It's all paper. The move to digital has just begun and the armed services program suggests that by 2015 the paper process will be history. Good luck on that. What this points out relative to the topic of this post and Light's op-ed is that there is obviously incompetent management "at work" here, and a bureacracy with minimal initiative. It's appalling, and this is obviously just one example that was coincidentally seen last night after reading Light's commentary. How many more situations are there like this across multiple areas of our government?
The article is obviously recommended.
Postscript 3/23 --- it should be noted that Federal employees generally have health benefits as employees and as retirees that far exceed what is available in most of the private sector. They also have inflation adjusted defined retirement benefit plans, a wonderfully reliable perk largely abandoned by the private sector in the 1990's. These are additional big costs associated with this bloated inefficient politically expedient bureaucracy.
posted by John Borden at 12:33 PM
2 Comments:
It should also be noted that some Many federal employees are dedicated, loyal, and work very hard with longer hours than required. I do resent those departments that do not measure up to that standard but do not want to be judged by them. That's why across the board cuts are stupid. Why don't they audit productivity and observe behavior and necessity before admittendly needed cuts are made.
If anyone suggests that the Federal bureaucracy is not bloated and does not have benefits that are not accessible in any other part of the economy, they are blind or stupid.
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