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For syndicated use in
federal newsletters. Feel free to use any or all of the following
interview in your newsletters. If you would like to add a few
questions specific to your agency, please send them to Carrie
Carnes and I will get them approved. Photos of Bob Stone are
available upon request.
Bob Stone is Project
Director for President Clinton and Vice President Gore's National
Performance Review, the Reinventing Government Initiative. He
is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense where he earned
a reputation as a deregulator, decentralizer, and passionate
advocate of putting authority at the front line. He has more
than lived up to his reputation at NPR. The federal workplace
is changing -- becoming a government that works better and costs
less -- thanks to the efforts of reinventors all across government.
Q: How did NPR start?
Stone: The National Performance Review was created by President
Clinton on March 3, 1993. He said the government is broken and
we intend to fix it. He appointed Vice President Gore to head
an interagency task force and the Vice President asked me to
be the project director. I jumped at the chance of a lifetime.
He had been interested in my efforts at Defense to simply and
eliminate regs to free people's enthusiasm and creativity.
We put together a task
force composed of more than 250 people, almost all career civil
servants. The President gave us six months to have a report to
him. "We have good people trapped in a bad system,"
Vice President Gore said. The Vice President was heavily involved
in this effort., including holding town meetings with federal
employees all over the country and meeting with each agency head
to ensure his or her support for our recommendations.
Ever since, a much smaller
NPR has been working closely with each agency to become more
customer-oriented. The Vice President's last report, The Best
Kept Secrets in Government, was published in September. You can
find it on our Web site at http://www.npr.gov, or in your bookstore.
Q: What is NPR doing
to overcome the perception that reinvention is only about downsizing?
Stone: NPR is not about getting rid of government -- it's about
creating a government that makes sense. This has led to some
job cuts, just as in the private sector. When we have had to
reduce the workforce, we have done it mostly through attrition,
slowed hiring, and buyouts. We have worked extensively with the
affected individuals, providing counseling and outplacement referral
systems.
We've tried to be selective
and cut out just the parts of government that we don't need any
more--and federal workers helped us find those places. For example,
it was a procurement specialist who told us that we should change
the law to make small purchases so simple that we no longer need
procurement specialists to handle them.
Reinvention includes downsizing,
but that's not its focus. We want an employee environment like
the one you're trying to build at IOC--a high involvement workplace
where self-managing teams are the norm. You are flattening management
hierarchies and empowering workers to make decisions and be innovative.
You are creating successful labor management partnerships to
focus on getting results together. Several IOC installations
are pioneers, winning awards for labor-management teams that
improve customer service and save money. That's reinvention at
its best. |
