Re-invention of government.

• Author: Schnepper, Jeff A.
• Position: Column

ON SEPT. 7, 1993, for the 11th time this century, a president proposed how, finally, to make government perform better. Prior attempts to imbue the Federal bureaucracy with bottom-line efficiency included two commissions headed by former Pres. Herbert Hoover in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a re-organization under Pres. Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, and a private-sector panel headed by businessman W.R. Grace in the early 1980s. Most of these efforts--even when enacted into law--brought little change.

The current plan--chaired by the Vice President and detailed in a 200-page document--offers approximately 800 suggestions how to make government work better and cost less. According to Gore, 40-45% of those suggestions can be enacted by the President on his own. The rest would require Congressional legislation.

The plan is extensive, as can be expected, given the immense task it seeks to accomplish. The Federal government is the nation's biggest single employer, with approximately 4,400,000 people, nearly four percent of the workforce. Of the nation's 20 largest organizations ranked by cash flow, nine are Federal agencies, including the top three departments--Health and Human Services, Defense, and Treasury.

The task will not be easy. The governmental incentives system is gridlocked. Civil Service regulations rule out rewarding good effort or punishing poor work. Under the Civil Service job grading system, most workers make a slow, lifetime march through 150 "grades" and "steps." Moreover, government managers and employees function within hierarchical bureaucracies, where there is one supervisor to every five workers, compared with one to 15 in the private sector.

The Gore Report seeks to address these problems. It calls for making it easier to fire incompetent employees, privatizing many Federal functions, and loosening the White House's grip on the more routine matters of the executive branch. The report's plan also would:

* Change procurement procedures from rigid rules to "guiding principals" that allow government managers more freedom.

* Exempt contractors on Federal construction projects of up to $100,000 from the requirement to pay the costly prevailing wages required by the Davis-Bacon Act.

* Eliminate 252,000 Federal government jobs, including the 100,000 the Administration already has pledged to cut by attrition.

* Try to make the government run more efficiently for average individuals and business people by, for example, speeding...