Published in James P.
Pfiffner and Douglas A. Brook, eds. The Future of Merit: Twenty Years after
the Civil Service Reform Act (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000).
Government
Legitimacy and the Role of the Civil Service
James
P. Pfiffner
George
Mason University
I.
Governmental Legitimacy and the Role of the Civil Service
The
civil service has always been caught between U.S. citizens’ skeptical
attitudes toward government and the role of the national government.
In the early 20th century, the civil service was just emerging
from the era of the spoils system. From
the presidency of Andrew Jackson until the Pendleton Act of 1883 the staffing of
the federal government was largely conducted by presidential administrations on
the basis of political loyalty. Based
on the premises that government work was basically simple, the political parties
needed government jobs as incentives for their membership, and that politically
loyal implementors were needed for faithful execution of the laws; the spoils
system flourished. Governmental
reform groups sprang up to criticize the inefficiencies of the constant turnover
of government workers and the corruption the system spawned in the quadrennial
fight over government jobs.
The
1883 Pendleton Act initiated the replacement of spoils with merit, but only at a
gradual pace. Initially, the intent
of the merit system was that recruitment and promotion would be based on ability
rather than partisan affiliation and that there would no partisan interference
with merit system personnel decisions. These
protections for civil service workers were premised on the assumption that the
civil service would work with equal enthusiasm for whichever political party was
in power. That is, government
workers would be neutral with respect to party and competent with respect to
their jobs. This ideal of neutral
competence would become the hallmark of the civil service.
In the 1980s, however, it would be attacked as leading to insufficient
enthusiasm for the policies of the administration currently in power, and in the
1990s it would be criticized as not sufficiently flexible for the information
age.
A.
From the Progressive Era to the “Golden Age” of Merit
In
the early 20th century the Progressives sought a new, more active
role for the government in the U.S. economy.
President Theodore Roosevelt led the national government to a more active
role in conservation of natural resources and curbing the excesses of big
business. Independent regulatory
commissions were created to monitor and regulate business activity.
World War I brought further governmental interventions in the economy,
and the expansion of the merit system. By
1933, eighty percent of federal government workers were within the classified
civil service.[i]
The
experience with the Great Depression and the coming of the New Deal brought
drastic changes in attitudes toward government.
Panic over the state of the economy led to experimentation with
government policy toward the economy and the profusion of government agencies to
deal with various aspects of the Depression.
Despite conservative opposition to government growth and intervention in
the economy, public programs were welcomed by many, and the government was seen
as an engine of change. With
unemployment approaching 25 percent, welfare programs were accepted by many as
legitimate assistance for those who could not find work.
Leading scholars and business leaders came to Washington to help lead the
nation out of the Depression, some as “dollar-a-year” executives who were
rich enough not to need a salary but who wanted to contribute to the common
good.
The
1950s Cold War consensus on a large military establishment and a temporary
consensus on a relatively small social welfare establishment, brought with it a
“golden era” of the civil service.[iii]
Agreement on the relative size of the government and its purposes was
accompanied by an acceptance of the legitimacy of the civil service, with its
professionalism and competence. But
the legitimacy enjoyed by the civil service and its increased size also led to
the rigidification of processes and procedures.
The Civil Service Commission became the central policy maker for
personnel administration and the central clearing house for recruitment for
government workers. Thus the
consensus on the role of the government and success of the CSC in
institutionalizing the public service contained the seeds of disintegration as
the role of government was expanded in the 1960s and questioned in the 1970s.
The
surface consensus and relative calm of the 1950s hid the simmering racial
inequality that was slowly undermined after Brown vs. Board of Education
in 1954 and exploded in racial strife in the 1960s.
The response of the political system to racism, inequality, and
environmental, degradation was a
flurry of activist public policy innovation and social legislation.
A booming economy and an activist optimism engendered a plethora of
governmental programs to attack areas of neglect and to pioneer new initiatives,
from literacy, to health, to environmental clean-up, to social welfare.
The burst of governmental optimism and activism led to legislative
activism by Lyndon Johnson that rivaled the famous “100 Days” of Franklin
Roosevelt in 1933. But the flurry of activity also included some poorly thought
out programs that would lead to a backlash in the future.
The civil servants who helped design the programs would later be blamed
when the programs were not as successful as promised.
The
narrow victory of Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey in 1968 accurately
reflected the changing attitude toward government in the American public.
Nixon presided over a portion of the liberal legislation at the end of
the 1960s era, but his political instincts were leading him toward a reining in
of the activist impulse and toward a conservative reaction against governmental
activism in social policy. Nixon’s
landslide victory in 1972 reflected public rejection of further liberal
experiments in public policy, but the Watergate “horrors” engendered further
public cynicism about big government. In
addition, the economy suffered from “stagflation” — simultaneous inflation
and stagnation. The inflation was
set off by Lyndon Johnson’s policies of guns and butter and the creation of
OPEC which led to the drastic increase in oil prices in 1973.
Inflation and a stagnant economy further eroded public confidence in
governmental policy.
These
far-reaching changes were reflected in attitudes toward the public service.
Kennedy and Johnson saw the public service they inherited from the 1950s
to be too stodgy and bureaucratic to create bold, new policy options.
Richard Nixon, however, held a deep distrust toward the career services,
seeing them as “dug-in establishmentarians fighting for the status quo.”[iv]
Nixon also came to distrust his own political appointees and felt that
they had been coopted by the career bureaucracy.
The civil service came to be identified with the policies of the federal
government and thus blamed for them in a parallel to the way some anti-war
activists blamed soldiers for U.S. policies in Vietnam.
Thus, the reaction of the public to the domestic, political,
and foreign policy excesses of the 1960s led to a distrust of the federal
government. The opportunism
of politicians then led to gradual delegitimization of government and
political attacks on the public service.
In
his quest for the presidency, Jimmy Carter ran against Watergate and the
excesses of Richard Nixon, but he combined his partisan attack with an assault
on the federal government (“Our government in Washington now is a horrible
bureaucratic mess....”[v])
and its employees (“There is no merit in the merit system.”[vi]).
Reflecting the changing political landscape, Carter was not a traditional
Democrat but was a fiscal conservative. He
was also skeptical of federal government intervention in state policy.
Carter’s skeptical approach to government provided a transition to the
much more conservative and anti-government administration of Ronald Reagan.
Carter’s Civil Service Reform Act gave future administrations tools to
elicit greater responsiveness from the career bureaucracies.
Reagan’s
anti-government rhetoric was honed over decades of political activity and his
governorship of California. Reagan
was able to capitalize on public disillusionment with the optimism of the 1960s
and the cynicism born of Vietnam and Watergate.
He argued that government was the problem, not the solution to social
ills. His anti-government
conservativism was rationalized by public choice economics that argued that
government workers were primarily self interested and would protect their
programs, thus melding disagreement with past public policy with hostility
toward the government and its workers.[vii]
The political appeal of this approach was attractive to conservative
politicians, and Republicans made significant gains in the 1980s with this
anti-government theme.
Despite
Reagan’s campaign promises to balance the budget, his unwillingness to
sacrifice his priorities in defense spending and tax cuts along with a severe
recession combined to produce historically huge deficits in his early years in
office. The failure of the
government to reduce defense or entitlement spending or to increase taxes to
reduce enormous deficits resulted in continued shortfalls of
hundreds of billions dollars. The
national debt increased from about 1 trillion dollars in 1981 to 2 trillion in
1984 to three trillion in 1988. The
trend continued, with the total debt reaching 4 trillion during the Bush
administration and passing five trillion in the Clinton administration.
This fiscal overhang increased pressure on governmental programs,
particularly on the “controllable” part of spending (excluding entitlements,
contracts, and interest on the debt). Budget
agreements to reduce the deficit, particularly in 1990 and 1993, restricted
spending on programs and contributed to a balanced budget in FY 1998.
C.
The Clinton Administration, the NPR, and the 104th Congress
The
Clinton administration had two major effects on the state of government
management and the civil service. The
National Performance Review was the broadest attempt to change federal
management in U.S. history, but perhaps more far reaching were the policy
battles that Clinton fought with the Republican 104th Congress.
1.
The NPR
Vice
President Gore took leadership of the administration’s push to reform the way
the government does business. The
NPR leadership argued that the prevailing paradigm of government management was
formed during the progressive era and was designed to counter the evils of the
spoils system and corruption. In
trying to prevent corruption and political interference with administration, the
merit system became gradually encrusted with a plethora of rules and regulations
to prevent government managers from using their discretion.
The system was designed during the industrial revolution and modeled on
large-scale bureaucracy with hierarchical control from the top to ensure
responsiveness to law and adherence to policy.
But this system was now cumbersome and outmoded and should be replaced
with a management structure appropriate for the information age.
The
information age at the end of the 20th century, argued the NPR, needs
more flexible organizations with flatter structures that can respond creatively
to the challenges of changing technology and global competition.
The proponents of the NPR argued that government should
“steer rather than row.” That
is, government should not produce goods and services directly, but rather set up
incentive systems that encourage citizens to do things themselves, use
contracting to take advantages of market incentives, and encourage competition
between government agencies and with the private sector.
The approach envisions government as catalyzing, enterprising,
decentralized, community owned, competitive, mission driven, customer friendly,
market oriented, and results oriented. The
further implication was that government employment could be much smaller than it
was.[viii]
The
NPR encompassed a wide range of management reforms and had broad effects on the
public service. While the intention
was to change the culture of government organizations and transform them into
entrepreneurial, creative, and customer driven organizations, the success of
moving in these directions was mitigated by the budget-driven mandate to reduce
significantly the number of employees of the federal government.
The Clinton administration cuts of more than 300,000 positions brought
the size of the civilian component of the federal government down to the
smallest it had been since the Kennedy administration.
2.
President Clinton and the 104th Congress
Perhaps
more far reaching than the management changes brought on by the National
Performance Review were the battles between the Clinton administration and the
Republican 104th Congress over the role of the national government.
President Clinton came to office as a “new Democrat” who supported
fiscal discipline and a limited, though positive role for the federal
government. He had absorbed the
political lessons of the 1980s and promised to “end welfare as we know it”
and to produce an efficient federal government.
But the policy centerpiece of his first year in office, his health care
reform proposal, seemed to belie his “new Democrat” intentions.
His health care reform plan, while based on private sector insurance and
care provision, was premised on complex and far reaching government regulation
of the industry. The Republicans’
defeat of health care reform in 1994 was one of the major factors in their
recapture of control of Congress for the first time since 1954.
II.
The Illusion of Smaller Government and its Effects on the Public Service
Despite
the delegitimizing of the federal government from the 1970s to the 1990s,
A. The
Tools of Contracting, Grants, and Mandates
Since
the most visible and easily understandable sign of big government is the number
of public employees, the easiest way to reduce the visibility of big government
and to claim credit for shrinking the government is to reduce the number of
public employees. There are a number
of ways to accomplish this. The
federal government (as well as state and local governments) can accomplish
public purposes and deliver services through a number of different “tools”
that minimize the number of government employees.
Tax breaks can be provided to encourage certain activities; mandates can
compel businesses or governments to take certain actions; grants can be provided
for the accomplishment of certain tasks; and contracts can be made for the
provision of goods and services. The
delegitimizing of government over the past few decades has made these options
for the provision of government services much more attractive and has increased
their use.
To
put the activities of the federal government into perspective, only about four
percent of the federal outlays is spent on public workers directly providing
goods and services. The majority of
spending goes to payments to individuals (58 percent), interest on the debt (15
percent), , contracts with private companies for goods and services (13
percent), grants to state and local governments (5 percent), and the armed
forces (5 percent).[xi]
Many
reasons exist for contracting out for goods and services, but in the past
several decades other incentives have been added to use contracting.[xii]
One is the assumption, encouraged by the business sector and many
politicians, that businesses are inherently more efficient and better managed
than governments, and that money is much better spent if it goes to the private
sector.[xiii]
Another driving force in the move to contract out is the delegitimizing
of the government; it is much easier for politicians to say that money is being
spent efficiently in the private sector. A
third driver is the political need to make the government look smaller.
These three factors have been constants in the Republican Party,
particularly with the conservative turn of the country since the 1970s.
But the political appeal of such moves also affected the Democrats,
especially the “New Democrats” of the Clinton administration.
The
NPR under Gore and Clinton argued for a government that is smaller and costs
less. They “delivered” on their
promise by cutting the size of the federal civil service by more than 330,000
between 1993 and 1998. This
reduction in the federal civilian workforce (excluding the Postal Service) of
15.4 percent brought the number of federal government employees to the lowest
level since the Kennedy administration.[xiv]
But the reality may be that these cuts have contributed to a government
that appears smaller but continues to deliver the level of services that
Americans demand.
Paul
Light has challenged the claim that the government is smaller in the 1990s than
it has been since the 1960s by calculating what he calls the “shadow
government” of those whose jobs are based on grants, contracts, and mandates.
He calculates that the $200 billion that the federal government spends on
contracts each year creates 5.6 million jobs and that the $55 billion in grants
creates 2.4 million jobs. He also
argues that federal mandates entail another 4.7 million jobs in state and local
governments. Whether or not his
methods for counting workers is airtight, his main point stands.
Millions of workers not on the federal government payroll are needed to
deliver the goods and services that the federal government provides.
The
cuts in numbers of employees without significant cuts in the programs of the
government imply that the contracting out trend has increased during the Clinton
administration (in line with NPR objectives and administration policy).
Light’s data also make the interesting point that the purposes of
contracting have been shifting from the production of goods and products to the
provision of services. According to
Light, in 1984 one half of contract jobs produced products, whereas in 1996 only
one fifth of them were for goods and 80 percent were for services.[xv]
B.
The Fragmentation of the Civil Service
At
the same time that the government has been contracting out more of its
functions, the traditional civil service has been fragmenting.
The traditional standard for the merit system in the federal government
has been the inclusion of employees in the “competitive service” who are
subject to appointment under chapter 33 of Title 5 of the U.S. Code.[xvi]
After the passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883 only 10 percent of federal
employees were included in the competitive service, and the law provided that
more could be added by presidents “blanketing in” through executive order
those not covered. Thus the coverage
of the merit system increased to more than 40 percent by 1900 and to 80 percent
by 1933 (cut to 66 percent during the New Deal).
The high point of the merit system was reached during the 1950s when more
than 86 percent of employees were covered.[xvii]
Since
the 1950s the traditional merit system, (i.e. the competitive service) has been
increasingly fragmented, with coverage dropping to 52 percent in 1996.[xviii]
The rest of federal government employees are in “excepted service,”
excepted meaning not covered by the hiring authority of Title 5.
For instance, the U.S. Postal Service has established its own personnel
system since it left the competitive service in 1970.
The Foreign Service has its own system, as do the intelligence gathering
agencies. In all, 123 organizations
of the federal government employ people in excepted services.[xix]
The fragmenting trend is continuing with the Federal Aviation
Administration receiving authority to set up its own system in 1995 and the
proposals of the Clinton administration to create separate performance-based
organizations (PBOs) with their own hiring authorities outside of Title 5.
In
1977 the President’s Personnel Management Project (which laid the groundwork
for the CSRA) described the excepted service as “a tangled, confusing web of
laws, regulations, authorities, and exceptions.”[xx]
The thrust of the CSRA was not to consolidate personnel practice into one
plan, however, but to delegate personnel authority to agencies and reserve for
OPM oversight and advisory capacity. In
recent years, many new members of the civil service entered through excepted
authorities rather than through traditional, standardized examinations.[xxi]
In the 1990s OPM has continued to delegate authority to agencies, and by
1998 virtually all hiring has been decentralized and the central registers of
OPM no longer exist.[xxii]
The recommendations of the NPR have favored this decentralization and
have argued that the old model of centralized authority and uniform rules were
based on the manufacturing age of large bureaucracies and no longer appropriate
to the information age of small organizations and flat hierarchies.
In
another manifestation of this fragmentation, the Department of Defense, which
employs about half the government’s civilian workforce, was exploring in 1998
possible changes to rationalize its civilian workforce for the future.
The assumption was that the workload of the department would fluctuate in
the future as it had in the past and that its workforce should be structured so
as to be able to gear up for periods of high activity but also be able to gear
down for slacker periods without going through disruptive reductions in force.
According to its planning proposals, the DOD would contain a core of
permanent employees that would be sized to perform a minimum or constant
workload that is not appropriate for outsourcing.
In the next concentric circle would be a tier of temporary employees who
could be hired for periods up to five years.
Finally, the third circle would be a large pool of employees who could be
hired under contract for specific periods of time.[xxiii]
The
National Academy of Public Administration has also made a number of proposals
for consideration by the federal government as it adapts to the changing
realities of the labor market. The
Academy proposes that not all federal government workers necessarily be
“full-time permanent” employees but that differing relationships between
government and employees may create a more flexible workforce.
NAPA proposes that the number of competitive federal hiring methods be
reduced to three: permanent workers, temporary workers who could be hired
without time limits and who would have full benefits, and temporary workers with
limited benefits and limited time periods.[xxiv]
NAPA argues that inherently governmental or “core” work would be done
by employees who have an expectation of continuous work and that noncore work
could be done by supplemental workers who do not have the expectation of
continuous work.[xxv]
III.
Merit, the Public Service Ethic, and Accountability
The
thrust of the above analysis is that recent decades have brought about profound
changes in the nature of governance in the United States, the relationship
between the role of government and the public service, and the relationship
between people who do the public’s work and the government.
This section takes up three issues that demand consideration.
First, how can the ideals of merit be preserved in an environment in
which the traditional merit system has been coming apart?
Second, how can a public service ethic be engendered when most people
doing the government’s work do not work for the government?
Third, how can accountability for public programs be enforced when the
workers managing programs are one or several times removed from those
responsible for accomplishment of the mission?
A.
Merit in Contracting and Political Appointments
Two
issues of merit are basic: how to apply it in a new environment and how it
relates to political appointees.
The
merit system, as established by the Pendleton Act of 1883, was based on the
foundation of three principles: 1) entry to the system by way of competitive
examination, 2) promotion and penalty based on performance, and 3) protection
from actions based on partisan political pressure.[xxvi] In the years since
its establishment, many refinements and additions have been overlaid on the
merit system.[xxvii]
* Hatch Act (1939 and 1993)
regulations have been added to ensure that partisan political activity cannot be
coerced.
* Classification systems
have been added to facilitate equal pay for similar work across the government.
* Veterans preferences have
been added by law as reward for previous service.
* Agreements have been made
with unions in collective bargaining agreements.
The carrying out of merit
principles has also come to mean that, after a worker has passed successfully
the probationary period, that the employee has in effect a guarantee of
career-long employment with the government during reasonable performance.
The only exceptions are a difficult separation action or a reduction in
force.
But
the essence of merit is the evaluation of individuals based on their
qualifications and performance and the protection from partisan political abuse,
that is non-partisan (or neutral) competence.[xxviii]
In
protecting the principle of non-partisan competence in the traditional merit
system the civil service developed a host of rules, regulations, and laws that
did a good, though imperfect, job of protecting merit.
But the complex system of regulations also tended to bog down the system
in procedural detail that impeded managers from managing.
It is these negative effects that have led in part to the reaction
against the system and to its fragmentation.
Managers could not hire or promote without heavy-handed oversight and
second guessing from agency personnel shops or the central personnel authority.
Neither could managers discipline or fire poor workers without burdensome
and elaborate record-keeping and the threat of long, drawn out legal
proceedings.[xxix]
Given
the new reality of administrative arrangements (in part created to get around
the barnacles of the merit system), how can law assure that the essence of merit
— non-partisan competence — will be preserved?
Many public purposes are now being accomplished through indirect
administrative linkages in which the government does not have the personnel
authority to enforce the traditional trappings of merit.
Of course it might try to ensure merit by imposing requirements in
contracts that private and non-profit organizations comply with all of the
traditional requirements of the merit system.
But that would defeat the purpose of the creation of many of these
arrangements in the first place.
What
is really needed is the accomplishment of governmental goals, that is, the
faithful execution of the law, in an economical, efficient, and effective
manner. New institutional
arrangements, such as contracts written with private or non profit
organizations, do not alter these basic goals.
What is needed as the minimum, but sufficient, requirement is that these
goals be accomplished without discrimination or partisanship.
Thus private contracting organizations need to comply with the broadly
accepted non-discrimination principles with which all businesses in the country
must comply.
But
what should be the concerns with competence beyond non-discrimination?
If a business fulfills the requirements of the contract, should the
government care about the internal determination of who is hired or how they are
promoted? Imposing intrusive
procedural requirements on internal hiring and promotion decisions on private
sector contractors would be unduly intrusive and self defeating.
It would bureaucratize and governmentalize the private sector contractor.
Thus, beyond the ensuring of
non-discriminatory policies, it does not make sense for the government to impose
the requirements of the traditional merit system on governmental contractors.
On
the other hand, this does not imply that contractors should feel free to make
hiring and promotional decisions based on nepotism, cronyism, or arbitrary
managerial decisions. These
practices, apart from their ethical improprieties, impose heavy costs on any
organization. Employees are acutely
sensitive to these types of maladministration, and any company or non-profit
organization that practices them may suffer negative consequences.
But this hands-off approach implies that a willingness to put up with
some bad managerial judgments in order to provide the necessary flexibility for
managers to exercise informed managerial decision making in contracting
organizations.
With
respect to the merit principle of protection from partisan political
interference, either to hire or fire, government workers, how can this principle
be applied to contractors? Partisan
pressure on contractors with respect to personnel decisions, from the executive
branch or Congress or political parties, is inappropriate and unlawful.
But vigilance is also needed that the awarding of contracts for goods and
services not be made on partisan grounds. Thus
the oversight of inspectors general in the contract granting departments and
agencies is essential to the integrity of the contract process.
At the same time, the new flexibilities in contracting achieved in the
Clinton administration ought not to be nullified.[xxx]
In
sum, in the enforcement of the principles of merit in the new world of
contracting out much of the government’s business ought to focus on essentials
and not reimpose all of the burdensome regulations of the traditional merit
system. Individuals must be
protected from overt discrimination through normal legal processes, and
personnel and contracting decisions must not be made on the basis of partisan
politics. Beyond that, care is
needed that added requirements do not replicate the regulations of the
traditional merit system that the new forms of administrative arrangements were
designed to escape.
2.
Merit and Political Appointments
The
anti-government rhetoric that began in the 1970s and the bureaucrat bashing that
it entailed led to a desire for more control by politicians to circumvent what
some believed to be iron triangles of linkages among bureaucrats, interest
groups, and congressional staffers. One
of the results of this felt need for more control was an increase in the number
of political appointees in the executive branch.
While Germany, France, and Britain each have one or two hundred political
appointees who change when partisan control of the government changes, the
United States has significantly more. The
president can make about 5,000 political appointments upon taking office, and
about 3,000 of these are full time members of the executive branch.[xxxi]
In
1989 the Volcker Commission recommended that the number of executive branch
appointees had been increasing over the past several decades and that the total
number of political appointees should be reduced from about 3,000 to about
2,000.[xxxii]
According to Paul Light’s calculations, the total number of senior
executives and presidential appointees increased from 451 in 1960 to 2,393 in
1992.[xxxiii]
The reasoning behind the Volcker Commission’s recommendations was that
the increasing numbers of appointees, rather than giving the president more
control, actually attenuated responsiveness to the president.
That is, appointees often come with political loyalties to sponsors
(patrons) other than the president, and the increasing numbers necessarily leads
to increasing layers of authority, distancing the appointee responsible for
mission accomplishment from the career civil servants actually doing the job.
Light
calculates that in 1960 there were up to 17 layers of management at the top of
the federal government, and by 1992 there were up to 32.[xxxiv]
In addition to the management problems brought on by layering and the
frequent turnover of appointees, the
deeper penetration of the bureaucracy cuts short the careers of the most able
civil service executives. Thus a cut
in the number of political appointees would lead to an increase of expertise and
professionalism near the top of agencies while still allowing for appropriate
control of administration policy by presidential appointees.[xxxv]
In addition, the large numbers of appointees and their control by the
White House has led to a significant slowing of the ability of a new
administration to get its appointees in place.[xxxvi]
The
conditions that led to the recommendations of the Volcker Commission in 1989
have not changed in the ensuing years of the 20th century.
In fact, two of the major changes in the federal civil service reinforce
the argument the government has more political appointees than needed.
First, the federal civilian workforce has been cut by 330,000, though the
reductions were only in the career ranks; the number of political appointees was
not reduced. Second, since much of
the work of the government has shifted from actually producing goods and
services to the oversight of contracts of those who provide the services, the
need for political direction of government management should be less.
What is needed in the negotiation and oversight of contracts is
expertise; the government does not need more political influence in the awarding
of contracts.
As
Chester Newland has argued (in this volume), merit in the career ranks must be
accompanied by merit in the political and executive ranks.
Without dedicated and competent political appointees, it will be very
difficult to ensure merit and commitment at lower levels.
The thrust of the Volcker Commission recommendations was that, with
increasing numbers of political appointees, it becomes more difficult to ensure
merit throughout the top of the executive leadership system.
B.
The Public Service Ethic
The
principles of merit as described above are negative in the sense that they are
protections from bad management, that is personnel decisions based on
factors other than merit are prohibited. But
we really expect more than protections from abuse in the public service;
citizens also expect a can-do spirit and a serious commitment to the public
interest. Mission accomplishment
needs to take precedence over minor inconvenience or monetary concerns.
With the admission that the federal government (as in all large
organizations) has its share of slackers and those retired in place, citizens
expect the kind of dedication to duty that characterizes the best of the postal
service, the armed services, the FBI, and the National Institutes of Health.
Many
of the most talented and dedicated public employees join the public service in
order to contribute to the public good. The
most talented career executives have lucrative options in the private sector
where they can make more money but many choose the public service because of the
challenge, the nature of the work, and the chance to make a difference in the
lives of others. How can Americans
preserve the best of this public service ethic — a commitment to the public
interest and a willingness to sacrifice in order to accomplish the mission —
when much of the public’s work is being carried out by non-governmental
organizations?
Incentive
systems in the private sector are oriented to the bottom line.
Business managers have commitments to stockholders and the future
profitability of the company, and there may be times when these commitments
override serving the public. But
these times should concern business decisions about what business to pursue and
which products to produce, not whether to fulfil the requirements of a contract
or how well to do a job.
First
of all, citizens have the right to expect the spirit of public service to
prevail in private sector organizations that carry out public purposes.
That is, contractors who collect refuse ought to be as concerned about
public health as are government employees. Private
manufacturers of jet fighters ought to be just as careful about quality control
as the military maintenance mechanics who service them.
Drug manufacturers ought to be just as committed to public health and
quality control as the Food and Drug Administration is about ensuring that they
are safe and effective. One already sees much of this commitment in the private
sector companies that carry out public programs.
The engineers at Morton Thiacol were just as much concerned with the
safety of the shuttle as the decision makers at NASA.
Realistically,
most people have mixed motives, and the public service ethic is not universal in
government employees, just as maximizing profit is not present in all employees
of the private sector. But the
commitment of workers ought to be determined by the mission to be accomplished,
not who signs their pay check. The
challenge is how to engender the public service ethic and commitment to mission
accomplishment in organizations that carry out public purposes, regardless of
the legal arrangements of their organization (public, business, non-profit).
The answer is the instillation of public service values through effective
leadership, informed management, and good recruitment — i.e. merit.[xxxvii]
In
seeking to instill these values in workers who carry out governmental policy, it
is essential to take a broad, inclusive view of public administration. George
Frederickson argues that “...governance comprehends the full range of public
activity — governmental, quasi-governmental, and nongovernmental.”
This fits with his definition of public administration: “Public
administration includes the state; indeed, it is rooted in the state.
But it is — and should be — more broadly defined to include the
administration or implementation aspects of all forms and manifestations of
collective public activity.”[xxxviii]
Frederickson
further argues that there is a danger in focusing too heavily on merely the
efficient delivery of goods and services by private contractors to the neglect
of the broader public service dimensions of doing the public’s business. “The
most destructive effect of [the] equating public service with commerce has been
the devaluation of public service to just another area in which individuals can
achieve essentially private ambitions....This tendency is particularly
destructive in public administration, for it attacks the assumption that a
special relationship should exist between public servants and citizens in a
democracy....The public expects something more from the bureaucracy, and rightly
so.”[xxxix]
What
is needed as the nature of governance changes in the United States is to ensure
that the “spirit of public administration,” or the “public service
ethic” infuses all who do the people’s work, regardless of who signs their
paycheck.
3.C.
Accountability
A
major challenge that has not been fully thought out by the government or the
public administration community is the question of accountability.
Political accountability is ensuring that the government is doing what
the people want it to do and is ensured (more or less) through regular
elections. Managerial accountability
is achieved through supervision of the work done to assure that policy
directives are being faithfully carried out.
Traditional accountability has been achieved through the processes of
bureaucracy and hierarchy, but as has been pointed out above, the way that the
government does business has been changing toward more contracting out.
Thus accountability through hierarchy is being replaced by accountability
through contract.[xl]
In
terms of efficiency, contracting out may save the taxpayers’ money and may
relieve the government of maintaining the personnel necessary to do many jobs
itself. On the other hand,
contracting for work attenuates the level of control that the government has
over the provision of goods and services. If
quality and quantity of what is contracted for is easy to specify in a contract,
the management problem is relatively simple.
But much of what the government acquires through contract is not simple
to specify in a contract. If changes
in the work are necessary, government leaders cannot give orders; they must
renegotiate the contract. As Don
Kettl argues, these new arrangements call for a new type of government manager.[xli]
In
addition to the problematic relationship between government managers and
contractors in the era of contracting, there are real dangers of fraud and
corruption. The history of U.S.
governments at all levels demonstrates that fraud in contracting is a common
problem. While most private sector
contractors are honest and competent, some will do their best to defraud the
taxpayers.[xlii]
Thus the government needs a new type of manager who can skillfully write
contracts and oversee them for quality and to detect fraud.
The dangers of fraud and the government programs at potential risk for
abuse are specified in Don Kettl in his book on government contracting, Sharing
Power.[xliii]
In his analysis of the implications of the new wave of contracting, George Frederickson argues that fraud will again become a major problem. “Hollowing out bureaucracy and eliminating regulations will make the seedbed for corruption and scandal....contracts have always made a tempting environment for kickbacks and fraud.”[xliv] He goes on to predict another wave of reforms. “The reforms that are being adopted may, at the margins, make government more productive, but they will almost certainly result in less ethical government. This being the case, in the years ahead we will eventually see another reform movement emphasizing administrative expertise, a merit-based civil service insulated from political meddling, and the use of regulations to control corruption.”[xlv]
Conclusion
As
America enters the 21st century, those concerned with the quality and
integrity of the public service have reason to be optimistic, but there are also
reasons to be concerned. The trend
of contracting out has created a strain in the federal public service because it
has increased uncertainty and was based in part of the premise that government
workers are inefficient. But the
more we learn about contracting the more we transcend this simplistic premise
and the more we know about when contracting pays off and when it is
inappropriate.
The
great battles over the role of the national government in the last three decades
of the 20th century have been bruising to the public service.
On the other hand, the pulling and hauling may have brought the political
system to an equilibrium in which the general scope of governmental action will
be accepted across the mainstream political spectrum despite disagreements at
the margins. If this is the case,
the public service can return to its mission of faithfully executing the laws.
Government
still faces the continuing challenges of ensuring the status of merit within the
public service and demanding non-partisan efficiency in the contracting
community. Accountability to the
will of the people expressed in public law is essential.
Finally, the public service ethic must be engendered in all those who do
the people’s work, regardless of who signs the paycheck.
ENDNOTES
[i].
See Patricia Ingraham, The Foundation of Merit (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 34.
[ii].
Ingraham, The Foundation of Merit, p. 34.
With the sudden increase in government programs and workers in the
early years of the New Deal, not all new workers were covered by the merit
system. Thus the percentage of
workers covered dropped during Roosevelt’s first term.
[iii].
See Chester Newland, “Politics of Transition from the
Administrative State to a Facilitative State,” in this volume.
[iv].
For an analysis of presidential suspicion toward the career
bureaucracy, see James P. Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency: Hitting the
Ground Running, second edition (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1996), pp. 74-76. The quote is
from Public Papers of the Presidents 1971, p. 448.
[v].
Quoted in Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency, p. 75, from
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports (16 October 1976), p. 3009.
[vi].
Ingraham, The Foundation of Merit, p. 71.
[vii].
The self interest claim, while partially true, was a narrow and
cynical perspective; but the efficacy of bureaucratic efforts to protect
their programs was belied by the significant domestic program and budget
cuts of Reagan’s first budget in 1981.
See Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency, Chapters 4 and 5.
[viii] See James P. Pfiffner, "The National Performance Review in Perspective," International Journal of Public Administration, Vol 20, No. 1 (1997), pp. 41-70.
[ix].
See James P. Pfiffner, “President Clinton and the 104th
Congress: Losing Battles but Winning the War,” Working Paper 97:4, The
Institute of Public Policy, George Mason University.
[x]. Clinton’s
statement symbolized the Democratic acceptance of a more conservative
political consensus in much the same way that President Nixon’s statement
that “We are all Keynsians now” symbolized the Republican acceptance of
deficit spending and the welfare state.
[xi]. Donald Kettl, et
al., Civil Service Reform (Washington: Brookings, 1996), p. 4.
[xii] A number of good reasons support contracting rather than directly providing government services. It can be done because expertise is needed that the government does not have. It can be done to gear up for a task for which the need for the workers will no longer exist once that task has been accomplished. Many goods can be produced more efficiently than the government could do it, and the competition of the marketplace may result in lower prices. Special expertise may be available that does not exist in the government. Private sector companies can operate without many of the procedural rules and constraints that the government must follow.
[xiii].
See James P. Pfiffner, “The American Tradition of Administrative
Reform,” in The White House and the Blue House: Government Reform in
the United States and Korea edited by Yong Hyo Cho and H. George
Frederickson (New York: University Press of America, 1997).
[xiv].
Donald Kettl, Reinventing Government: A Fifth-Year Report Card
(Washington: Brookings, 1998), p. 18.
[xv]. Paul C. Light,
“The True Size of Government,” Government Executive (January
1999).
[xvi].
General Accounting Office, “The Excepted Service: A Research
Profile,” (May 1997), GAO/GGD-97-72, p. 1.
[xvii]. Data can be found
in U.S. Civil Service Commission, Biography of an Ideal: The diamond
Anniversary History of the Federal Civil Service (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1958) and updates by OPM presented in Patricia Ingraham, The
Foundation of Merit (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995),
p. 34.
[xviii].
GAO, “The Excepted Service,” p. 11.
This probably overstates the coverage, since employees of the CIA,
DIA, and NSA are not included in the data used to calculate the percentages.
[xix].
GAO, “The Excepted Service, p. 5.
[xx]. The
President’s Reorganization Project: Personnel Management Project: Final
Staff Report, Vol. 1 (December 1977), p. 42, as quoted in GAO, p. 23.
[xxi].
Ingraham, The Foundation of Merit, p. 56.
[xxii] See Kerry Ban, “The National Performance Review as Implicit Evaluation of CSRA: Building on or Overturning the Legacy?” in this volume. The OPM workforce dropped from 6,861 in 1993 to 3,567 in 1998. (Patricia Ingraham and Donald Moynihan, “Evolving Dimensions of Performance from the CSRA Onward,” in this volume. The number of personnelists in the government has decreased by 21 percent (8,900) from 1993 to 1998. (Chester Newland, “Politics of Transition from the Administrative to a Facilitative State,” in this volume.
[xxiii].
Presentation of Diane M. Disney, Deputy Assistant secretary of
Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy (May 15, 1998).
[xxiv].
NAPA, New Options, New Talent: The Government Guide to the
Flexible Workforce, HRM Series IV, Washington, NAPA (August 1998), p.
xiv.
[xxv].
NAPA, New Options, New Talent, p. 14.
While these three categories might simplify some aspects of federal
hiring, Chapter 2 of the NAPA report describes four five types of
relationships that might exist between an employee and the government that
might be through intervening organizations such as a Professional employer
organization (PEO), consulting firm, temporary help company, or an
independent contractor. (pp. 17-21.) This
new workforce might be more flexible, but it would certainly not be more
simple.
[xxvi].
Ingraham, The Foundation of Merit, p. 56.
A longer list of merit principles can be found in Title 5 (section
2302, b) and are adapted in “The Merit System Principles,” OPM pamphlet
MES-97-2 (June 1997).
[xxvii].
See the list of overlays on the merit system in Ingraham, The
Foundation of Merit, p. 57.
[xxviii].
We ought not to expect public servants, or political appointees for
that matter, to be neutral with respect to program.
We expect that since they have committed a portion of their careers
to the carrying out of public purposes that they will be advocates for the
accomplishment of those purposes. This
expectation of legitimate advocacy does not, however, justify fanaticism,
zealotry, or unethical practices in the protection of their “turf.”
We still expect that they will render their best judgment to
political superiors in the executive branch and members of Congress and
abide by authoritative policy decisions.
[xxix].
For an analysis of the reasons why federal managers often do not use
the regulations available to remove poor performers, see U.S. Merit Systems
Protection Board, Office of Policy and Evaluation, “Removing Poor
Performers in the Federal Service, (September 1995).
[xxx].
For an analysis of the changes in contracting achieved in the first
term of the Clinton administration see Steve Kelman, “Implementing Federal
Procurement Reform,” in James P. Pfiffner, editor, The Managerial
Presidency, 2nd edition (College Station, TX: Texas A&M
University Press, 1999).
[xxxi].
For the data on political appointments see James P. Pfiffner, The
Modern Presidency, 2nd edition (New York: St. Martin’s
Press), p. 117.
[xxxii].
National Commission on the Public Service, Leadership for America:
Rebuilding the Public Service (Washington, D.C., 1989), for a detailed
argument for a reduction in the number of political appointees see the Task
Force Reports to the Commission, “Politics and Performance:
Strengthening the Executive Leadership System,” (pp. 157-190) The Task
Force on Relations Between Political Appointees and Career Executives was
chaired by Elliot L. Richardson; the staff director was James P. Pfiffner.
[xxxiii].
Paul Light, Thickening Government (Washington: Brookings,
1995), p. 7.
[xxxiv].
Light, Thickening Government, p. 7.
[xxxv].
For a trenchant critique of our patronage system in the executive
branch, see David M. Cohen, “Amateur Government,” Journal of Public
Administration and Theory, Vol. 8, No. 4 (October 1998), pp. 450-498.
[xxxvi].
For data on the pace of political appointments, see Pfiffner, The
Strategic Presidency, Chapter 8 and Conclusion.
[xxxvii].
For an analysis of effective leadership in the public and private
sectors, see Hal Rainey and Ed Kellough, “Civil Service Reform and
Incentives in the Public Service,” in this volume.
[xxxviii].
H. Gorge Frederickson, The Spirit of Public Administration
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), p. 225.
[xxxix].
Frederickson, The Spirit of Public Administration, p. 195-196.
[xl].
For a typology of different kinds of accountability and their
implications, see Barbara Romzek, “Accountability Implications of Civil
Service Reform,” in this volume.
[xli].
Donald Kettl, Sharing Power (Washington: Brookings, 1993).]
[xlii].
For one egregious case, see Normal
Ricucci, Unsung Heroes (Washington: Georgetown University Press,
1995), Chapter 5, “Stephen Marica: Using the Wedtech Scandal to Establish
Credibility”.
[xliii].
Kettl, Sharing Power, pp. 4-5.
[xliv].
Frederickson, The Spirit of Public Administration, p. 193.
[xlv].
Frederickson, The Spirit of Public Administration, p. 194.