Discuss efforts (particularly during the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations) to improve productivity in the agencies of the federal government of the United States in the context of the notion of "dichotomy" in the historic public administration literature

After reading and researching the topic that was given to us, it seems that during the Clinton – Bush era, a dichotomy did not exist. Personally, it seems that the two had word together to accomplish the same goal.  I say this because during this time, both republicans and democrats agreed with how their elected officials ran the government. By the two working together seemed to improve productivity in the agencies of the federal government of the United States.

During the Clinton administration, his ideas were significantly influenced by the New Public Management (NPM).  The NPM was a trend that surfaced in Europe and Oceania during the 1990s.  One of the key components of NPM was acknowledging citizens as customers.  The case for this strategy rested  on the fact that more local government services were becoming “ fee- for – services” based, and citizens in general were demanding a level of service quality , one equivalent to the one that was provided by private sectors. Clinton reinvented the federal government by altering the ways in which the federal government conducted its affairs and interactions with the “customers” (citizens) they served.  Under the Clinton administration, he created the National Performance Review which incorporated reinventing government principles and exhorted federal agencies to downsize, eliminate unnecessary regulations, focus on results, and offer customer service equal to or better than “the best in business.”  The NPR goals included:

1.       Employee empowerment

2.       Restructure and “do more with less”

3.       Performance budgeting

4.       Enhance use of information technology

5.       Identified performance goals and set customer service standards.

During the Bush administration, the use of data to make budgetary and programmatic decisions became the foundation of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). The PMA was the Bush administration plan for the federal government. Under the Bush administration, private alternatives such as competitive outsourcing were favored as a performance management measure. President Bush espoused competition and privatization as the best option to overcome bureaucratic resistance.  Under the PMA, federal agencies were required to show how public programs achieve results more efficiently than other methods, such as faith – based, private, or nonprofit alternatives.  The MPA goals included:

1.         Strategic management of human capital

2.        Competitive sourcing – privatization

3.       Improved financial performance

4.       Expanded electronic government

5.       Budget and performance integration (GPRA)

Under both the Bush and Clinton administration efforts had a citizen/customer focus and emphasized a greater use of electronic government. The Clinton electronic government effort spawned the Government Paperwork Elimination Act and hundreds of innovative web projects. The Bush effort winnowed those efforts to 24 that had the potential for significant changes in government (such as an electronic travel system), for citizens (such as a common portal for federal benefits), and for businesses (such as a common portal for all regulations affecting businesses). It extended its efforts via the E-Government Act of 2002. Both reform efforts also placed greater attention on improving program performance and obtaining results. While the Clinton reform effort undertook the initial implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act, which created a new supply of performance information, the Bush administration systematically attempted to leverage that information to improve agency performance and increase accountability for results. Both administrations, after several years of top-down recommendations and initiatives, shifted to more of a support role in which they worked with senior agency leaders to develop initiatives and performance targets jointly. This led to greater ownership by agency-level political appointees. Together, both reform efforts shared a number of common recommendations on improving financial management, strengthening human capital, and achieving budget reform. Efforts begun under Clinton were more concretely implemented under Bush. Interestingly, both also encountered challenges in explaining the results and value of their effort to the public.

Despite these similarities, the Clinton and Bush reforms displayed a number of important differences, especially in their implementation. Clinton’s initial six month Performance Review generated over 1200 recommendations. By sheer volume, some thought it discredited itself. There were enough idealistic ideas in the initial set of recommendations that those naturally opposed to real reform used them to impugn the credibility of the entire effort. In addition, the Clinton effort continued to generate initiatives and recommendations during the course of the entire eight-year effort. It issued over 100 reports and publications. Bush’s Management Agenda, on the other hand, focused on a few large ideas that represented long-standing, well-known management challenges. The Bush administration doggedly focused on the implementation of these core elements for its entire eight years and added or deleted relatively few items from its Management Agenda.