Snippets of Peter Orszag
By Elizabeth Newell
OMB Director Peter Orszag spoke at a Government Executive leadership breakfast this morning, and we have stories posted on his comments on federal pay and combating distrust in government. But a couple other comments stuck out at me.
On the SAVE Awards:
Orszag strongly insinuated that many of the cost-saving ideas submitted through the SAVE awards process were not worthy of transparency. While he said the primary reason that only four of the ideas were make public was to allow for candid internal discussions, he made several jokes about the quality of the ideas and said "many were not as promising as one might have hoped for." Here are some other quotes on the awards process.
"On a quality- adjusted basis, we might be a little below [the more than 38,000 ideas submitted]. We had a selection process for highlighting and including in the budget the best ideas... I think the issue really is similar - and we're continually evaluating this question - to the internal discussions on the budget. Before decisions are made, what is the balance of transparency versus preserving the discussion."
"What I'd like to do is take the maybe four or five hundred of them that were at the bottom of the distribution and share them with you to give you an idea of the somewhat sordid process we went through."
On a management agenda:
Orszag also made it pretty clear the administration won't be spending time coming up with a catchy name for their management agenda, a la the Bush Administration's President's Management Agenda (PMA) or the Clinton era National Performance Review (NPR).
"I don't know that a cute name is what's necessary. I think what we need to do is do the hard work. If we succeed in significantly transforming the IT backbone of the government and working with [OPM Director] John Berry on significantly improving not only the hiring part but the other components of the human capitol agenda, those will be huge, lasting fundamental changes that will make the federal government work better for decades to come. There are other additional things that need to happen that we're acting upon - contracting a good example - but in terms of the underlying core function of the federal government across every agency, that IT backbone and a high-performing workforce are, I think, the two foundational pieces to an improved federal government."
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So since when has the government been interested in IT? Systems that have been used by industry for years are just now making there way into government work. So why the change of heart? We all know IT eliminates manpower what can be done manually by many can be performed by one and a spreadsheet. The leadership wants to pump up Governement employement today with so many out of work yet technology will eliminate the need for people. So what is it we going to join the 21st century or is this all just mouthwash for those who speak with folked tongue. After many years of civil service seeing great suggestions evaluated and given rejection using terms like Fad,Already adopted, wont work because. This has all been to protect jobs for years so the food chain can get their worth so the Feds cant hide anymore are they afraid the general public will see they have done nothing to be the leaders in IT burning the taxpayers dollars. So if we havent spent the money on IT inprovements over the past 30 years what do we spend all that money on?
LC Posted Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:46 AMThis is a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black. The main flaw in the SAVE Awards is that it was administered by OMB: A significant conflict of interest. If someone has a good idea, then the program examiner covering the program is going to catch some heat about why he or she didn't think of it first. In some cases program examiners would be embarrassed that someone else came up with ideas on "their programs." Some of those good ideas were probably "lost" by the assigned program examiner. I surely hope OMB had more sense than to assign the ideas to the program examiners who cover the exact same programs. I doubt OMB has the sense, though.
It would really make sense to have another agency handling the competition, perhaps on a rotating basis. Budget savings is not OMB's area of expertise.
If some of the ideas were lacking "quality," then this perhaps points to the need for tens of billions of dollars in training for agencies' career employees -- the type of expensive training, for example, that political appointees receive. That isn't going to happen, so it allows critics to have it both ways. The politicals say that employees "aren't with the program," but they won't take the time or money to tell them what "the program" is.
Craigie Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2010 7:46 AM