Inside the reinvention machine: appraising governmental reform

Abstract

In this book, the authors of Improving Goverment Performance: An Owner's Manual(Brookings, 1993) join with other public management experts for a look at both the practice and theory of reinventing government. In examining the movement's driving ideas, relationships with the government's workforce, and connections with the broader political community, they take stock of the boldest governmental reform movement in a generation. The authors assert that Vice President Gore's National Performance Review has sparked remarkable innovations by operating managers in federal agencies. The NPR, however, has unleashed broad changes throughout the federal government without building the new capacity in the Executive Office of the President required to manage the changing burdens of federal programs. The book appraises the many positive management reforms that federal managers have created, assesses the central political and administrative support that the White House must provide if the NPR is to be successful in the long run, and examines the lessons about the president's role in governmental management that the NPR's experiment in decentralised administration teaches. The contributors are Carolyn Ban, State University of New York (SUNY), Albany; Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Brookings; Gerald J. Garvey, Princeton; Constance Homer, Brookings; and Beryl Radin, SUNY, Albany.