Presidential Management Initiatives: A Ford Legacy to Executive Management Improvement

Abstract

No recent initiative for improving executive management generated more debate among active participants than Presidential Management Initiatives (PMI). Launched by President Gerald Ford on July 23, 1976 and subsequently incorporated into the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) budget preparation instructions to major spending federal departments and agencies in November, 1976, PMI was terminated by the Carter Administration less than six weeks after taking office. ' This seven month experiment marked the shortest half-life of any major presidential management reform in recent memory. Few officials outside of the Washington community even heard of PMI. The usually attentive press missed both its beginning and passing. In the annals of government management, Presidential Management Initiatives may well be relegated to a footnote. However, this experiment deserves far more than an abbreviated obituary not as gauged by results, limited as they were, but for what it sought to accomplish. The brief experiment in Presidential Management Initiatives provides a particularly interesting insight into recurring efforts to use the federal budget to improve the management of federal departments and agencies. This issue should be of major concern to those who see in the budget process great opportunities to achieve presidential objectives and improve the management of government. From this perspective PMI's legacy is a valuable one, adding to our cumulative knowledge and experience derived from the program-planning-budgeting (PPB) experiment of the late 1960s, the introduction of managementby-objective (MBO) in the early 1970s, and the use of zero based budgeting (ZBB) by the Carter administration. Presidential Management Initiatives also may shed new light upon the institutional constraints which have plagued those who sought to integrate OMB's responsibilities for central budget review with management. PMI highlights the discontinuous but frequent efforts to promote improved government by means of new systems, techniques, and other approaches for dealing with the ever-growing management problems of government. In a broader sense, PMI adds to the ongoing debate among presidential scholars concerning the president's roles and responsibilities as manager of government.2 Thus, PMI offers a brief, but nonetheless instructive history of an attempt to link management and budget within the Office of Management and Budget and to promote this objective among the major spending departments and agencies of the executive branch.