Inside the Reinvention Machine

About this book

The National Performance Review has been one of the liveliest management reforms in American history. It has helped reorient the federal bureaucracy toward a far more effective attack on the government's problems. This book provides the first independent assessment of the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" plan after more than a year of effort. What has the reinvention machine produced? Where does it most need to be oiled and adjusted? And has it truly changed the way the federal government conducts its business? Inside the Reinvention Machine brings together a distinguished group of public management experts for a look at both the practice and the theory of reinventing government. In examining the movement's driving ideas, relationships with the government's work force, and connections with the broader political community, these experts 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 that is needed 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 succeed in the long run, and examines the lessons about the president's role in governmental management that the NPR's experiment in decentralized administration teaches.