Reader Question 17. Government Reform Methods Defined
Question: “I noticed that your definition of government reform differs from that currently being done in my state.” The governor of my state “has setup a commission to review each of the state agencies’ goals in order to steam line government and eliminate redundant activities. The commission will report its findings and recommendations within one year. Your approach appears to be more focused on the activities of an agency.”
Answer: Your observations are correct but in this blog format where I give general advice I do not have the details for giving the kind of specific advice that a state reform commission like the one in your state is setup to do. I have recommended elsewhere that a state reform commission be setup just for this kind of top level over view before attempting specific reforms within individual agencies. The logic here is why spend time and resources on an agency, which a reform commission may find, has redundant activities.
I do have a disagreement with the approach used by the majority of state reform commissions too often they tend to focus on reforming specific agencies. I prefer to take a broader approach starting by defining the states “Needs” and reviewing the functions that fulfill those Needs. Each of the State’s agencies performs one or more of these functions. All state reorganization should be by function not by agency because it is easier to remove a function from an agency and place it with similar functions in another agency. You may also remove a process from a function where the process is redundant within other agencies. An example of this in my recommendation for “Centralized State Purchasing” which removes the process of the actual purchase from agencies to the state level where volume bids can be let. See Article 21. “Centralized Purchasing- The Best Way to Balance State Budgets.” Article 22. “Functional Restructuring of State Government rather than Departmental Restructuring.” and Article 23. “The Relationship between Needs, Functions, Funding Formulas, and Performance Budgeting” .
Another problem is that state reform commissions often miss the relationship between vertical functions and their interface with horizontal functions. This is where several vertical functions have shared responsibilities. The shared responsibilities are managed through a special horizontal function made up of a team with its members from the vertical functions. An example is in foster childcare with a number of different state functions with shared responsibilities. See Article 26. “Reorganizing (Restructuring) using Vertical and Horizontal Functions or their Processes.” .
