Secretary O'Leary and senior Department of Energy officials have responded swiftly and positively. In responding to Congress and the White House's National Science and Technology Council, Secretary O'Leary laid out an integrated response that includes several departmental initiatives, such as the strategic alignment effort begun before the Galvin Report was issued. In addition, she asked Undersecretary Charles Curtis to respond directly to the Galvin Report recommendations on governance and oversight.
The details of the DOE response are described in an accompanying story (see below). In essence, Mr. Curtis has embraced the recommendations of Appendix B of the report dealing with fixing the GOCO (government-owned, contractor-operated) governance system. Instead of a corporatelike structure of governance as envisioned by the Galvin Task Force, the department will establish a Laboratory Operations Board with strong representation from the private sector. In addition, Bruce Twining, manager of the Albuquerque Operations Office, has agreed to sponsor several oversight pilots to establish a more productive and efficient operation at the Laboratory.
These are all very positive and encouraging changes. If you have not yet felt a lifting of the oversight burden and a move to a more productive relationship between DOE and the Laboratory, it is because at the working level little has changed to date. Over the years the DOE system has been honed to have government employees focus on compliance and procedure. Changing the system and culture to focus on results requires building trust and changing the reward system, which must be done in partnership with the laboratories. Mr. Galvin has continued to caution that such changes will take time.
Congress also has followed up aggressively on the Galvin Report. Most of the hearings covering the DOE have featured the Galvin Report. In March, I participated in two hearings in the House. (My written testimonies are available at the Lab library and at the Lab's Community Reading Room.) Mr. Galvin has personally presented the report recommendations and his personal views, both in the House and in the Senate. It is quite clear Mr. Galvin has the respect and admiration of Congress. His views carry significant weight.
On the issue of governance, Mr. Galvin places the burden of a broken system squarely at the feet of Congress and the Department of Energy. At the March 9 hearing before the House Science Committee, Mr. Galvin stated categorically the system of governance is broken -- and the laboratories did not break it. In my view, Congress is receiving Mr. Galvin's message more positively than at any other time in the past 10 years. However, Congress is also in a mood to cut the size of government and particularly to cut the budget.
The next six months will be exciting as the Congress scrutinizes the DOE budget request with the Galvin recommendations in mind. In addition, both the House and the Senate are seriously considering eliminating the Department of Energy along with several other cabinet-level departments. I have tried to pass along the advice of Peter Drucker (one of the foremost philosophers and organizational effectiveness thinkers of this century) -- in many if not most cases, downsizing has turned out to be something that surgeons for centuries have warned against: "amputation before diagnosis." The result is always a casualty.
Size, at the department or the Laboratory, must follow function. Before deciding if there should be a Department of Energy, Congress should consider what it needs from the nuclear defense establishment in the post-Cold War era, and it should consider what the role of the government will be in civilian technologies, such as energy and environment and their influence on the economy. Before sizing the DOE laboratories, the Congress and DOE should decide what role they want the laboratories to play in the reconfigured defense complex and in the civilian world. They also should decide where in the government these functions are best performed. Secretary of Defense Bill Perry has weighed in against the transfer of the nuclear weapons functions from the DOE to the DoD, for example. The goal of all of this surely must be more effective, not just smaller, government.
Having said that, I tend to agree with several recent observations that radical changes are required in the area of governance and oversight of government functions. Peter Drucker, in the February 1995 issue of Atlantic Monthly, claims the reinventing-government effort is getting nowhere fast because the basic approach is wrong. He believes the civilian part of the U.S. government is too large and has outlived its policies. He states ... trying to patch and to spot-weld, here, there and yonder ... never accomplishes anything. There will be no results unless there is a radical change in the way the federal government and its agencies are managed and paid. Drucker states the government must rethink itself. Every agency, every policy, every program, every activity, should be confronted with these questions: "What is your mission? Is it still the right mission? Is it still worth doing? If we were not already doing this, would we now go into it?"
Rethinking, Drucker says, is not primarily concerned with cutting expenses. Although costs are cut, it leads above all to a tremendous increase in performance, in quality, in service. I believe that is sound advice, not only for the government but for us.
Another graphic illustration of the need for radical government reform is presented by Philip K. Howard in his recent book, The Death of Common Sense. Howard claims that over the past 30 years, modern regulatory law, in contrast to centuries of common law, has taken away the use of judgment and discretion. The drive toward establishing a rationalistic order has driven the government to be self-executing and dispassionate. Government has evolved to where fairness is established by following a book of rules, but the rule book of modern regulatory law has become unknowable, in Howard's view because it has too many entries. The rule book is intended to prevent government officials from exercising arbitrary authority. Instead, Howard claims, it prevents them from doing the sensible thing.
In Howard's view, the government has backed itself into a situation of never being allowed to be seen as doing any harm. The government is now expected to act as an impartial decision-maker, giving everyone a fair shot. The government is forced into sameness in order to demonstrate fairness. What follows is that few decisions are made. The government deludes itself into thinking the right decisions will be made if we build in enough procedural protection -- a thick enough rule book, if you will. Justifying the fairness process has become more important than the goal. Since corruption by government officials is considered among the most hideous of crimes, we are willing to put a lot of safeguards into the integrity of government processes.
But, the more safeguards and the more procedures, the less the government can set priorities, because process has no sense of priorities. Howard believes that process has become the secret weapon of the status quo. Process is defensive -- the more procedures, the less government can do. He goes on to say government has lost sight of the end -- the process has become more important than results. Government agencies, he believes, now typically act as referees to the process, not decision-makers. He believes responsibility, not process, is the key ingredient to action. The role of the government should be to make choices, not to avoid them under the illusion of searching for the nonexistent truth. Quite frankly, I worry about how much of this malaise we have built into our own system here at the Laboratory. In industry, quality initiatives often focus on improving processes. But processes are tied to results, and results are driven by customer requirements.
Is it any wonder then that the Galvin Report found the current system of governance broken and advocated it be replaced with a bold alternative? Mr. Galvin has continued to push vigorously for the idea of corporatization of the laboratories; that is, ownership by the U.S. government but management styled after the private sector. The intent is to free the laboratories from government gridlock -- so starkly depicted by Drucker and Howard. What Mr. Galvin had in mind was to start over, to get back to where people are expected to make decisions and to be held accountable. There are only a few agencies left in the government that can do that without endless interference from either the legislative or executive branches or without being held hostage by judicial proceedings built into the rule book.
Mr. Galvin reiterated the reports message at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., on April 13. In addition to laying out the essence of the Task Force recommendations, he closed a panel discussion, in which I participated, with some strong comments on governance. He said -- look at all the reports there have been over the last score or so of years, they all said the same thing because the ... problem never got fixed. It ain't gonna get fixed this time either, if they don't reorganize -- radically. He admonished the federal government to become a world-class customer, one that operates on the basis of trust. In arguing for a stronger role for the laboratories in governance, he reminded the government that the people doing this work are American citizens, they are not aliens. This comment struck a particularly strong resonance with me because much of the oversight and auditing frenzy of the last decade made me feel as if the government is treating us as common criminals rather than citizens concerned about the welfare of the nation.
Mr. Galvin closed with the comments -- You can't run an institution that way. ... You've gotta break away entirely. It's got to be a whole new mold. ... It can't go half the way. At this point, the old Chinese proverb may you live in interesting times came to mind. The next six months will be an interesting time. Stay tuned.