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Reinventing Government:Fast BulletsandCulture Changes
By Robert P. Hillmann 
 
In early March 1993 President Clinton created what is now called the NationalPartnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) and named Vice President Al Gore toserve as his point man in a drive to reinvent government in the United States.
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Whileon the surface it may appear to be nothing more than just another governmentmanagement fad, it is anything but that.
Defining the Term Reinventing Government
The term "Reinventing Government" comes from a book with the same namewritten by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. The concept however, has been inpractice in the private sector since the mid 1980's where it is more commonlyreferred to as business process reengineering or simply reengineering. Today theseterms are for the most part used interchangeably, although some in government stillprefer to use the term reinvent as opposed to reengineer.Trying to discover exactly what is meant by the term "reinventinggovernment" is not an easy task. Much of what has been written about the subjectgets bogged down in jargon that many of its users don't completely understand.Jerry Mechling, director of the Program on Strategic Computing andTelecommunications in the Public Sector at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, is the author of one of the most clear and concise articles written onthe subject. In an article for GOVERNING magazine Mechling refers to reinventinggovernment as "Public- Sector Reengineering".
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In explaining what reengineering ishe simply states that "Reengineering is radical change".
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He then goes on to identifythree elements necessary for reengineering to occur
 
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Fundamental change: "In a fundamental redesign, allsteps in the process are subject to redesign; it is notreengineering if only a few steps are changed. Thesweeping nature of the change distinguishesreengineering from other organizational change."
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Rapid Progress toward radical goals: "True reengineeringhas radical goals that it intends to reach rapidly."
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 "Incremental 'fixes' are not reengineering.Reengineering is revolution, not evolution, both in endsand means."
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Selective use of appropriate information technology: Itis the use of information technology that marks the truedistinction between the terms reinventing governmentand reengineering government. While to reinventgovernment simply means to radically alter it, toreengineer it means to use computers and otherinformation technologies to achieve the radical goals.
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 Reengineering in the public sector is much more difficult than in the privatesector. The reason for this is that very often it will "…require coordination andchange across bureaucratic lines of authority."
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These bureaucratic lines can becorporate governmental boundaries as is the case with municipal governments, theconstitutionally recognized boundaries between the 50 states or the lines thatseparate the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government.They can also be the physical, economic and philosophical borders betweensovereign nations. In fact, Mechling and company say that one of the majorobstacles in the way of public-sector reengineering is "America's constitutionallyembedded reluctance to authorize governmental innovations (the checks andbalances which constrain government)".
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The net result is that governmental entitiesare able to resist radical change in ways that private sector organizations cannot.Mechling says that, "In government the safest and even the fastest progressmay often be made through small steps, rather than through reengineering. Therevolutionary ends of reengineering are almost always valuable, but in governmentthe risks of revolutionary means may be too high."
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In other words he is saying thatyou should remember that it is the radical change and not the reengineering process
 
that is the goal. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reinventing government bulletinboard, NPRNews.COE, cautions military personnel in a similar way noting, "Asnecessary as organizational improvements are, there is a danger that we canimplement the Performance Measurement Process and other reinventing efforts in away that does not fit the demands of the new world order."
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Clearly the militarypersonnel are being told here that the goal of the radical change that is to beeffected has to do with the creation of a new world order and not with theorganizational improvement that would also occur as a result of the reengineeringprocess.Once it is determined that reengineering is the proper way to make theradical change that is desired, the first thing that must be done is to carefully makepreparations and gain support for the planned operation, keeping in mind that themore radical the change, the more opposition that will be encountered.
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Theopposition to reengineering projects generally comes from "insiders"-- people whoare close to and aware of what is going on within the targeted institution and whoselives may be greatly affected by the outcome. Supporters on the other hand willcome from two separate groups. The first of these, like its opponents, will come frominsiders but this will be a relatively small group.
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"The second and larger group,however, is comprised of people who don't normally pay close attention. These'outside' supporters get involved only if they think that there is an important issue tobe resolved. They may not even notice small changes."
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Osborne and Gaebler makea similar comment in "Reinventing Government" when they state: "Just as Columbusnever knew he had come upon a new continent, many of today's pioneers—fromgovernors to city managers, teachers to social workers—do not understand theglobal significance of what they are doing."
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The last step in the process is to quickly
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