STATEMENT OF HUGH HECLO BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE HOUSE POST OFFICE AND CIVIL SERVICE COMMITTEE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP95-00535R000300080034-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2013
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: April 12, 1984
• Content Type: MISC

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STATEMENT OF HUGH HECLO
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE
HOUSE POST OFFICE AND CIVIL SERVICE COMMITTEE
APRIL 12,1984
WASHINGTON, D. C.
MADAM CHAIRWOMAN:
I am grateful for this opportunity to offer my evalua-
tion of the Senior Executive Service as it has evolved over
the past five years.
lam a professor of government at Harvard University
and a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
I have published books and articles on problems of federal
executive management, and one of these contributions (A Gov-
ernment of Strangers,Brookings, 1977) has been alternatively
blamed or credited with advancing ideas that lay behind SES
provisions in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. In short,
I am one of those academic types who has never met a payroll.
But I have tried to listen carefully to and think
seriously about what practitioners in government say and do.
And I have been greatly informed by reading all of the testi-
mony presented to this Subcommittee since last November 7th.
This reading of your hearing materials leads me in fact
to my first conclusion. I believe Gladys Spellman's instincts
were correct when she insisted on the sunset provision that
set these hearings in motion five years later. Without this
provision, the current scrutiny being given to the system
would never have occurred. I believe that our approach to the
difficult problem of executive management should still be
regarded as experimental. The evidence is not yet in. We do
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not know whether it is too soon for the results of more
effective management to show up, or whether it is too soon
for anyone to have really had a chance to politically abuse
the system. A new statutory requirement for congressional
review should be enacted. I think that this time the leash
should be shorter --say three years-- to hold the political
managers of this vital personnel system more accountable.
It is in the spirit of Gladys Spellman's initiative that
I will, as frankly as possible, give you my evaluation of
what has happened.
Your Subcommittee's work leads me to a second observation.
.-- I am struck by how little evidence of serious evaluation is
forthcoming from the central personnel leadership of the
executive branch. Compared to the fine work of the GAO
and the information presented by Common Cause, the Federal
Executive Institute Alumni Association, the Senior Executives
Association, and the Office of Merit System Review and Studies
--compared to this body of material the Office of Personnel
Management seems to have little to offer.
I find it absurd, for example, that Director Devine's
testimony cites evidence that senior executives express
4-. cncasul
satisfaction with their jobs ,to conclude that the SES corps
is in high spirits. Of course it may mean nothing of the
kind. At Harvard I may take great pride in my own little
personal projects while regarding the larger bureaucratic
system of Harvard as an abomination.
Five years ago serious evaluations were begun at OPM.
Today these efforts seem to have faded and not been renewed.
Neither was it encouraging in November 1982 to see OPM'i
evaluation office reorganized under a political directorship
for public affairs. GAO should be asked to examine the
executive branch's evaluation process and results; if the
central personnel agency cannot be induced to produce objec-
tive evaluations, the Congress should expand its capacities
to do so.
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My third conclusion is admittedly more judgmental.
But in a situation such as this I do not think we should
hide from making judgements. While I find the GAO evidence
useful, I also find it (like the Grace Commission report)
unduly narrow. It tends to view the SES as an isolated set
of personnel techniques. It sees particular occurrences --the
paycap, the stab in the back on bonuses, the "performance
appiaisal systems"that most participants see as having minimal
effect on performance, the mobility enhancing techniques that
are not being used to develop peoples' careers, job-enriching
sabbaticals that have gone to a total of five persons in
non-defense related agencies--these occurrences are seen by
the Comptroller General as the causes
rather than as the symptoms of larger
there are few smoking guns to suggest
system must be working pretty well.
The GAO statement puts the best
in its general tone and spirit, is an
of disappointments
problems. And since
politicization, the
face possible on what,
unhappy story. Indeed
I think there is a feeling in many quarters that since there
is no obvious,terrible flaw in the SES conception, it is better
to let the system lie and not disturb it too much.
I judge the implications of the evidence differently.
As I see it, we are not succeeding in the attempt to create
a creditable higher civil service. We are not doing so
because we do not have--indeed the 1978 Civil Service Reform
Act did not even contemplate creating-- a larger system of
public management into which the SES could fit and be sustained.
Reformers saw it as their job to fix the bureaucrats and not
the larger disorders of political management in which civil
service problems are embedded. To do more would have been too
controversial. In its internal conception SES may be fine.
But we are trying to fit a healthy component into a flawed
and ailing structure. In the remaining time alloted to me
I would like to try to elaborate these points.
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Is This Success?
Let me very quickly itemize a few major findings
without bothering to footnote the witnesses in question.
Each result is subject to qualifications of course, but
ask yourself this question: Are these, taken altogether,
the signs of a successfully operating personnel system?
o-- over 70% of current and former executives believe
SES is not providing a system designed to attract
and retain competent senior executives
o-- almost 90% of senior executives do not feel SES
has improved the quality of government outputs
o-- 80% of executives say the system of financial
incentives has had nil or negative effects on
performance
o-- most executives feel it is the intrinsic value of
their work and not financial incentives dangled by
top management that motivates effective performance
o-- 82% of executives report the management incentives
of the Merit Pay System is not worth their cost
of administration
o-- most senior executives believe their agencies'
performance appraisal system has little effect on
performance, hasn't improved communication between
superiors and subordinates, and is not worth the
cost
o-- 50% of executives think bonus awards are not being
made in a fair manner in their agencies
o-- most executives perceive bonuses as going dispro-
portionately to persons who make a big splash or
work closely with political officials, not managers
who work quietly and effectively out of the limelight
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o-- 40 or more of senior executives have witnessed
one or more forms of arbitrary personnel actions,
mainly arising from partisan politics or the desire
of top management to place a particular person
o-- 54% of executives feel the SES Candidate Develop-
ment program is not working successfully in their
agencies
o-- 75% of executives feel managerial flexibility under
SES has not been used to improve executive development
o-- 75% of executives think relations between political
appointees and career executives is not fostering
managerial effectiveness
o-- of those who entered SES in 1979, 40% have left
government
o-- 22% of career executives say they are planning to
leave
o-- 72% of career executives would not recommend a
career in the federal government to their children
Madam Chairwoman I do not believe these are the signs
df a successfully operating higher civil service. I
believe that in the private sector if a personnel
director and his staff produced these kinds of results
among a company's employees he would be summarily
fired. And he would deserve to be.
Apart from a rather silly emphasis on financial
incentives and productivity measures to motivate high
level professionals, the basic problems do not arise
from within the SES program itself. The fundamental
problems arise from trying to graft a well- conceived
SES system onto an ill-conceived non-system of political
management and legislative oversight.
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Where Good Intentions Went Wrong
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was born with a
split personality. On the one hand it was the culmination
of several generations of effort by "good government" types
to produce a positive, high level role for senior civil
servants. On the other hand the Act was responding to a
more recent surge of anti-Washington, "government is the
problem" sentiment.. The selling of civil service reform
inside the bureaucracy required concentrating on the former.
The selling of reform to the larger outside political world
required riding the emotions of the latter. Because bureau-
crats were lazy, SES should make them work harder; because
they were obstructionist, SES should make them more respon-
sive; because they were incompetent, reform should make them
easier to fire.
In this atmosphere there was absolutely no incentive for
anyone to take on the politically tough question of how to
ensure the effective management of this new SES mechanism.
Civil service reformers were just that, trying to "fix
bureaucrats" without intervening in the political management
of the system. Reformers were like the marriage counselor
who deals only with wives.
If you doubt that this gap lies at the heart of SES's
troubles, ask yourself this question. After five years, how
many of the persons who designed the SES system can be found
today with any general responsibility for supervising the
implementation of their design? I know of no surer recipe
for failure than to separate people's personal career stakes
from the fate of the projects they are called upon to manage.
Yet that is what we have done. To ask temporary political
appointees to superintend most of the operation of the complex
SES system is roughly comparable to entrusting the family
heirlooms .to atwo year-old (which is roughly how long most
political appointees remain on the scene).
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Let me assure you that I do not believe political
appointees are generally malevolent or stupid or uncaring.
It is all a matter of incentives. Temporary political
executives do not have to live with the consequences of
their management of the SES system; their real careers
lie elsewhere. There are few concrete reasons to worry
about the long-term health of the higher civil service
personnel system and strong reasons to worry about short
term policy and personal agendas. Bureaucratic performance
is likely to be thought of in terms of quick responsiveness
to direction or simple, mechanistic measures of productivity
that can be easily understood. For political appointees it
is personally rational to be institutionally foolish regard-
ing management of SES--not to worry about long-term resent-
ments against the way bonuses are used, not to worry about
the executive development of officials who will be of use
only to a successor administration, not to look past short-
term responsiveness in judging performance.
If we were to take seriously the lessons of private
sector practice--rather than its proverbs imported to the
public sector by consultants--our system of public manage-
ment would look very different. For example, there is much
talk of a "Quest for Excellence" in the public sector. But
to judge from the Peters/Waterman study of that name, public
management excellence would require something like the
following:
o-- those responsible for implementation would be
"in on the action" of deciding policies.
o-- any assumptions of a we/they relationship--
expectations of innovative change from on high
and mute responsiveness from below--would be
broken down.
o-- topside staff would be lean and composed of
persons with a long-term commitment to the
organization's core values.
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Our current non-system of public management, embracing
career and political executives, is roughly the negative
image of these stipulations.
Doing Better
I will now prove that I am an ivory tower academic
by failing to provide a neat set of practical recommenda-
tions to correct the situation I have described. My real
aim is to try to encourage serious people to reflect more
broadly about this subject. It is time to do the job that
was not done in 1978 and start thinking through the larger
system of public management.
Does this require a new set of Subcommittee hearings?
A joint House/Senate Study Group, a new mandate to GAO?
I will leave this for others to decide. Let me conclude
by suggesting three areas for eventual consideration.
1. Political appointees should be removed from
direct management responsibilities regarding the SES
personnel system. This would have special reference
to the Office of Personnel Management, Executive
Resources Boards, and Performance Review Boards. In
a moment I will suggest how career executives should
be held accountable for everyday management of the SES.
2. We should reorder and rationalize the current
executive personnel non-system that exists below agency
heads and above the existing SES levels. For the most
part, this whole band of jobs--embracing daily respon-
sibility for policy management and administrative man-
agement-- should be regarded as a kind of "super-SES."
There should be less career tenure than the SES permits
but a closer examination of merit than the normal political
appointment process allows. These should be jobs to which
the best SES executives should be able to realistically
aspire.
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3. Ultimately--which is to say beyond the political
passions of the moment--there is a shared interest between
Congress and the Presidency in a non-partisan system of
public management. By that I mean a system that will work
with equal fidelity whichever group happens at the moment
to be in power. But today there is no reliable way of
institutionally expressing that joint interest. While
recognizing the Constitutional difficulties, I believe
we should consider the establishment of a permanent
Public Service Commission to serve as an agent of Congress
in overseeing the management of federal personnel systems.
My preference would be to have this Commission headed
by a person appointed for a fixed term by both Houses of
Congress and include persons nominated by the President as
well as representatives of the general public. The relevant
staff capacities from GAO would be given new prominence in
this new body.
The Public Service Commission would call career
executives to account for their management of the SES
system. It would oversee and report on the qualifications
of those persons in the higher public service--the
"super-SES" appointments. It would prepare background
materials for use in the Senate confirmation of all
presidential nominees to federal positions.
Madam Chairman, in the past few months we have
been hearing again the "mess in Washington" stories.
The friends of friends who get federal jobs after giving
financial assistance to persons in high places; the
political executives whose tenure is shortened by new
revelations; political blacklisting in an overseas
speakers program; proposed lie detector tests on demand
for 2.5 million federal employees suspected of leaking
information, and so on. These too are but the latest
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symptoms of a public management system that is not working
well. I realize there are inherent tensions and ambiguities
in any way you structure the public service. But it is
difficult for me to believe that we cannot do better.
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