A CORE VISION FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN THE 21st CENTURY

In 1993 President Bill Clinton asked Vice President Al Gore to work on making government function more efficiently and cost less. The challenge was to regain public confidence in the federal government’s ability to solve problems by fostering partnerships and community solutions. The vice president formed a National Performance Review (NPR) team, which issued a report in September 1993. The NPR report, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less, called for revising federal procurement regulations into guiding principles instead of rigid rules, decentralizing authority to purchase computers, testing an electronic marketplace, increasing the small purchase threshold, and relying more on off-the-shelf commercial products.

In October 1994 the president signed into law the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA), which is the most significant attempt to reform the government’s acquisition process since World War II, and is a flow-down of the core vision and guiding principles from the NPR. The act also includes 20 recommendations on procurement from the NPR team’s report. FASA charges the executive branch with reinventing the acquisition process by increasing personal initiative and decreasing mandatory controls. The overall goal of FASA is to streamline the contracting process through eliminating non–value-added rules and procedures, shortening procurement lead times, encouraging the use of automated purchasing procedures, using electronic commerce to the maximum, encouraging the use of commercial products to satisfy government requirements, and using proven contractors as a way to reduce risk.

Playing a major role in this reform effort is the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). Created by Congress in 1974, the OFPP is located organizationally in the White House under the Office of Management and Budget. OFPP is charged with the distribution of uniform policies and procedures and the maintenance of the Federal Acquisition Regulation System. The FAR, a part of that system, had replaced previously existing regulation systems in 1984. In his 1990 book, Procurement and Public Management, Steve Kelman, later to become administrator of OFPP, describes federal procurement “as a system in trouble” and the government industry relationship as “a culture of distrust.” Mr. Kelman instructed the task force assigned to oversee the administrative aspects of revising the FAR to incorporate such business practices as:

• Placing greater reliance on the good sense and business judgment of the procurement workforce

• Satisfying the customer’s needs

• Reducing unnecessary layers of review

• Emphasizing the importance of timeliness of the procurement process

• Stressing best value judgment in making contract awards.

Over the next year many revisions were written, reviewed, commented on by the public, and issued as amendments to the FAR.

It is never easy to put a mechanism in place that fosters a change in the way business has been done over many years. It can be compared to a large ocean liner changing its course. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Reform Colleen Preston summarized the situation facing government procurement as the “most unavoidable challenge facing acquisition reform....[was] going through the needed cultural change.”