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Press Release
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release January 14, 1999
VICE PRESIDENT GORE HOSTS GLOBAL FORUM
ON REINVENTING GOVERNMENT
Announces New Efforts to Improve Government Service
and Help The Nation's Children
Washington, DC -- Vice President Gore today opened the first-ever global conference on reinventing government, a meeting that included high-level representatives from nearly 40 countries, and announced three key government reinvention initiatives in his effort to reinvent government -- civil service improvement, children's well-being and measuring customer satisfaction.
"Reinvention is based on this fundamental truth: we can achieve our highest democratic ideals only by using practical approaches that unleash the energy of ordinary citizens," Vice President Gore said.
In the conference keynote address, the Vice President detailed three new initiatives:
Civil Service Improvement: Vice President Gore announced new
efforts to help the federal government improve relations between
workers and managers to help them deal with poor performers.
He announced legislative proposals that would: permit flexible
pay systems so pay can be more performance-oriented, allow all
agencies to evaluate their managers, and provide agencies with
flexible policies for hiring and retaining a high-quality
workforce.
Results for Children: The Vice President announced new efforts
to cut red tape and meet the needs of America's children. The
federal government will enter into ten partnerships with state
and local governments that will increase their flexibility in
using federal program dollars. These will focus on using
indicators that reliably chart measurable improvements in the
lives of children. The flexibility given to partnership
communities will enable them to save significant dollars which
can then be devoted to the well-being of children.
Customer Satisfaction Survey: A recent survey taken at Vice
President Gore's request showed that 75% of agency employees say
their agency has a customer focus. Today, the Vice President
called for the next step, asking the 32 agencies that serve over
90% of the government's customers to participate in a
government-wide "customer satisfaction survey" that will compare
the quality of their service to that of the private sector.
The conference, "A Global Forum on Reinventing Government," was
organized to bring together officials who understand the vital link between efficient government and a prosperous economy and are eager to share ideas and effective practices for improving government service.
At the start of the Clinton/Gore Administration, President Clinton asked Vice President Gore to work with federal employees to make the United States government work better and cost less. As a result of reinventing government initiatives led by the Vice President, the U.S. government has eliminated 250 outdated government programs, slashed more than 16,000 pages of regulations, cut more than 640,000 pages of internal rules, helped balance the federal budget for the first time in 30 years by saving more than $137 billion, and reduced the federal workforce by more than 345,000 employees, creating the smallest federal government -- as a percentage of the total workforce -- since the 1930's.
"A Global Forum on Reinventing Government" is sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the Innovations in American Government program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government in the Office of the Vice President of the United States, the Brookings Institution, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the United States Information Agency.