{"id":22156,"date":"2017-04-25T15:25:32","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T15:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/04\/25\/scratch-built-government-a-how-to-blueprint-commentary\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:59:08","slug":"scratch-built-government-a-how-to-blueprint-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/opinions\/2017\/04\/25\/scratch-built-government-a-how-to-blueprint-commentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Scratch-built government: A \u2018how-to\u2019 blueprint [Commentary]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dropping the Second Shoe. <\/b>It’s been about two weeks since OMB Director Mick Mulvaney issued his memo on ‘building government from scratch,’ and while that ambitious goal may be a bit hyperbolic, we should all appreciate the sentiment \u2026 this has been a long time coming, and it’s sorely needed. You see, the ‘hulls of’ government (bad pun intended) tend to accumulate lots of bureaucratic barnacles over time, the aggregate result of myriad, well-intentioned but largely disintegrated acts of Congress, the courts, and the executive branch, and every once in a while those barnacles need to be scraped off. That’s at least part of what this effort is all about, and as a general matter, OMB seems to be going about it in just the right way \u2026 rationally, objectively and relatively free from preconceived notions and anti-government rhetoric. Take the hiring ‘frost’ (it never really was a freeze, was it?). When RUMINT about it was rampant, lots of people expressed lots of concerns, but when it was imposed, it had enough exceptions and loop-holes \u2014 I believe by design rather than accident \u2014 that no agency or program should have been egregiously impacted \u2026 especially since it was explicitly temporary, a stage-setter for the memo and guidance that have just been issued. Blending Politics and Administration.<\/b> Experts will argue about its merits, but those debates notwithstanding, the details of this initiative represent an example of what can be accomplished when a new administration’s appointees work collaboratively with their senior career civil servants. Even though those new appointees had every opportunity to view those civil servants with some skepticism (a natural phenomenon, and something that happens in every transition), it’s clear that OMB’s new political leadership had the foresight to ask \u2014 and more importantly, to listen \u2014 to their career staff, and the fact that they did so early in the administration is especially gratifying. It sometimes takes years for new appointees to accept and acknowledge the value of the career employees who serve and support them, but in this instance, the learning curve was rapid, and the results spot on. What and How.<\/b> That is not to say that some agencies won’t be adversely affected, in some cases historically so, by the so-called ‘skinny budget’ that must be read alongside the OMB guidance. And that’s precisely why many agencies have extended the hiring ‘frost’ beyond its official, governmentwide expiration date. They’re wisely positioning themselves for the exigencies of that skinny budget, but they also know that as Draconian as it may be for some of them, that’s just the first move in the annual (perpetual?) budget game. Congress will have much to say about the final fiscal outcome for FY 2018, and no one is in a position to accurately predict that result, but it makes sense to hedge against the worst-case risk even while arguing for relief. Thus, while the ‘what’ of the FY 2018 budget remains uncertain, the ‘how’ of it \u2014 as articulated by the OMB memo \u2014 is pretty clear and straightforward. And it’s pretty good, at least as far as it goes. However, as OMB and the agencies consider their next steps, especially in meeting the memo’s June and September submission milestones, here are some lessons learned from previous major government transformations over the last couple of decades: <\/p>\n\n\n\n