On the Ballot
What DOGE can learn from Clinton's effort to 'reinvent government' in the '90s
Jan 28, 2025
Dr. Elaine Kamarck, the founding director at the Brookings Institution and key leader of the Clinton-era National Performance Review, revisits the push to make government more efficient. She discusses the parallels between her work in the '90s and the current efforts surrounding the Department of Government Efficiency. The conversation highlights the complexities of federal budget management, the symbolic hurdles of reform, and the critical need for strategic communication and cooperation among government employees to achieve meaningful change.
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Quick takeaways
- The National Performance Review underscored the importance of engaging civil servants to identify inefficiencies, enhancing government reform efforts.
- Successful government efficiency initiatives like DOGE require a nuanced, cooperative approach to avoid detrimental impacts on essential public services.
Deep dives
The National Performance Review's Legacy
The National Performance Review (NPR), initiated during the early days of the Clinton administration, aimed to reform government by addressing inefficiencies and waste. A key strategy involved engaging civil servants from various agencies to critically evaluate each other's departments, ensuring an unbiased perspective on what improvements were needed. This approach emphasized the importance of real experiences and insights from employees on the ground, rather than just relying on superficial metrics. As a result, the NPR successfully implemented over 400 recommendations, significantly reduced the federal workforce, and established customer service standards that reshaped interactions between the government and the public.
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