No one truly wants to remodel the house of government

Commentary

Efficient government is often used to illustrate the word "oxymoron," a combination of seemingly contradictory terms.

Common descriptors of government include inefficient, ineffective, bureaucratic, wasteful and duplicative.

I spent two decades working in government. The last 10 I spent working exclusively to improve the management and operations of government.

I agree that the adjectives listed above are a fair assessment of many government operations, although they do not reflect the hard work and dedication of most public servants.

But if government is ineffective and duplicative, how did it get that way?

Imagine government starting out as a small, 28-by-32-foot house, built to serve a limited purpose. As time goes on, the house is expanded.

Who decided to modify the house? Imagine that every year 201 architects and one master architect (the governor) come together to make repairs and to update the house as deemed necessary.

They break up into committees and sometimes even form subcommittees to redesign the house.

To envision the workings of these committees, think now of the famous parable of six blind men describing an elephant, each of them touching only one part of the animal.

The first man touches the side of the elephant and declares it to be a wall. The second man grabs the tusks and declares it to be a spear.

The third holds the trunk and declares it to be a snake. The fourth man's hands touch the knee, and he declares it to be a tree.

This wonderful parable regrettably reflects how government grew from a small house to a large edifice that seems to satisfy very few.

The last part of my career in Minnesota government was spent as the director of the Management Analysis Division.

My office had the responsibility of staffing Gov. Arne Carlson's Commission on Reform and Efficiency (CORE). The commission's purpose was to find immediate cost savings and long-term structural improvements in the management and operations of state government.

We viewed our assignment as a privilege, and carried it out objectively, under the specific direction of the governor not to be influenced by big-P or little-p politics.

Following Carlson's first legislative session, the governor asked our group to conduct a strategic planning session for his cabinet. In preparation, we interviewed all of the cabinet members.

Over a year later, CORE released its report. One recommendation was to reduce the number of state agencies from 26 to eight. We had projected significant savings and improved customer services from this consolidation.

I was very naive walking into a cabinet meeting to discuss that recommendation. To say that the cabinet members reacted in a un-Minnesotan manner is an understatement.

One lesson I have learned is that while most agree that the house should be redesigned to become more effective, few who advocate this want to have their part of the house redesigned, made smaller, given a different purpose -- or, heaven forbid, torn down.