Frederick C. Mosher

The Changing Responsibilities and Tactics of the Federal Government

In decades gone by, most of what the federal government was responsible for and expended money for it did by itself through its own personnel and facilities. Consequently, much of the doctrine and the lore of federal management, like that of private enterprise, was based on the premise that its efficiency rested on the effective supervision and direction of its own operations. This was predominantly, though not exclusively, the case; federal administration has always worked with and operated through other governmental and nongovernmental institutions to some extent. The thesis of this article is that the changes since the beginnings of the New Deal and since World War II have been of such magnitude as to alter fundamentally the nature of federal respnsibilities and modes of operating, calling for a quite different approach to the role of federal management in American society. The emphasis here is not upon freshly recognized (though old) social and economic problems and new public programs to respond to them-such as equal opportunity, health care, inflation, environment, energy, and others. It is upon the exploding responsibilities of the national government in virtually all functional fields and its carrying out of those responsibilities through, and interdependently with, nonfederal institutions and individuals.

Research in Public Administration: Some Notes and Suggestions

T IS one of the marks of a profession that its members consciously work toward the advancement of knowledge in their field. Where the profession is organized, one of the purposes of its association in virtually all cases is to promote and facilitate research. Those in public administration have a professional drive, expressed through a vigorous society which marks this year its seventeenth birthday. With new financial resources and an expanded program it can look forward to bursting the bonds of adolescence. The central theme of this paper is that it is now time for critical assessment of where the profession stands in the matter of advancement of knowledge. In spite of the pride it may rightfully take in the achievements to date, there is much to be done in the field of research.

The Public Service in the Temporary Society

But there is a question prior to these which requires attention. It concerns the changing nature and probable future directions of the society from which the public services are drawn, within which they operate, and which they are presumed to serve. This essay therefore begins with some observations about the society and its demands upon government, including some of the underlying dilemmas which seem to me most salient to the public service of the near future. Its second part is a discussion of the probable implications of these social directions and dilemmas for public administrative organizations, the public service, public personnel systems, and the universities.

Some Observations about Foreign Service Reform: "Famous First Words"

The committee structures required are elaborate, the exchange of information necessitated is extensive, and the daily conflict between different agencies over priorities is exhausting and distracting. Where such close coordination offers only marginal benefits-as is the case with educational, cultural, and long-range informational programs-an effort to achieve it is undesirable, and can cause unnecessary trouble. So far as the higher level of coordination is concerned-long-range policy coordinationthis is generally a matter that takes care of itself unless a very powerful department of the government (e.g., Defense) is involved. An independent Board of Directors, in charge of a Foundation for Cultural Relations, is not likely to launch a large program of action with a country which has, for example, broken diplomatic relations with the United States. The members of the Board will realize that they have to explain themselves to the President and Congress, and while they may exercise discretion within the framework of existing policy, they are not likely to follow a course 180 degrees away from such policy. Besides, if they do, the Secretary of State has, of course, the residual right, as the Presidents chief foreign policy officer, to veto such action. No special grant of authority is needed for him to be able to take such action. Finally, the kind of coordination that is likely to be most fruitful in the fields of foreign cultural and informational policy can probably best be achieved if agencies with a distinctive responsibility for these fields, and staffed by professionals appropriately trained, conduct the coordinating activities. Twenty-five or more federal agencies are now in this field, by explicit intention or by indirection. Such political direction as they need can be supplied by maintaining liaison, through an Assistant Secretary for Cultural Affairs, with the Department of State. Broadly speaking, the coordinating function of this officer would be to advise those directly in charge of cultural programs where to make their major efforts. But the pooling of resources, the determination of what to do, and the marshalling of the necessary professional knowledge and skills, are coordinating functions that can probably be conducted more efficiently by officials working elsewhere than in the fire department setting of the State Department. Presently existing ideas and bureaucratic arrangements have shown themselves inadequate with respect to the fruitful coordination of international educational, cultural, and informational programs. There is little reason to suppose that they can be made to work simply by reaffirming their validity more strongly. The coordination that is needed requires a new idea of coordination and new organizational instrumentalities for achieving it.

Presidential Transitions and Foreign Policy: The American Experience

More than 20 years ago when I was still a professor at Berkeley, I was visited by a young official, a member of what was then the British Colonial Service. He had just completed several weeks in Washington where he had watched with fascination the transition of Jack Kennedy to the presidency. His observations, I believe, included our supreme transition disaster of modern times: the Bay of Pigs. My British guest was appalled by what he perceived as the backbiting and the disorderliness that characterized our transfer of government and contrasted it, with pleasant but cocky superciliousness, to transitions in Great Britain.I Long before my British visitor flaunted his impressions, I had been wondering about the problems and the costs and the dangers of our presidential transitions, whose punctuation points are engraved on the Gregorian calendar. Changes in organizational leadership are common and inevitable in all societies. But the changes are often less pervasive, less intensive within the organizations concerned, and less frantic than ours. A few weeks ago, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia announced its appointment of a new president who would assume office in the summer of 1985. Let us imagine that the transition to this new president were comparable to that of a new president of the United States. First, he would have just completed a bitter and acrimonious campaign against the incumbent and his administration, little conducive to harmonious and constructive relations between the two and their staffs. He would be expected to dismiss, on the very day of his assumption of office, the provost, all the vicepresidents, deans, and department chairmen, the entire personal staff in his office, and a number of tenured professors friendly to the predecessor administration. Some of the top replacements would assume office on that day, but the majority of the offices would remain vacant for weeks and months. Few of the appointees to the top positions would have had significant experience at the University of Virginia or any other university (except as students), and some would be outspoken opponents of public higher education. These might even include the new president himself. He would almost certainly arrive bearing a variety of promises and commitments-to make appointments, establish new schools and programs and abolish others, change the standards of entrance as well as of graduation, reorder the cur-

The Executive Budget, Empire State Style

O N January 21, 1952, President Truman transmitted to the Congress his Budget for fiscal 1953. The next week, Governor Dewey sent to the State Legislature his Executive Budget for 1953, his tenth annual budget. Both budgets were record-breakers: Trumans, the largest peacetime budget in our national history; Deweys the first New York State budget of over a billion dollars. They are alike in other respects. Both are voluminous documents of words and figures which relatively few people will ever see and which, it is safe to predict, no one will voluntarily read in entirety. Both are the product of months of administrative planning, negotiation, decision-making, and tedious bookkeeping. Both represent comprehensive programs of government activity, well summarized in the executive messages which accompany them. But the similarities do not extend to the

Is Mobility Enough for the Temporary Society? Some Observations Based upon the Experience of the Federal Executive Institute

The case analysis which follows is based upon a paper which Mr. Saroff initially prepared for a reunion of current and past faculty members of the Federal Executive Institute (FEI), held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in February 1973.* I have been only occasionally a participant-observer of the FEI and do not presume to judge the effectiveness of that organization, any more, I think, than does Mr. Saroff. (Although, in the terms of the Watergaters, most of my hearsay evidence has been favorable to enthusiastic.) But the main theme of Mr. Saroffs paper on the relationship between personnel and leadership mobility on the one hand and innovation and adaptiveness on the other seemed to me a significant challenge to some of the assumptions in the current and predictive literature about organizations, with implications far beyond that altogether unique institution known as the Federal Executive Institute.