[Senate Hearing 106-598]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-598
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: A PROGRESS REPORT
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 9, 2000
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-985 cc WASHINGTON : 2000
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
TED STEVENS, Alaska CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi MAX CLELAND, Georgia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Darla D. Cassell, Administrive Clerk
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
Kristine I. Simmons, Staff Director
Marianne Clifford Upton, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Julie L. Vincent, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Voinovich............................................ 1
Senator Durbin............................................... 8
WITNESS
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Hon. Anthony A. Williams, Mayor, District of Columbia:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Appendix
Attachment I..................................................... 24
Attachment II.................................................... 31
Attachment III................................................... 33
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: A PROGRESS REPORT
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TUESDAY, MAY 9, 2000
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring,
and the District of Columbia Subcommittee,
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:40 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George V.
Voinovich, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich and Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. The hearing will come to order.
We have a very busy witness with us here this morning.
Mayor, we are very happy to have you come back and visit with
us, and Ms. Norton, we are glad to have you here with us.
Welcome.
Today the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia meets
to discuss performance management in the District of Columbia.
First of all, I would like to congratulate the Mayor on
some of his accomplishments. One of them that we worked
together on was the District of Columbia College Tuition
Assistance Act, and I understand, Mayor, that has now been
expanded so that D.C. graduates who aspire can attend
universities nationwide, exercising one of the options that you
had in the legislation in terms of whether there were enough
openings at the University of Maryland and at the University of
Virginia, and apparently there were not, so it is now open
around the country.
We are pleased that we were able to work with you on that
initiative, and I was also pleased that the private sector
stepped to the table to be supportive, and they are well on
their way to raising $30 million for a scholarship fund, so
that now the residents of the District have the same
opportunities as if they were to live in one of our States, and
the added benefit, of course, with the scholarship program.
Mayor, you have also engaged the private sector in a
broader discussion of how public-private partnerships can help
transform the District into that ``shining city on the hill,''
and I want to congratulate you on this initiative and again
pledge to you publicly that I am willing to help in any way,
and if the business community focuses in on some things that
they think they would like to accomplish, I would be more than
happy to try to help you market it nationwide so that you can
get more than just the folks who live in and do business in the
District.
Mayor Williams. That is great.
Senator Voinovich. This Subcommittee and Congress as a
whole remain committed to fulfilling our responsibility to
exercise oversight over governance in our capital city.
Congress is responsible for approving the spending of $1.9
billion in Federal funds in the District of Columbia, and it is
our job to ensure that this money is spent efficiently and to
maximize benefits to D.C. residents.
Just for the record, I asked my staff how much money the
District receives from the Federal Government, and it is $1.9
billion, but it is understood that $1.5 billion in Federal
funds is to administer various Federal grants provided to
State, county and local governments. So those are the kinds of
dollars that you would get just ordinarily because you are
performing the functions that counties, States and
municipalities would around the country. Then, there is an
extra $435 million in special Federal payments to the District
of Columbia in regard to court operations, court services, and
offender supervision; and of course, the $17 million in the
D.C. College Access Program.
That gives everyone an idea of just how much money and
where it is coming from, and it should explain why Congress is
interested in reviewing what the District is doing.
In that regard, 1 year ago, this Subcommittee invited
Control Board Chair Rivlin and Council Chair Cropp and you,
Mayor Williams, to share your thoughts on how the District
could improve its performance-based management. As I think
about it, that was pretty early on in your term. You were a new
Mayor coming in, so you were still getting your feet wet--and I
suspect you probably still think you are getting your feet wet.
It took me about 5 years.
We have invited the Mayor to meet with us again today to
report on the District's progress since last year. The Mayor
has unveiled some promising proposals at our last meeting, from
the short-term action items, to the D.C. Scorecard, to the
polling of District residents in order to determine their
highest priorities for the city administration.
I look forward to hearing Mayor Williams' progress report
on achieving these goals. There is no question that the Mayor
has devoted considerable time over the past year to determining
what the goals should be for the District by holding
neighborhood forums, compiling the results into comprehensive
management strategies and then establishing goals for the
District Government agencies.
On April 20 of this year, the Mayor released the first
official set of Scorecards for the city government. These
Scorecards encapsulate the top priorities for each deputy mayor
and agency head into simple checklists. They are easy for the
public to understand and are useful, too, for holding
government executives accountable for their results.
I am somewhat concerned, however, that the District may not
be as far along as it should be in terms of establishing
performance expectations. The General Accounting Office
released a report last month that raised some valid concerns
about performance management in the District, reporting that
the city was not able to fully comply with any aspect of the
District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management
Assistance Act of 1994. That law requires annual performance
plans which establish goals for the next year and annual
performance reports which evaluate the progress made in meeting
the previous year's goals.
According to GAO, the Mayor's performance report does not
contain the required information for any of the 542 agency
goals identified in the accountability plan. The report also
does not describe as required the status of the court orders
pertaining to the 12 civil actions concerning activities of the
District during FY 99, nor does it identify who is responsible
for seeing that a particular goal is met.
The District's failure to report on the goals set in the FY
99 performance accountability plan, Mayor, was of great concern
to me. However, my staff tells me that these goals were set by
the Control Board, not by the Mayor, and that the Mayor is
starting fresh with his own goals for his administration. I
understand that explanation, but I hope that next year, we can
expect to see the District's performance accountability plan in
full compliance with the Federal law.
I am also concerned about the status of the District's most
recent performance accountability measures as included in this
year's budget request sent to the Council earlier this year. A
majority of the measures had targets that were left to be
determined or had the exact performance goals of last year. On
the other hand, I suspect, Mayor, that year after year, you may
have the same performance goals, because it is going to take
that long to reach some of them; they are very ambitious.
Finally, with the performance accountability plans, the
D.C. Scorecards, and other performance monitors like the
Neighborhood Action Plan, I am concerned that the city lacks
one comprehensive plan for holding the agency heads
accountable. While all the ingredients seem to be present at
this point, they appear to be spread throughout numerous
performance plans.
While I applaud the important steps the Mayor has taken to
this point, I believe that more remains to be done to produce a
coherent, easily understood performance plan, and I look
forward to learning about your strategy, Mayor, to meet these
challenges.
I appreciate your being here today to report on the
District's progress and management reform.
When Senator Durbin arrives, I will yield some time to him
to make an opening statement.
Mayor, again, we are glad to have you here. I appreciate
the good relationship that we have and the telephone calls and
the occasional meetings.
Please proceed.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ANTHONY A. WILLIAMS,\1\ MAYOR, DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA
Mayor Williams. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
interest in and support for our city, and particularly for your
commitment to work with us in broadening our public-private
partnerships to include the private sector all over our
country, because we are our Nation's Capital, and we think that
businesses all over this country should have a sense of
responsibility and ownership and commitment to what happens in
our city, and we certainly welcome that, and I want to thank
you and Senator Durbin when he gets here, our congresswoman,
Congresswoman Norton, who has joined me, for the opportunity to
testify on what we are doing in performance management in the
District.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mayor Williams appears in the
Appendix on page 19.
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In the last 15 months of my administration, the District
Government has made great strides in instituting a performance
management system that I believe does introduce accountability
for each and every agency, for every employee and, as we get
into this more extensively, I hope that for our business
community, our faith community and our nonprofits, in order to
really transform the way we do business, making us more
responsive to our citizens.
I believe the approach that we have taken, while it leaves
much to be done, and I would readily agree with that, has shown
promising results in our first year, and we are going to
continue to drive change using this system.
When we took office, we found the challenges that we
inherited were quite daunting. For one, accountability for the
District workforce was rare, if nonexistent. We had a deeply-
entrenched culture resistant to change. There was an
infrastructure decimated by deferred maintenance and
disinvestment; and technology needs that were grossly
inadequate.
I would argue that a year has made a dent in many of these
things, but it has made only a dent.
My first priority to get started was to restore faith in
government by demonstrating rapid, visible improvements in
basic services, so I challenged my cabinet to set an aggressive
short-term action agenda. We set concrete objectives with
measurable deadlines ranging from a month to no more than a
year, and I am proud to report that we completed 90 percent of
them during 1999.
However, short-term initiatives are only a down payment. To
me, they were there only to build that initial trust and
confidence in the government, to give us a little momentum, but
ultimately, the challenges facing our city are significantly
greater, and we recognize that.
I would like to simply submit for the record the full list
of the initiatives, but I want to highlight a few of them and
describe how we are building on these short-term successes.\1\
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\1\ Attachment I referred to appears in the Appendix on page 24.
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For example, we restructured electrical and building permit
processes, eliminating a several-months-long backlog of
electrical permits by February and completing 80 percent of
complex building reviews within 30 days through 1999. Today, 80
percent of electrical permits are issued within 48 hours, and
95 percent of complex building plans are reviewed within 30
days, which is a significant improvement over the past.
We established a single phone number for residents to call
for information and service requests with the launch of the
Citywide Call Center, 727-1000, in April 1999. Today we average
more than 2,000 phone calls per day, and we can track data on
frequently-requested services and how long it takes to resolve
them. We are building a database where our citizens get a case
number, and we hope that in the future--and we are building
this process now--we will be able to actually track where their
response is somewhere in the agencies as we are responding.
There is a lot of work to be done. We have gone from a
system where people rarely answer the phone and were impolite
to where people now answer the phone, are polite, do not always
know what we are talking about, but they are polite, and I
think that is progress.
Welcome, Senator Durbin. I am happy to stop if the Senator
wants to make a statement.
Senator Durbin. No. Please continue.
Mayor Williams. We targeted open-air drug markets in six
communities, and arrests increased through stepped-up
enforcement. Now the police department is closely tracking drug
activity statistics to document how this short-term action will
show reductions in drug activity over time. This initiative has
evolved into the Capital Communities Program, a comprehensive
strategy to focus a broad spectrum of resources on distressed
communities. In some of these Capital Communities Programs, we
have seen some indicators of crime go down by more than 50
percent.
So on the basis of our building this initial confidence in
the government with the short-term goals, we decided to do
something a little untraditional. We decided that in order to
build a comprehensive performance management system in the
government, we needed to empower citizens to set the priorities
for our government. I believe that our citizens have had 20 to
25 years of pent-up civic pride; they love our city, and they
are itching to make a difference in our individual
neighborhoods. For far too long, local government has not been
a reliable partner for our citizens. We wanted to change that,
and we started with what we are calling Neighborhood Action,
which I would argue is the broad umbrella that will bring all
these plans ultimately together.
At our first summit in November, more than 3,000 citizens
from all over the city answered the call and spent over 7 hours
developing a plan for the city. And it was not just a chit-chat
session. We compiled these comments and used citizen priorities
to put together the budget for next year. We used them to
develop a city-wide strategic plan with very specific
measurable goals for each agency of government.
The plan is organized around five broad themes that are
really common to many cities and certainly are important to our
city. The first is achieving Unity of Purpose. An example of
Unity of Purpose is building public-private partnerships.
Another example is building partnerships with the faith
community; making government work--answering the phones, paving
the streets, managing fiber optic cuts; promoting economic
development--bringing in commercial investment; producing
housing; strengthening families, children and youth--the tragic
story of what happened to Brianna is an example of the work we
need to do in strengthening families and children; and finally,
building and sustaining healthy neighborhoods and public safety
is a premier example of the need in that area.
Our detailed plan, though, is a great way to keep our
government focused and to hold agency directors accountable,
but by itself, I believe it is not going to engage our
citizens. I want our citizens to be able to see the progress we
are making in achieving their priorities, and until they have
some evidence that our government is a reliable partner, I
believe they will have less incentive to invest themselves,
their own resources, their own synagogues, churches, and
nonprofits in the interests of our community.
So we have developed a set of Scorecards for myself, for my
deputy mayors, and for each of our agency directors, based on
the citizens' goals in this plan, and they are listed on
Attachment II,\1\ entitled ``Going to Bat for the District,''
and they are available at our website, washingtondc.gov.
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\1\ Attachment II referred to appears in the Appendix on page 31.
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We are building a virtual e-government, and I hope citizens
will keep track of our progress this way. Every citizen can see
the score every day; they can see how it changes. And I think
that this government in so doing will become more accountable
to our public.
Now, issuing a Scorecard is similar to the strategy of last
year's short-term action agenda in that we define the goals and
inform the public of what they are. We gave agency leadership
the resources and support needed to meet their goals, and we
established a system to hold them accountable at the end of the
day.
I recognize that many of the goals we set for ourselves are
a stretch, but I would rather have ambitious targets and come
close, rather than meet or exceed timid, weak goals. So this
year's goals, for example, include some real stretches. One,
for example, is 2,000 new and rehabilitated housing units under
construction by December 2000. This is well in excess of last
year's production, which is already significant in and of
itself.
Another goal is the reduction of 911 response times to 8
minutes for 90 percent of critical medical calls for service.
Right now, just to give you a sense of context, only 42 percent
of calls meet that standard. So there is a lot of work to be
done to meet that goal.
Another goal is reduced wait times at Department of Motor
Vehicles to 30 minutes or less for 80 percent of driver's
license and inspection transactions. We had declared that we
were meeting a 30-minute goal until we actually started
measuring what was happening, and then we recognized that,
whoops--we were really far away from that 30-minute goal. To
me, the Department of Motor Vehicles is a great example of
where these goals are meaningless, these Scorecards are
meaningless, unless there is some independent validation, and I
will talk about that in a second.
But the Scorecard is only one element of the broader
performance management system we have in place for evaluation.
It is a public statement of a few commitments we are making,
but it is not the exhaustive list of everything in our Citywide
Strategic Plan.
To capitalize on short-term successes and to institute
long-term systemic changes, last spring, I instructed agency
directors to develop strategic plans evaluating existing
practices and proposing comprehensive improvements for their
agencies. Directors were to make tough assessments of their
organizations' strengths and weaknesses and competencies;
question what businesses their agencies were in and what
businesses they should get out of; and identify strategies for
change.
I have set up performance contracts based on these agency
plans with my deputy mayors and agency directors so that they
know exactly what they are responsible for delivering, and
their job security depends on their effectiveness. These are
attached in Attachment III,\1\ and an example is the DMV
performance contract. Again, this performance contract, like
the Scorecard, will be related to the Citywide Strategic Plan,
which will serve as the one single, unified plan to which you
referred, Senator.
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\1\ Attachment III referred to appears in the Appendix on page 33.
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However, we are not waiting for mid-year and year-end
evaluations to judge agency successes. We are tracking the
performance contract commitments on an ongoing basis. And to
give you a flavor of the types of commitments and results we
are seeing this year, I can talk about DMV, which is one of our
highest-profile customer service operations.
Almost every resident has to register a car, have it
inspected, and get a driver's license. Sherryl Hobbs Newman set
an ambitious year 2000 goal of 80 percent of license and
registration transactions within 30 minutes as new data system
were revealing the extent of the problem with average process
times of 1 hour or more. The District just announced aggressive
strategies to move us toward the target by December 2000, for
example--additional personnel and additional counter bays at
the C Street main facility; we are going to be open now on
weekdays later this month until 10 p.m., and we are hoping that
by distributing volume overall, those hours and throughout all
those bays, as well as organizing our traffic better, we can
reach this goal. Also, customer service training will be
developed and provided by USAIR, an example of a public-private
partnership. We have also received from USAIR stress management
for our employees. If you are an employee sitting at the
counter, and you are dealing with people who have been waiting
for an hour, they are not always in the best mood or temper.
This week, we will announce temporary trailers as we explore
sites for additional facilities. We are building a new
satellite to the DMV, but we are not waiting for that; we are
actually going to be putting up temporary sites to relieve the
load down at C Street. And finally, we will have site designs
that address parking needs of residents visiting DMV, because
there is nothing more galling than to come down to register
your car and find no place to park, then you wait too long, and
when you come out, you have a $50 ticket on your car. That does
not put people in a good mood.
On the Office of Contracting and Procurement, our initial
analysis of the agency's workload there indicated that nearly
half of agency transactions were for less than $2,500, but less
than one percent of the District's contract dollars were spent
on these small transactions. So we proposed an innovative
strategy to establish purchase cards for those small
transactions. This was piloted at our D.C. Public Library in
November, and nine additional agencies will come on line by
July 2000. In addition, Contracting and Procurement is working
with the D.C. Public Schools to deploy purchase cards there as
part of a broader initiative to empower D.C. Public Schools
with its own procurement authority. I also list in my
testimony, submitted for the record, the Department of Parks
and Recreation.
But I want to talk briefly about accountability, because
with performance contracts in place for directors at mission-
critical agencies, the D.C. Office of Personnel is rolling out
a comprehensive performance management program throughout our
government in the summer of 2000. Our agencies are developing
performance agreements for every District employee aligned to
the Citywide Strategic Plan, which again is the unified plan
that we are seeking, and all of our agencies' goals and
objectives. All of these agreements will be in place by October
2000.
This is part of my goal to create a Unity of Purpose in
which we want all of our employees to understand our Citywide
Strategic Plan and accept and adopt a personal role in
supporting and executing that plan, and then incorporate the
goals and objectives of this plan in their day-to-day work.
How can we be sure that we are meeting these goals? We are
not just taking agency reports on faith. Agencies are required
to provide a clear definition of each Scorecard measure, how
the data is collected, how it is calculated and reported. This
approach is based on the Office of Management and Budget's
guidelines to Federal agencies for ensuring verifiable and
valid performance data. A great example again is the DMV where,
before we had the schematic system where you can actually
measure waiting times, we could tell people that we had 30-
minute waiting times, and no one really knew. Now that we have
some measurement device to actually validate our information,
we know that we have work to do.
On remaining work to be done, I believe that my
administration has made significant progress linking strategic
planning, budget formulation, performance expectations and
evaluation, but I recognize and certainly acknowledge the need
to do much more. Sustaining progress, ensuring valid and
reliable data, unifying the different plans, and benchmarking
progress against other jurisdictions are among our objectives
for year 2000.
For us, ``performance management'' is not just a catch
phrase. It is our way to make sure that our students get the
books they need; it is our way to make sure that our senior
citizens get the meals they need; it is our way to ensure that
teachers will be paid on time, that foster families get the
services they need. In short, it is our way to show that
democracy can work in the District of Columbia and that we can
make our way toward the city we all know and love.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to testify, and I
would be happy to answer your questions.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mayor.
Senator Durbin, we welcome you this morning. I want to
publicly acknowledge the conscientiousness of Senator Durbin.
We have been having lots of meetings, and Senator, I really
appreciate that fact that you are here.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to apologize for coming in late and also for the
fact that the full Appropriations Committee is meeting as of
this moment, and I will be asked to go there for the markup
shortly. I wear two hats, as the Ranking Democrat on both the
authorizing and appropriating subcommittees for the District of
Columbia, so I will try to do both duties, and I thank you for
your leadership.
We are fortunate to have in the room two men with mayoral
experience on a Capitol Hill which is populated by a lot of
people who apparently want mayoral experience, because they try
to run your city for you, Mr. Mayor. And I am not one of them--
I think you are doing a fine job. I have seen a lot of leaders
before you who have tried, and I think you have achieved more
in the 16 or so months that you have served.
Delegate Norton, of course, fights this battle on a daily
basis over in the House of Representatives, and I salute her
for her leadership.
I think that your reaching out to the neighborhoods to
establish priorities--and it has been recognized nationally--is
the kind of grassroots leadership that the District of Columbia
needs so the government connects with the people who live here.
There was a big controversy last year over the proposed tax
cut that came from the City Council, and as a result of that, I
asked for quarterly reports from your administration about some
key indicators that I think really help us to understand
whether we are making progress in the District of Columbia.
They run the gamut from public health concerns, rat
eradication, to questions about public safety, which of course
are paramount in the minds of everyone who visits and lives in
the District. But I guess the most important one in my mind was
children and whether the District is responding, both in the
schools and in the city services, to the needs of the children.
This hearing is a good illustration of an effort to make sure
the best management techniques are in place.
My only question to you, if I might, Mr. Chairman, before I
have to leave is whether you feel that the system that you are
currently using to measure standards starts with good baseline
data. Of course, you have to establish that before you can
establish whether or not you are making progress. How do you
come up with verifiable baseline data in terms of performance
and services available to the residents of the District of
Columbia?
Mayor Williams. Senator, one of the reasons why some of the
reports that GAO refers to, and the Senator referred to, have
information left out is not only because in some instances, we
inherited performance plans, in some instances, we do not yet
have full authority over parts of the government, part of the
reason is because we do not yet have the information in some of
these agencies on which to build a reliable performance
program. We felt it was important to put in place those
operations and processes and systems, get the data, and then
build a plan, as opposed to just putting a plan out there for
plan's sake.
So we have made a conscious effort to begin with our
agencies, come up with an initial discussion of a Strategic
Plan, then go to our citizens and, working with our citizens,
come up with a final Strategic Plan and then build that out
through our budget, build that out through our agencies.
We have now, for example, begun a compensation
classification system where every employee will have a sense of
ownership of this plan. And initially, 1,200 employees will be
signed on.
To give you an example of agencies outside our control, we
have brought in Grace Lopes, who is our representative with the
receivers in consultation with the different plaintiffs'
groups, in consultation with the different judges involved. We
want to establish standards and expectations with them and then
fold them into our plan. We are trying to work with the school
system to fold it in and, piece by piece, build one unified,
comprehensive whole beginning with what we can control and then
working our way out. And it is painstaking and laborious.
Senator Durbin. I think you are on the right track, and I
am really impressed with the job that you have done and hope to
help you in my capacity here on the Hill.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to say a few words
before I have to run off.
Mayor Williams. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate it.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator.
Mayor, I would like to just focus on a couple of big areas
before we get into some of the details. Did you understand in
my opening statement what I was driving at in terms of
coordinating and getting all these plans organized so that it
is easy to understand?
Mayor Williams. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. I would be interested in your comments
about how you think that can get done.
Mayor Williams. As you know, I think it was part of the
Appropriations Act and maybe the Revitalization Act for the
District, there was a requirement analogous to GPRA that we
have a performance plan for the District and then a management
report on the basis of that plan.
As the report indicates--and I make no contest with it--
there were problems in that we inherited a planning structure
that had been started by the Control Board, and everyone knew
that we were going to put in place our own planning and
reporting structure, and we have begun to do that.
It was also mentioned that there were many goals at lower
levels that were left out; there were some agency managers who
were left out. In the case of agency managers, because we are
in the process of working our way into the agencies, creating
this Management Supervisory Service, which I would be happy to
talk about and where in many instances there may be some
changes, we want to wait until new managers were in place who
felt sponsorship of the plan, who accepted the plan, and to put
their measures in place as opposed to again imposing these
measures on someone who may not have been part of creating
them, may not have had ownership of them.
Finally--and I think this is a big part that really isn't
referred to in the GAO report--you have receiverships, you have
the schools, you have independent boards and commissions that
are not directly under the authority and in some instances are
not at all under the authority of the Mayor, and here, it is
going to take coordination and cooperation of independent
entities to work toward this unified whole.
I am confident that we can do that, but we wanted to begin
initially with agencies under our own control, because it is my
vision that we not only have receiverships involved in this,
the schools involved in this, the boards and commissions
involved in this, but I have taken some initial steps--and
again, this is a long road--to try to get the business
community and the faith community involved in this.
To give you an example of the faith community, as an
initial step, in addition to our regular Mayor's prayer
breakfast which the city has held now for 25 years, we had a
National Conference on the Role of Faith Community and
Community-Building, and we had Reverend Floyd Flake from New
York as our keynote speaker, talking about ways in which the
faith community can play a role in family counseling, crisis
intervention, support for children, and education.
My vision is that ultimately, if you look at a performance
plan for our community, it is not just what we expect the
government to do but what all of us expect one another to do,
if that makes sense.
Senator Voinovich. The thing that I am really interested
in, in anticipation, a year from now is that the Neighborhood
Action Plan presents goals for each department and agency, and
that is a great idea to go out to the citizens and ask what
they want, talking to the customers--too often we do not talk
to the customers, and we decide what they want, and then we
find out that it is not really what they want--but you have
that.
Then, the performance contract lays out three levels of
performance--below expectations, met expectations, and exceeded
expectations. And then, the performance measures in this year's
budget proposals appear to identify the responsible manager for
each goal.
I guess what I am driving at is that you have your
neighborhood goals, and you have your Scorecard, and to make
sure that is all in the same performance plan so that you do
not look at the Scorecard over here and see how you are doing
here, and you have your performance plan over here--because in
so many instances, it is the same stuff. I just think that from
a measurement and accountability point of view, if you have it
in one document----
Mayor Williams. Right--and we could go into great detail on
this in September. But we could start with a citywide plan that
is a combination of what we are hearing from our agencies and
from our citizens, and there would be a set of stated goals.
Then, from those goals would come the measures that we are
using to put into performance contracts with the agencies. From
those same goals would come the measures that go into the
budget, which really serves as the performance plan for the
District for purposes of this act. We would like to see the
timing change so that when we submit the performance plan, we
are also submitting the budget, because they really should go
together, as you know, and we want them to go together.
From these same goals would come not only the budget and
these performance contracts, but would come the Scorecard, and
these would be the measures that we are testing in terms of
this evaluation.
So I really see all of it as being connected.
Senator Voinovich. That does provide a problem, because if
I am not mistaken, I think the law says that the performance
plan is due on March 1. I know that you have decided that you
want to wait until the budget--do you want to go into that?
Because we have had some people look at that, and they have
come back, and they really do not feel it is necessary that the
performance plan and the budget have to be at the same time;
that there is no reason why you cannot put a performance plan
in earlier and then submit your budget to the Council.
Would you like to comment on that?
Mayor Williams. Well, I think that to work well, the
performance plan and the budget have to work together and
really have to contain a lot of the same information, because
modern budgeting is performance budgeting, and folks who say
that we can do the performance plan and then do the budget are
correct in the abstract, but they have got to be down where we
are, trying to do a budget in the District. We have one of the
most complicated budget processes in the Nation because of the
number of people who are involved. We are doing our budget
without the same--even in the best of circumstances, for
example, when we get our audit done in February, we are doing
our budget without the kind of lead time that other
jurisdictions have to properly forecast economic conditions,
revenues and expenditures. We have got to go through a very
laborious and painstaking process.
In the best of worlds, I would like to see our city have a
biennial budget process because we spend such an enormous
amount of time on the budget. We finish one budget, and by the
time it gets to the Congress, we have already started another
budget.
So in the midst of all this, we have to also give the
proper weight and attention--and I want to give enormous weight
and attention--to performance planning on a different cycle--we
are just adding another cycle to a system that already has a
lot of cycles. And it certainly can be done in the abstract,
but it is very difficult.
Senator Voinovich. The law is that it has got to be by
March 1, and I think if it is possible that you could do that
by next year by March 1, I think it would be well-taken; and
maybe you will be in a much better position to do it after you
have put the two of them together this year.
The other thing is that many people have no comprehension
in terms of the responsibilities you have. You have the typical
municipal responsibilities, you have county responsibilities,
and you have some State responsibilities. How many different
budgets do you have--is the city budget coincidental with the
Federal budget? When I was a county commissioner, we had the
county budget which was on a July cycle, we had the Federal
budget which was on an October cycle, and then we had a city
budget that was on a calendar, and we had to try to keep track
of the revenue sources.
Is the city budget based on the same as the Federal budget
cycle, beginning in October?
Mayor Williams. Right. Our budget is a Federal budget, and
most State and local jurisdictions that I know of are July 1,
and June 30.
Senator Voinovich. So you have one budget calendar--your
city budget then coincides with the Federal budget?
Mayor Williams. Right, and we are trying to jam an enormous
amount of processing, planning, coordination--you are trying to
wrap up your audit of 1 year; you are beginning your execution
of another year, and in many instances, you have just started
your execution because the budget did not start until January
because people could not agree on whatever they could not agree
on; and you are also trying to plan another budget.
I do not know what is particularly sacrosanct about March
1.
Senator Voinovich. I do not, either, but that is what the
law says.
Mayor Williams. Yes.
I was also going to mention that most--I am trying to think
if there are some--but from my own experience, I know that the
way the GPRA was established and constructed, the Federal
agencies submit their performance plans with their budget. So
just to be consistent, I think it would make sense for us to do
the same. It is not the end of the world; it is just something
that would certainly allow this planning process to work better
and more efficiently for everybody involved.
Senator Voinovich. My only comment is that you are going to
do it for the first time this year, and you might give some
thought to doing it in terms of the deadline for next year.
One of the things that has come to the attention of this
Subcommittee is the human capital crisis in the Federal
Government. With the low unemployment, would you like to
comment on your ability to attract talented people to head
various city agencies and how that is coming along?
Mayor Williams. In every position that I have filled at a
high level in this government, I have worked with the business
community. In the first instance, as I got started, one of our
major companies here gave us four or five headhunting firms to
work with us on a whole range of different positions, and I
expected a long line of people at my door, ready to come on in.
But a tight labor market, the daunting challenges that confront
the city, and frankly, a history of this city where we have a
reputation for bringing everyone out into the palace courtyard
and executing them periodically, just created a situation where
that line was not as long as I would have liked it to be.
We have continued to work with our business community and
the Federal Government to recruit the very best and most able
people, but I think that our medium- and even long-term
salvation is really to spend a lot of time and attention on
this Management Supervisory Service and groom our own farm
team. Looking at your own city and other cities, one of the
things that impressed me was that for many of these positions,
they are hiring people in the city; they are hiring people who
worked in the government or worked in the private sector in the
city. There is this talent pool in the city that they are
drawing from. I think we need to build and maintain that same
talent pool here so that every time there is an opening, we can
readily draw on ready talent that we have already nurtured and
groomed in our own ranks.
I think that having a Management Supervisory Service where
everyone is working at will, in exchange for top-quality pay,
is going to allow us to do that.
Senator Voinovich. Well, I must say, looking at what we are
doing on the Federal level, that we have some major problems,
because by 2004, 31 percent of our people will be leaving, and
another 21 percent will be eligible to retire. It might be
interesting for you to get a little snapshot of exactly where
your workforce is in terms of retirement.
The other issue is the competency that you need in your
various departments and getting a handle on it. So often,
whether you are going to be able to perform some of the things
that you want to--not often, but most of the time--has to do
with whether you can get the qualified people to do the work. I
think the issue of human capital--and we will make something
available to you--is really an issue that, in putting together
performance plans and other things, sometimes seems to get the
back of the hand; you put it together, and nobody is thinking
about what kind of people are we going to need in order to
achieve these goals that we have set for ourselves.
The other thing I would be interested to know is what you
have done in terms of benchmarking. You mentioned your
Department of Motor Vehicles. Have you examined other
departments around the country in terms of how they handle
their situations, so you could copy those that are working? How
are you going about making that improvement to reduce it down
to that--I think your goal is a 30-minute waiting period.
Mayor Williams. At a very broad macro level, as you know,
in my first year, I spent a lot of time in other cities looking
at how they did business and really looking at individual
agencies and how they worked, collecting information, and began
benchmarking at a broad level, a citywide level, if you will.
We have worked with an organization called the ICMA, and my
first budget last year had a lot of benchmarking information;
and we plan a systemic effort now of including this same kind
of comparative information in the performance plan that we will
be doing in the next year, and in the next budget and the next
performance plan will have a heavy dose of this benchmarking
information, because for one thing, it gives us a way to
understand what we need to do in terms of performance, and it
also is data that we need to understand what right-sizing our
government means. Everyone believes that we can right-size the
District Government, that it is still inefficient and out-of-
size in many, many different ways, but to what level.
To give you an example, in the police department, we have
some benchmarking on the police department. We can use this
information to determine over the long run where we want our
police department to be, or over the long run, where do we want
DMV to be.
Sometimes, though, you get conflicting information. New
York City has a tremendous drop in crime, has the highest
number of officers per capita in the country, but at the same
time, San Diego had the greatest drop in crime of any of the
major cities, and they have the lowest ratio of police per
capita.
Senator Voinovich. That is one of the things that we talked
about earlier, and I would love to have you come back in
September to talk about how you are going to coordinate all of
these plans so we can get ready for next year, and I would also
like to go into more detail on the police department. It is an
interesting issue in regard to size. So often, it is not how
many you have but what you do with the ones that you have.
Do you have any idea how many or what percentage of your
department is employed out on the street?
Mayor Williams. The chief and I would both agree it is
still too little, but we have made a goal over the next year to
get 200 more police officers out on the street. That is a
combination of 150 officers that we hope to recruit either
laterally or through new hires and 50 that we are going to get
from behind desks as part of this civilianization program.
Having said that, though, I think the chief has done a good
job in two things. He has done something we used to call
``Summer Mobile Force,'' and we are now just calling ``Mobile
Force,'' because we do it all year, where we have a special
deployment of police out on the street at any given time at
night. We have also created something called ``Power Shift''
that you may have heard some controversy about, where we have
tried to align the deployment of our officers not 9 to 5, but
to the time when crime is most likely to occur, which as you
know is not 9 to 5--it happens in the evening. That has
definitely had an effect out there in the neighborhoods.
Senator Voinovich. Do you have all two-men cars, or do you
have one-man, or does it vary?
Mayor Williams. I would say, based on the operation and
division, it varies.
Senator Voinovich. So there is no requirement that you have
two people in each automobile?
Mayor Williams. On that, I could get back to you on what
the actual requirement is.
Senator Voinovich. Yes. As I said, I would really like to
get into some of the detail in terms of deployment and how they
are deployed and response time.
You were saying regarding Emergency Medical Services that
you want to get it down below 8 minutes; is that correct?
Mayor Williams. Down below 8 minutes, and it is a
combination of the actual response time of the fire and EMS and
the actual processing in the call center. We are doing our
share in terms of building a cadre of people who are better
able to respond to the calls and answer them effectively and
professionally, our own system, and working with Bell Atlantic,
a private vendor, to see that we have upgraded their component
of the system as well, because there is a systems component, a
people part, and the fire and EMS part. On the fire and EMS
part, we have launched a pilot under former Chief Tippett to
cross-train our fire suppression and EMS people so that your
first-line responder is better able to respond to that
emergency, because what actually happens in many instances is
that you have someone respond, but they are not able or
equipped to respond to that medical emergency. So we are trying
to change that.
Senator Voinovich. I know a little something about that,
because last year, we had an emergency in Cleveland, and I was
not aware that they had changed the system, but not only did
EMS show up, but we had a big fire truck come down the street.
That is the new protocol--they send EMS and the fire service.
Of course, my question was what if a fire occurred at this
time, and apparently, they would respond to the fire; but they
decided to back up the EMS. It was amazing to me, because they
got there in about a minute and a half. It was just
incredible--and I do not think they were waiting outside the
house.
Mayor Williams. One thing I have learned as Mayor is that
there are fire suppression personnel, and there are EMS people,
and they are different; and there is a fierce debate around the
country on this whole issue.
Senator Voinovich. And that debate is still going on in my
home town.
The interesting thing is to find out how other people are
doing things, because you have to jump-start some things. I was
going to say that best practices in terms of things like
procurement, using the Smart Card and doing some of the lower
purchases using the card instead of the typical paperwork that
one has to do in terms of procurement, is a big issue.
Mayor Williams. I blatantly steal from other cities, and
they know I do that.
Senator Voinovich. There is nothing wrong with that as long
as they are best practices and they are working.
I just want to emphasize again the importance of the human
capital part of the job in terms of the quality of the people
that you have, the ability to keep those who are quality, the
ability to attract new people to come to work for the city, the
issue of incentive programs, the issue of training of your
workers, and the issue of empowering people who work for you,
because I really believe that those of us in government are
going to be in a more and more difficult position in the next
couple of years in terms of holding the people that we have and
also trying to encourage them to come to work for us--
particularly people who have special skills. As we move more
toward technology, it is going to be more and more difficult to
attract them, because the private sector is really doing a job
of enticing them to go to work for them. It is a terrible thing
to wake up one day and find out you do not have the folks; or,
in the alternative, I recall when I became Mayor of Cleveland
that one of the problems we had was that our salary schedule
was not competitive. My folks said you cannot go to the council
and ask them for more money, and I said why not. They said,
well, you are asking for more money to hire people. And I said,
if they want me to hire good people, I have to have a salary
schedule that is competitive. So I said let us go and talk to
them about it. And it was amazing, after I explained what the
situation was and the kind of people that we wanted to bring to
the city and where we were in terms of our salary schedule,
that they got it, and they adjusted the salary schedule so we
could attract those individuals.
Again, so often, there is the reaction that these are
``government workers.'' Well, I think government workers are
the finest workers we have in America and are very, very
underrated, and I think that if we are going to keep the good
ones and attract the other ones, we have got to have a really
good plan in place that will create an environment where they
want to stay with us because they feel they are challenged, and
they are being recognized, and also have a program where you
can encourage new people to come in and go to work for you.
Mayor Williams. I know, Senator, in our city--this may hold
true with the Federal Government--as far as our demographics,
we have a huge number of people now who are retiring. So the
good news is that we can use this as an easier way--I will put
it that way--to bring our government to its right size without
huge RIFs or devastation of the work force. But the bad side of
it is--you are right--that if you are not careful--and this has
happened to our city in the past, where we had to make some
serious cuts, and we used early buyouts, for example, early
retirement--if you are not careful, you lose a lot of your
institutional knowledge and wherewithal and expertise.
Senator Voinovich. You just gave me an idea, Mayor--maybe
that is one reason why we have even more to worry about in the
Federal Government. People reach age 55, and they can retire
and go to work for the D.C. Government--and I know you are not
out recruiting them right now.
Mayor Williams. It is an interesting thought, though.
[Laughter.]
Senator Voinovich. Last but not least, you and I have
talked on several occasions about cooperative agreements, and I
called you in particular about the Hill, and I would like to
report to you that we have had some excellent relations with
Gary Albrecht, and from what I understand there is a good
relationship, a cooperative agreement, between the D.C. Police
and the Capitol Police, but that we have other agencies here on
the Hill that should be part of those cooperative agreements.
So I would like to continue to pursue that with you and would
like to talk about that again in September to see how much
cooperation you have been able to get to see if we cannot
enhance the reaction to crime not only on the Hill, but also to
deal with some of the other agencies that we have around
Washington. For example, I know that after the tragedy that
occurred at the Zoo, you called and talked about that issue.
So we are going to do everything we can to encourage
Federal agencies that have separate security departments to
investigate the opportunities they may have to work more
closely with the District. I really believe that if those
cooperative agreements can be entered into, and there is more
communication back and forth between the security forces here
in the District, that everyone will be a lot safer, and we will
be doing a better job of utilizing the resources that we
currently have.
There is no reason why there cannot be much better
communication and more cooperation among the various police
entities that we have in the District.
Mayor Williams. I recall, Mr. Chairman, before you were in
your current position and I was Mayor--this was during the
height of our fiscal crisis and our other problems--I was
pushing very hard for cooperation between the different police
departments, because I think a lot of people in our city feel
that, for example, the IMF and the World Bank, in terms of
managing traffic and motorcades, do a great job of cooperating
with one another, and we can build on that.
I believe there have been gaps sometimes where we can share
intelligence and know-how and we have not.
Senator Voinovich. I would like--and maybe Congresswoman
Norton can help out, too--to encourage those Federal agencies
that have separate security departments to reach out and have a
little better relationship with the D.C. Police Department. Too
often, I think they have an idea that they just have their
separate little domain and turf, and they do not really need to
bother with anyone else. But if they really think about it,
they could enhance their own capabilities by understanding that
they do have a symbiotic relationship with a lot of the other
security forces that you have in the District.
Mayor Williams. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. Do you have anything else that you would
like to share with me today?
Mayor Williams. I think the thing that we are most excited
about is using your good offices to broaden this partnership
that really is emerging between our city and the business
community, and I think the most spectacular example is what the
Congress was able to do and our business leaders, the civic
leadership of the city, with the College Access Program. For
the first time, that represented the regional and District
business leadership coming together with government leaders. If
we can use that model to now expand and include businesses all
over the country, I think that has exciting possibilities.
I have talked with the business community here, and our
goal over the next year is to try to see that every school has
a business sponsor, and in conjunction with that business
sponsor, we are getting the very best principals, and we are
getting a good business manager for each school. This is just
one example of what that kind of program can develop and
anticipate.
Senator Voinovich. I know you have been meeting with the
business community, and I am anxious to hear what they finally
agree to do. As I have told you, I have talked with the
Cleveland Tomorrow people, I have talked with the Cleveland
Scholarship people, and if you are ever interested in having
them come in to sit down with you and your business community,
I would be more than happy to get that done.
Mayor Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate it.
Senator Voinovich. Thanks for being here today. We will see
you again.
Mayor Williams. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Our meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:40 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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