This evaluation is a case study of mixed results. It documents how difficult it can be to administer separate, seemingly complementary federal programs in a value-added way that makes sense to customers and uses taxpayer money wisely. This close-up look at the incentives and, perhaps more importantly, disincentives in the small pilot program studied offers critical lessons for more ambitious efforts to use public funds more effectively.
The IEL Policy Exchange evaluated the effectiveness of a small pilot program to test joint administration of two federal programs—the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program (Weatherization Program) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Section 504 Rural Housing loan and grant program. Both programs can help elderly, rural, very low income home owners repair their homes to make them safer and more energy efficient. But the two programs also have different goals and administrative structures, and are accountable to different Congressional committees.
The pilot program was very small, only $275,000 shared by three participating states (New Mexico, North Carolina and Ohio). In these states, the pilot operated side-by-side with its two, much larger component pieces—the Energy Department’s $214.8 million Weatherization Assistance Program and the Agriculture Department’s $54.7 million Section 504 Rural Housing loan and grant program. One state, Ohio, worked closely with a nongovernmental partner.
The IEL Policy Exchange looked closely at both the process of implementing the pilot program and the results this process produced in order to extract lessons learned and make recommendations for future improvements.
This study included several major research and data collection tasks: analyzing statutes and other related materials; developing a detailed side-by-side comparison of the two programs; and conducting structured telephone interviews with federal administrators, state and local field staff officers and customers of the pilot program.
This report describes the lessons learned from the successes and limitations of the pilot program. It then draws on these lessons to make recommendations to improve future efforts to combine or streamline programs that have different statutory requirements and administering agencies, even though they have similar goals, provide similar services or serve essentially the same people.
Major lessons learned from this study are:
Over-Arching Lessons
- Structural differences matter.
- There is currently not much federal "glue" to connect policies and programs across departments.
- The form of assistance matters.
- All states are not created equal—and neither are
branches of federal agencies.
- Mission matters.
- It makes a difference when staff put the customer first.
- Scarce money can be the "mother of partnerships."
Results Produced by the Pilot Program
- It is hard to succeed if success is not clearly defined.
- Program goals and measures of success reflect departmental
stove pipes.
- Long-term and corollary results are often not rewarded.
Customer satisfaction should be a prime measure of success.
- Partnerships are never perfect, but they become easier with practice.
Pilot Program Process
- Timing is everything.
- Having a nongovernmental partner can pay off.
- Combining programs does not automatically reduce paperwork and
bureaucracy.
- All bureaucracy and complexity are not dictated from Washington.
- Federal staff at the state and local levels do not expect the
federal government to change the way it does business.
- Staff know little about other programs and agencies.
This study makes the following recommendations:
- Put customers first.
- Articulate clear goals and identify benchmarks for success.
- Identify and, wherever possible, simplify inconsistent requirements and troublesome structural barriers.
- Hold staff at all levels accountable for results.
- Give staff sufficient notice and time to undertake a new program.
Invest in staff training.
- Provide assistance to staff and customers to assure continuous
program improvement.
- Reduce the amount of paperwork for staff and customers alike, with
a focus on results.
- Develop strategies to address statutory, regulatory and administrative barriers.
- Provide grants, not loans.
- Assure that repairs are of high quality.
- Provide Congress with information on complementary programs.
- Build flexibility into the system while maintaining accountability for results.
In order to succeed, collaborations across departments, such as this pilot program, need leadership from top-level officials and career staff who are committed to making the joint effort work. Both are necessary. Either one alone is not enough.
Leadership starts at the White House and with the President’s Cabinet Secretaries. They need to select political appointees with a vision that goes beyond their agency boundaries. They also need to reward appointees who promote programs and policies that efficiently produce results in the national interest rather than focusing solely on the more narrow concerns or budget of their agency.
Also, career staff (civil servants) are the people who will actually implement the program—or, conversely, bureaucratically stonewall or stymie something that they don’t understand, think is a bad idea or find too threatening. Consequently, successful collaboration across departments requires that senior career staff understand the big picture and support both the collaborative process and the goals of the collaboration.
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Click below to get the full text of Mixed Results: Lessons Learned from a Case Study of Interagency Collaboration
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