The American public is displeased-often angry-with a government it sees as spending billions of dollars on paperwork and process, but not producing meaningful results. In response, the federal government is in the midst of a gigantic effort to return major responsibilities for services to the states, banking that states have the desire as well as the know-how to fashion effective solutions to problems so long addressed primarily at the federal level.
Will states be able to make government work better and cost less? Will federal flexibility on the "means" actually produce better "ends"? Will revamped accountability for spending public funds emphasize results that are meaningful to citizens rather than tidy but often useless analyses of process? Or will states simply duplicate old structures and continue to support narrow programs that resemble isolated stovepipes sticking up in the policy skyline?
In the midst of this policy making angst, the state of Oregon continues to move ahead on an ambitious experiment with results-driven government. The state of Oregon is doing what others have only tried on a local scale: it is taking its strategic planning seriously and putting budget teeth into meeting the state’s long-term goals. Its efforts touch all aspects of what makes a state healthy-economic development, education, health care, the environment, social services, and community participation. Furthermore, Oregon has crafted a promising process to track progress-the Oregon benchmarks-that other states and governance reform efforts are already imitating.
Along with local partners, the state of Oregon has entered into an innovative agreement-known as the Oregon Option-with the federal government. This unprecedented arrangement gives the state more freedom from federal rules in return for better bottom-line results.
This report is a snapshot of what Oregon is doing, sharing information and insights gained during a 1995 IEL Policy Exchange site visit to Oregon. For four intense days, more than 20 senior staff from the Congress and the Clinton Administration met with state and local officials, spent hours with low-income families, toured programs with front-line agency workers, and talked with the governor. They got first-hand practice in setting goals and using benchmarks to measure progress. And they worked their way through Oregon’s many waivers from federal laws, drawing larger lessons they could use to help shape policy back in Washington.
Site visit participants studied and discussed many of the initiatives that support the state’s long-range agenda-the Oregon Health Care Plan, the Educational Act for the 21st Century, and the state and local Commissions on Children and Families.
However, Oregon’s effort is much more complex than simply passing piecemeal legislation. It recognizes that services for people-whether health, education, employment and training, or social-do not come in a neat package with one return address. They come through systems and programs that are intertwined, some even say hopelessly tangled, from the local town hall to the halls of Congress.
Oregon is working to craft a decision-making process that seeks to avoid program proliferation and micro-management, trusting people to do it right. The state is using such tools as training, waivers from federal laws, intergovernmental agreements, and budget accountability to make programs work to meet broad community and state goals. Its most innovative tool-the benchmarking process-provides the base for a governance system that focuses on results.
Oregon is not the only place putting a greater emphasis on results or developing new relationships among the local, state, and federal levels of government. Its leadership would warn other states against cookie-cutter adoption of Oregon’s approach. And its officials would never claim their efforts are perfect or finished. Yet, the state is on the cutting edge of results-driven government, trailblazing in the Oregon tradition.
Although the picture painted in this report is positive and promising, no system, including the results-driven benchmarking process, is perfect. For example, while benchmarks seek to measure what is important, there are rarely neat cause-and-effect relationships in the complex human areas that so many of the benchmarks address. Moreover, the data needed to support the benchmarking process often are not available or not comparable over time. And any system of accountability contains opportunities for "gaming the system," fraud, creaming and mediocre thinking.
As this report goes to press, the journey of Oregon towards accountability for results continues. There have been setbacks that could not have been anticipated and there have been important changes in federal as well as state laws. For example:
- Since the 1995 Policy Exchange site visit, Congress has dramatically changed the federal welfare system-phasing out the 61-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program and replacing it with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Children program that provides capped block grants to states.
- In the November 1996 election, Oregon passed its second round of property tax limitations, squeezing local resources even as the call at the national level intensifies for more "devolution" of responsibility to states and localities.
- The state legislature has modified the education reform law, the 1991 Educational Act for the 21st Century.
And many of the key players cited in this report now have new roles. For example: Duncan Wyse has moved from the Oregon Progress Board to the Oregon Business Council; and Connie Revell is director of the Oregon Option, a new position.
As these and other changes evolve, it is clear that Oregon will be a state to watch-a bellwether of change that can inform what other states do as well as national policy.
The New Oregon Trail is designed to help policy makers and concerned citizens alike understand the context, culture and history that set the stage for Oregon’s efforts, from the benchmarks to the Oregon Option. This report:
- Shares information and insights about why the ground is so fertile in Oregon for doing the business of government differently;
- Examines "benchmarks" in the concrete as well as the abstract;
- Explores larger lessons learned from Oregon’s many waivers from federal laws;
- Puts the Oregon Option in this larger context; and
- Explores implications for federal policies.
The following pages describe the new Oregon trail-an experiment to make government accountable for results and to build productive partnerships with the federal government. While this new trail is sometimes difficult and not without imperfections, it does seem to be headed in the right direction.
By bringing Democrats and Republicans together to learn and solve problems, the IEL Policy Exchange promotes cross-cutting initiatives that foster effective and collaborative services for children, families and communities. By putting education experts side-by-side with housing experts (and health and welfare experts side-by-side with training experts), the Policy Exchange works to build personal networks as well as a substantive knowledge base for policy makers in order to help them envision and implement solutions that meet society’s needs.
It is not easy to get people to change their mindsets, but we have come up with an innovative process that gets people excited about working together to solve problems.
Randy Franke, Chair
Marion County Board of Commissioners
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Click below to get the full text of The New Oregon Trail: Accountability for Results
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