An End to the War on WasteAuthor(s): Paul LightSource: The Brookings Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), p. 48Published by: Brookings Institution PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20080389 .

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POLITICS WATCH

An End to the War on Waste BY PAUL LIGHT

The Cold War was not the only war put behind us during the Bush years. So, too, apparently, was the war on waste. We

haven't had a big procurement scandal for five years now, and

Ronald Reagan's estimate of

$100 billion lost each year is

long forgotten. In spite of occa

sional reports from the General

Accounting Office showing that government is still losing

billions to antiquated account

ing systems, poorly managed contracts, and ill-conceived

programs, the war on waste is

off the front page. The question is what to do

with the troops who fought the war?the 12,000 or so auditors

and investigators who work in

more than 60 federal Offices of

Inspector General (OIGs) cre

ated between 1978 and 1988. Launched by Congress in 1976 at the Department of Health,

Education, and Welfare, and

expanded across government in 13 different waves over the

next decade, these offices re

main nearly invisible to those

of us outside government, only

occasionally popping up in sto

ries about scandals such as the

one over President Clinton's

passport. Yet the OIGs were

among the few units in govern ment that actually prospered

during the 1980s. Their staffing went up almost a quarter; fund

ing, even faster.

Theirs was a classic "body count" war, giving Ronald

Reagan and his beleaguered Office of Management and

Budget the only good statistics

on a map of spreading red ink:

over $100 billion in OIG sav

ings won through recoveries of

missing funds, fines, and other

improvements in how we

spend federal dollars over the

first 10 years. Their achieve

ments did not go unnoticed in

the White House. Even as most

domestic agencies were being cut back, Reagan gave the

OIGs new staff and resources.

The more the OIGs could

show that the war was being won, the more they would get

in next year's budget.

Meanwhile, other offices in

government sacrificed for the

war on waste?evaluation

units, offices of budget and

policy analysis, procurement and personnel shops all lost

staff to the OIGs under Reagan. When agencies grew overall,

the OIGs always grew faster; when agencies shrank, the

OIGs always shrank more

slowly. Even though we seem to

have stopped talking about

waste, the OIGs continue to

fight the good fight. Each

year they set new records in

savings and indictments. Each

year they report growing statis

tical success against what seems

to be an unyielding tide of

inefficiency. But the war they're fighting

may not be winnable, at least

not the way it's been fought. For all their efforts, the OIGs

have mostly focused on a nar

row war of attrition in which

they mop up the fraud, waste,

and abuse after it occurs. They

patrol the territory, spot the in

cursion, audit and investigate with guns blazing, recover the

money, indict the bad guys, then wait for the next attack.

They did not do their jobs poorly, but may have been do

ing the wrong jobs. What we now realize is that

government cannot win a war

on waste without attacking the

enemy at the source. Fighting waste after it takes place is ex

pensive, demoralizing, and, as

the OIG yearly records suggest,

never-ending. What we need

to do is prevent the incursions

in the first place, starting with a

modern financial management

system, and the computers to

go with it. We must create the

capacity within the government to recognize and prevent ineffi

ciency in the design and

implementation of new pro

grams, and we must design

incentives for doing the right thing in the first place. We are

now talking about reinventing

government, not rooting out

waste, about restructuring and

flattening agencies, not busting fraud.

Can the OIGs play a role in

this new management agenda? Two features of their operations

suggest they can. First, the

OIGs remain independent from

the partisan pressures that often

emerge on Capitol Hill and the White House. They are

required to report to both

Congress and the president and are "creatures" of neither,

and they have enormous auton

omy in how they staff and run

their offices.

Second, several OIGs have

already shown a willingness to

engage in the kinds of program evaluation we need to design

more "workable" programs in

the first place. The Health and Human Services OIG, for ex

ample, has developed a strong evaluation capacity that pro vides quick-and-dirty studies

of immediate value to the

secretary. This blend of speed and independence can bring a fresh perspective to both

ends of Pennsylvania Avenue

about designing more effective

programs.

Pledged to free government from second-guessing and

endless internal regulation, President Clinton may have

far less interest in being kept apprised of the latest OIG sav

ings record and much more in

how the OIGs can participate in a full-scale reinventing of

government. Will he ask the

OIGs to give up their body count mindset? Trained and

rewarded for one kind of war

on waste, will the OIGs be

able to adapt to the new presi dent's new management order?

If they cannot, they may go the way of the 16-inch-gun

batdeship, an instrument no

longer needed in a vastly

changed environment.

Paul Light is professor of public

affairs at the Humphrey Institute,

University of Minnesota, and

a senior fellow of the Governance

Institute. He is the author of

Monitoring Government:

Inspectors General and the

Search for Accountability

(Brookings/'Governance

Institute: 1993).

4 8 THE BROOKINGS REVIEW

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