Prepared for Representative David M. McIntosh

On April 15, 1999, the Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs, which I chair, held a hearing on the Administration's actual and expected paperwork reduction accomplishments under the Paperwork Reduction Act. This letter seeks to clarify the nature of your involvement in paperwork reduction through your National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), or under regulatory Executive Order 12866 which provides that you "shall coordinate the development and presentation of recommendations," or as Chair of the President's Management Council (PMC).

The hearing examined the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) mis-management of the paperwork burden imposed on Americans, OMB's falsely-claimed paperwork reduction accomplishments, 872 violations of law last year alone where agencies levied unauthorized paperwork burdens on the American people, and a woefully inadequate number of specific paperwork reduction initiatives identified by the Administration for Fiscal Years 1999 and 2000. The bottom line was that paperwork by your Administration is expected to increase by 2.6 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, in these two years. This is on top of the 2.3, 1.0, and 0.4 percent increases, respectively, during the past three years.

Given these problems, the General Accounting Office's representative at the hearing, Nye
Stevens, Director of Federal Management and Workforce Issues, recommended that you become
more involved by exercising your responsibility under Executive Order 12866. Quite frankly, the
Administration's witnesses gave conflicting testimony about your role in paperwork reduction.
The Administration's representative at the hearing, Deidre Lee, Acting Deputy Director for
Management, Office of Management and Budget, testified that you have not been involved in the
Government's paperwork reduction efforts. However, the Department of Agriculture's Chief
Information Officer Anne Thomson Reed testified that she understood that you had stressed the
importance of paperwork reduction in meetings of the PMC.

Please clarify what has been your involvement in government-wide paperwork reduction and the involvement of your staff and other members of the NPR and PMC and their staffs. Once again, it appears that, when it comes to Federal paperwork, what should be down is actually going up and up. I believe that the public deserves substantially more paperwork reduction initiatives by the Clinton-Gore Administration. What steps will you take to improve the Administration's sorry record in this area? Perhaps then Americans would be subject to fewer, rather than more, Federal paperwork requirements.

Thank you for your letter of April 20, 1999 to the Vice President about the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and the importance of having Federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) implement it properly. As you know, the Administration supported the Paperwork Reduction Act. Congress passed this bill without a dissenting vote, and President Clinton was pleased to sign it into law on May 22, 1995.

First, I would like to clarify that the President's Management Council (PMC) is chaired by the Deputy Director for Management at OMB. However, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), under the strong leadership of the Vice President, has been working tirelessly with other entities in this Administration to create a more streamlined government. We are focusing on delivering great service to the public; fostering partnership and community solutions; and reinventing agencies to get the job done with less.

Our efforts have resulted in many real and significant measures that have reduced paperwork for both the public and government employees, including:

Revising the Small Business Administration's (SBA) application forms from 78 pages to one page reduced paperwork imposed on small business applicants. This measure also cut a 90-day review to 3 days.

Eliminating the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) physician
attestation form wiped out 11 million forms of useless paperwork.

Eliminating the Department of Labor's requirement that employers file financial statements of the condition of their pension and welfare benefits plans ended a quarter of a million filings annually.

Moving from procurement requisition forms to procurement cards eliminated millions of forms within the federal government.

In Georgia, Federal and State agencies worked together to consolidate application forms for a range of assistance programs and cut 70 pages of applications to six.

The Vice President's Plain Language campaign has led to more understandable forms and notices, thereby reducing burdens on the public. The leader of this effort has been the Securities and Exchange Commission which simplified mutual fund prospectuses.

In this information age, all institutions have come to rely more and more on information to perform their most basic functions. Information is the key to an effective government that provides its citizens with necessary services – national security; a sound financial system; health, safety and environmental protection - in the least intrusive and most efficient manner possible.

As your letter notes, the Vice President has personally urged Federal agencies to review and reduce, where possible, the information they need in order to serve the public. Even the Act recognizes that we must rely more on information, but requires each agency to weigh the burdens imposed by collections of information on the public against the need for or practical utility of the information received.

As you also know, under the Paperwork Reduction Act, the OMB is charged with responsibility for overseeing efforts by each agency's Chief Information Officer to manage the agency's information resources. OMB recently published the FY 1999 Information Collection Budget that summarizes these efforts. It notes, for example, that targeted legislation to reduce individual taxes – legislation supported by both the Administration and Congress – nonetheless requires additional reporting. The document identifies over 70 statutes recently enacted by Congress that will necessarily require additional information. We can and will, of course, continue to work to ensure that these new programs are implemented as efficiently as possible within the constraints established in the law.

You may be assured that this Administration remains committed to reducing red tape and any undue burdens on citizens who must deal with our government. As you know from your work with former Vice President Quayle's Council on Competitiveness, this task is one that requires the full bipartisan cooperation of all of us if we are to truly serve the American taxpayer.

Sincerely

Morley Winograd

Senior Policy Advisor

and Director of the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government

cc: The Honorable Dan Burton

The Honorable Henry A. Waxman
The Honorable Dennis Kucinich