Honorable John Glenn March 19, 1976 setting or planning which would be outside the mainstream of government. If we can apply the historical lessons of planning at local levels of government in the United States, it will be seen clearly that as planning became more "legitimate" it moved successively from a citizens' planning committee at its beginning early in this century, to a formal public planning commission within the framework of government but separate from the local governing body and chief executive, and then in recent decades into a department or office of planning directly responsible to the localities' governing body and chief executive. Keeping long range planning outside the normal governmental structure at the national level--through special commissions, councils, or foundations--would be a recognition that planning had not yet been accepted as a normal part of central management and policy making. This is not to say that these various groups outside the mainstream of management and policy making do not have significant contributions to make. Indeed they do. ACIR itself is one such body, and we believe that it is making a significant contribution by evaluating existing programs and initiating new ideas. However, without integrative and long range thinking going on within central management and policy making units of government, there is no mechanism for using counsel generated by outside groups. The Federal government now has had more than a decade of experience with improved management techniques such as planning-programmingbudgeting systems (PPBS), management by objectives, program evaluation, and policy analysis. These are all efforts to get long range thinking and goal setting institutionalized within the regular processes of central management and policy making. The proposal in your letter that Congress insist on each government agency's budget submission including a planning document stating goals and policies would be another such effort. These are all to the good. So are the expanding efforts to require impact statements, not only concerning the environment, but also addressing economic, fiscal, intergovernmental, inflationary, energy, and other such matters. The objectives of these analyses are unassailable, but the problem is to keep the process manageable. Again, we return to the necessity of selective planning and policy analysis on key issues so that policy making programs and projects are not paralyzed. Federal information, education, training, and planning assistance programs are essential lubricants in national policy and planning endeavors. They are essential to assuring (1) State and local government involvement in national policy making, (2) educating the public for civic responsibility, (3) avoidance of duplicative information gathering at all levels, and (4) government and private sector cooperation. Yet, at the present time planning assistance and intergovernmental personnel programs are facing significant budget reductions, Honorable John Glenn March 19, 1976 while proposals for more timely information gathering (such as the mid-decade census) languish, and the tension between freedom of information and privacy acts makes it unclear as to how to make best use of the many Federal data sources for planning purposes at all levels. These issues all must be addressed, but they are at the how-to-do-it level, rather than at the first priority level of deciding whether it is really expected that long range planning and goal setting should be made a regular part of national government in the United States. To help overcome the deficiencies in the Federal government's present approach to setting long range goals and to develop strategies for achieving them, attention might focus on these objectives: 1. Clarify and operationalize Congressional intent in support of national planning. 2. Systematize and strengthen Federal support for planning at State and local levels (including regional), and for building greater governing capacity at these levels. 3. Require a major study of Federal information and research programs relating to the practical availability of the results of such programs for planning, management, and policy making at all levels of government, as well as in the private sector. On the first point, Congress could show that it means business with respect to requirements for executive branch preparation of the national growth report, the annual rural development report, the national transportation plan, and other such legislated national planning requirements, by providing adequate planning staffs in the executive branch for these purposes, and by assuring more adequate Congressional oversight of these executive functions. Additionally, Congress could re-emphasize and operationalize its intent and capability for periodic program reviews and oversight by giving serious attention to legislation such as S. 2925, the Government Economy and Spending Reform Act of 1976, introduced recently by Senator Muskie. For purposes of improving the Federal government's capability for collecting inputs from the field for its planning process, Congress could recognize that the executive branch's field structure has been reorganized, and is established in 10 regions, each with a Federal Regional Council. It now should face the question of whether national efforts should utilize these mechanisms and incorporate information from the field representing the views of Federal, State, local, and regional governmental units, as well as private sector interests and the public-at-large. Honorable John Glenn March 19, 1976 Secondly, to strengthen its support for State, local, and regional planning and governing capacity, Congress could consider consolidation and increased funding of various planning assistance programs, as well as more adequate funding of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. These programs assist the lower levels of government not only in improving their own operations, but also in incorporating citizen involvement at those levels in meaningful ways. Another important action which Congress could take to strengthen central management and policy making would be to establish a civil service career development program requiring advanced training as a prerequisite for promotion to top management levels in the Federal government. The required training might include management and planning techniques, communications techniques, orientation to major national issues, intergovernmental relations, public finance, accounting, and personnel management. Appropriate State, local and regional officials should be eligible to participate in this program and should be encouraged to do so. Finally, the study of Federal information sources would inventory the types of information presently generated (of both the statistical and the research or analytical types), methods now used for synthesizing them and making them useful, and their current availability both within and outside of the Federal government. This inventory would be evaluated and recommendations would be made to improve both the availability and usefulness of such information. for planning, management, and policymaking purposes. None of these proposals--and they are simply staff views--are revolutionary. They build on the rather substantial institutional and information base that has emerged in recent years. Their thrust is to focus on the task ahead of us. In all this, however, it must be recognized that traditional political values and basic systemic issues are involved. Historically, ours has been a system that responds vigorously to a crisis that is overt, undeniable, and easily defined. Intricate, interrelated, yet insistent challenges usually have been treated, if at all, in a piecemeal, partial fashion, due to the interplay of diverse interests within our highly pluralistic, multi-centered governmental and political system. The "concert of interests" approach occupies a hallowed place in our political tradition. And rightly so! Yet its application today is more difficult than ever before, given the greater heterogeneity of the American electorate, the growing list of issues that are matters of public policy, and the increasing difficulties of our party system in fulfilling its historic compromise and consensus-building roles. Integrative responses, not to mention effective anticipatory planning, are difficult to mount under these very real political and systemic constraints. Honorable John Glenn March 19, 1976 I hope these comments will be helpful. If I can be of further assistance, please let me know. American Association for the Advancement of Science 1 7 7 6 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, NW. WASHINGTON. D. C., 2003 6 March 22, 1976 The Honorable John Glenn Dear Senator Glenn: William D. Carey, Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has asked me to respond on both of our behalfs to your 4 March 1976 letter which summarized the discussions of the 4-6 February symposium by the Senate Government Operations Committee on "Our Third Century: Directions." I shall address the three specific questions which were taken as the major agenda items at the February symposium in order: Question 1: What role should government play in setting longterm goals and in development of strategies for achieving those goals? We agree with the consensus of the symposium participants that since a long-range view of the nation's activities has become imperative, government has a responsibility to look ahead and to plan. However, given the built-in bias in favor of the policy premises of any incumbent administration and the existence of a vested-interest bureaucracy, government tends to project a future which does not recognize the legitimacy of contrasting expectations. We are therefore skeptical about its ability to take the lead in long-term goal setting. Instead of stressing "goals" and "goal setting" as a proper role for government, we believe the emphasis should be upon developing strategies for displaying and examining choices and alternatives, and the social and institutional changes that are both implicit and explicit in the acceptance or rejection of those choices and alternatives. However, even this is insufficient without creating a process by which the Congress and various sectors of the public focus discussion and debate around the information presented. Thus, although we applaud the major emphasis the symposium placed on substantial public involvement in developing alternatives, we are dubious about the merits of any proposals, no matter how well intentioned, whose objectives are simply to provide an undifferentiated public with better information. Little would be gained and much |