Reforming And Restructuring The Federal Government

Excerpt from Reforming and Restructuring the Federal Government: Hearings Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session We thought there were several senators that would come along. At this time, now, with the primaries going on in the South 48, there is obviously no other senator here, but I decided to continue to hold the hearings because their original intent was for me, now, as Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, to have in formation from Alaskans that I have known in the past to have Views that I would like to have on the record that as we proceed now with legislation go to deal with the restructuring of the Fed eral Government. There has been some comment about the fact that these hearings were scheduled very quickly. I want you to know, we didn't know until last Thursday when we finally got the telecommunications bill passed. That was an enormous breakthrough for Alaska and for us personally since I have worked a long time on that. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In Canada, as in other countries, politicians, public servants, academics, members of the private sector, and other citizens, are engaged in a serious examination of the function of government in society and how that function can best be performed. This document provides background for a discussion of government reform in a contemporary context and discusses a current attempt to alter the administrative environment of the federal government that picks up a number of the earlier themes. It provides an introduction to the following points: highlights of administrative reform attempts at the Canadian federal level since 1962, and government reform in a contemporary setting.

This book describes and examines reforms of fiscal federalism and local government in 10 OECD countries implemented over the past decade.

Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.

This book describes and examines reforms of fiscal federalism and local government in 10 OECD countries implemented over the past decade.

Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.

Kakistocracy, a term that describes what our government has become, a government controlled by "leaders" who are the least able or least principled citizens. These leaders are labeled "kakistocrats." In Reform the Kakistocracy, Kovacs describes how the kakistocracy transformed our federal government from one of limited powers to one of immense power without any constitutional changes. This decades-long transformation revised the functions and powers of Congress, the executive, and the courts. These revisions change how each branch of government fulfills its institutional role as a check on the powers of the other branches. They also fundamentally affect the relationship of citizens to their government. The result of the transformation is decades of policy failures, harmful wealth inequality, a health care system costing two times more than in other industrialized nations, and the imposition of such massive amounts of debt that citizens will eventually live in involuntary servitude to the federal government. As part of the discussion, Kovacs takes on the real - world conflict faced by the kakistocrats - who should be the beneficiary of their loyalty? Of course, it is the Constitution but what does that mean when applied to day-to-day decisions? Kakistocrats deal with laws and regulations, sometimes very vague, deal-making, favors, supporters, opponents, citizens, political parties, interest groups, contributors and other branches of government. How does a kakistocrat balance all these competing factors to be faithful to the Constitution? Unlike many books on government reform, Reform the Kakistocracy does not let the reader dangle with fuzzy answers. It presents a clear, thought-provoking, roadmap of governance principles and proposals for restructuring the kakistocracy to achieve a sustainable government that can be managed by citizens. Some may call the roadmap controversial, aggressive, naive or completely unworkable in this political climate, but the roadmap puts serious, creative, ideas into the marketplace for discussion.