OMB DIRECTOR ALICE RIVLIN
ELAINE KAMARCK, SENIOR POLICY ADVISER TO THE VICE PRESIDENT
INTERIOR SECRETARY BRUCE BABBITT
FEMA DIRECTOR JAMES LEE WITT
NASA ADMINISTRATOR DANIEL GOLDIN
SBA ADMINISTRATOR PHILLADER
FCC CHAIRMAN REED HUNDT
REINVENTING GOVERNMENT
THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, DC
2:0 0P.M. EST MONDAY, MARCH 27, 1995
NASA Administrator Dan Goldin.
MR. GOLDIN: Two years ago, the president and the vice president asked NASA to reinvent itself as part of the initial reinventing government activity. They asked us to do more with less, and that’s exactly what we set out to do. And during the first phase, we have cut the NASA budget by just about 30 percent. And in the five-year planning period from ’96 to 2000, we have taken out $35 billion from the budget. We had done this mainly by terminating programs that were no longer relevant or terminating programs that were not managed properly.
We also were restructuring programs, and the keystone for that was the space station. We redesigned the space station and we tried new management techniques, where we took the government out of the middle and we transferred the program to private industry.
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Q A question for Mr. Goldin, please? Mr. Goldin, how many jobs will be lost in phase II, the second part, and what’s the breakdown between government and private sector? And secondly, how many people will you have to hire back in the event that there’s another major shuttle accident as is predicted by NASA before the space station is half completed?
MR. GOLDIN: (Laughter.) First let me say, before I answer your question specifically, this is a new time and a new age, and we no longer measure the vitality of NASA by how many employees work on a program, and we no longer measure vitality of NASA by whether our budget goes up. What we want to measure is what has NASA done for the country, and how relevant are we? And we’re in a new way of thinking. And it’s very important to transform yourself into that mode. Industry in America has downsized. Industry in America has downsized
and they’ve become much more competitive but somehow we feel very queasy about the government. We love the government but we hate the government.
NASA is terrific. We have wonderful people, but we have a management system and an infrastructure that was set up in 1957. We have independent filed centers because they didn’t have Federal Express. They couldn’t get a machine part to go from one place to the other. Everyone has a machine shop. We have print shops. We have payroll disbursing at every single one of our centers. So, what we have to say is let’s get the infrastructure at NASA down, and that’s where we’re going now.
Keeping that in mind, we want to be relevant to the American public. Our idea is to inspire the country and create opportunity. There’s a whole new mobile commercial communications industry — the so-called big Leos — that the FCC is licensing. Much of that technology came from the ACTS spacecraft, which is up there today. We’d like to believe as we transition jobs off the government payrolls we’re creating opportunity for the future of America. So long as we hold onto government jobs, we cannot create new industries in this country. So, the answer is we’re working it. We have a process in place. It will be very deliberate, and we’ll answer your question about midnight.
Q But how many jobs —
Q Can just break down how many —
Q Of the 55,000 that was in the paper, what’s already been done? What’s —
MR. GOLDIN: I would say on the order of about a quarter.
Q Has already been done?
MR. GOLDIN: No, no. On the order of a quarter is in this Reinventing Government II.
Q So about 10,000 —
MR. GOLDIN: Probably a little — a quarter of 55,000 is probably a little bit more than 10,000.
Q (Off mike) — of which how much is NASA, and how much is private sector?
MR. GOLDIN: We haven’t broke that out, but about — it’ll be — we already reduced the NASA payroll somewheres on the order of 4,000 employees out of 25,000 or 26,000.
Q But you must have some general idea. Of the 13,000, would half of them be NASA, or — (inaudible) —
MR. GOLDIN: It’ll be much less than half.
Q I think you already said —
MR. GOLDIN: That we — yeah, we identified 2,000 FTEs as part of the second phase.
Q So the 10,000 or 11,000 would be private sector?
MR. GOLDIN: Could be. But we’re in the process of performing the analysis.
Q And have you made provision for the fact that you will have to hire people back if you have a major shuttle accident while you’re constructing the space station?
MR. GOLDIN: Let me deal with that. The fact of the matter is, you don’t design in safety by putting people on a program. What we are doing is redesigning the shuttle program, and we’d like to have it become safer.
And let me give you an example. When I became administrator, they had 19 people — after all the Challenger safety checks — sign off on a piece of paper that it was okay to shut the shuttle bay doors. And guess what happened? The shuttle bay doors shut. You don’t design in safety by having a lot of people check checkers, who check checkers, who check checkers. I do not accept what you’re saying as a necessity to just hire back people. The space shuttle will operate efficiently and safely, and it is not our intent to do anything to stand in the way, and don’t measure safety of the space shuttle by how many dollars we spend on it or how many people we have associated with it. & Q How is this viewed by the states? Is it — (inaudible) — is it passing the buck to the states? Or is it passing goodies to the states? And what’s going to happen to all these people who will be fired, who will all go on unemployment compensation?
MS. KAMARCK: Let me start with the latter.
The — last year we — this administration — the president signed a buyout bill, the first ever buyout bill. That bill has been used extensively through the first phase and, in fact, in the second phase of reinventing government.
Q (Off mike.)
MS. KAMARCK: Oh, we’ve had huge numbers accepted, and I’ll get to the exact number, but for instance, last week alone at NASA, 1,500 people were offered — and accepted — buyouts. And that story repeats itself throughout the federal government, so between attrition and using the buyout authority aggressively, we have in fact been able to do historic downsizing, and buyouts have been an incredibly valuable tool to the government in this effort.
Q How about this case? What is their attitude of having all these new responsibilities?
MS. KAMARCK: There are some places — Minerals Management Service — where some states have wanted these responsibilities in the past, so it’s kind of a mixed bag.
Alice, do you want to talk to the state question overall?
MS. RIVLIN: I was going to give a number on the buyout —
MS. KAMARCK: Oh, what’s the number?
MS. RIVLIN: The number on the buyouts — so far, this is through fiscal ’95 — is about 36,000, of which — they are about half domestic, half defense.
I think the states questions is — really depends on which part of the spectrum here we’re talking about, but in general, these are areas where the states either have the capability or want to have the capability.
I think maybe James Lee Witt talking a little bit about how it will work with FEMA.
MR. WITT: Sure. What we have had in the history of FEMA through the cooperative agreement with FEMA and the states is basically we send dollars down to the state and local emergency management programs. That was on a 50-50 cost share. And what it would do — they would go through and check the box, “Yes, I’ve done this, yes, I’ve had this exercise” or “Yes, I’ve had this training course.” It really was nothing that was there to encourage them to develop to a level they need to be at to respond to the risks they face in each state.
So, what we’ve done, working with the states to develop a performance partnership standard, is to let them work with us and to developing those standards to meet those risks and give them the flexibility to help set the standards, identify the areas where they want to spend those dollars to meet those risks, and it’s working very well. They are really excited about it. Joe Myers (sp), from the state of Florid, the state director, is here. He’s already gone out to his counties working with them. So, it gives them more flexibility to identify program areas they need to be working on instead of micromanaging them. So, it really should help all of us and help have a safer America.
Q Mr. Goldin, what specific programs are you considering eliminating or spinning off to private industry?
MR. GOLDIN: We’re looking at a number of programs. And probably the lead program is the space shuttle. We’ve had the American launch industry come to us, and they said they believe they could make the space shuttle safer and they could operate it for much less money. And we also had the Chris Craft (sp) panel suggest that. We’re also taking a look at some of our communications activities. And a perfect example of that is we have a program called NAFUS (sp). The government for the last seven years — NASA has been developing with custom software a financial system that we could buy off the shelf commercially. We cancelled the government-developed software system, and we’re going to buy commercial software. So, those are the type of programs we’re looking at.
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Q Mr. Goldin, has this budgetary uncertainty had any impact on morale at the agency? And if so, what?
MR. GOLDIN: Of course. People are going to be concerned. But let me come back and say American industry has downsized successfully, and we’re much more competitive in the world. When you downsize, you would like to do it as fast as possible to minimize the impact on the terrific employees that we have. I want to tell you, our employees are wonderful. The problem we have is we have an infrastructure that’s 35 years old. It’s got to change and we’ve got to be ready for the 21st century.
Q Is it too early — can I ask you to say how it’s going to impact on Goddard?
MR. GOLDIN: What’s that?
Q The Goddard Space Flight Center?
MR. GOLDIN: Let me say the following: Again, we are in the middle of a process. We have two external teams and three internal teams. We’re doing it very deliberately. The budget is stable and solid for ’95 and ’96. We are going to take the time to go through and make very deliberate businesslike decisions. And as we make the decisions, we’ll make statements. I think it would be very inappropriate and very unfair to our wonderful employees if we shoot from the hip. And I want to come back and say I don’t want to make any commitment to the number of jobs involved, because I want to be sure we have a thorough vetting. We’ve committed to the Congress. Before we make any decisions, we’re going to consult with them, we’re going to consult with the White House. So, we have a deliberate process, and I really feel it’s inappropriate to talk about numbers or places now. But the criteria are that costs must come down and it must be best-in-the-world research.
Q Does the concern have any impact on operations that you talked about?
MR. GOLDIN: So far, we don’t feel there are any impacts on operations. We are going to constantly monitor it. But again, it is very difficult. I’ve been through downsizing in industry. It’s a little easier in industry, but we’re not afraid to do it in government. And everybody ought to work with us and say, “My god, what a wonderful opportunity to change the space program and go into the 21st century instead of holding on with an iron fist about protecting jobs so we keep the status quo.” NASA is not about the status quo; we’re about the 21st century.
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STAFF: Folks, we’ve got one last item from Dan Goldin, and then we’re going to — we’ll call a close to it.
MR. GOLDIN: Just so there was no misunderstanding — I talked about closing our remote sites. We have 10 NASA centers. We anticipate that all those centers will be held in place, but we have a multiplicity of sites other than those centers, and they are undergoing a very rigorous review, because we think that there could be significant cost savings.
Q How many of those — (off mike)?
MR. GOLDIN: Many. (Laughter.)
STAFF: We have a lot of paper. I want to make sure that you’ve all got it. The press office has it, and we obviously invite you to call the agencies themselves or you can call OMB or the NPR to get more information. Okay? Thank you.
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