Working also significantly reduces long-term poverty ... - DDW

ASPEC Card Agent specification is key to policymaking
GAO, June 13, 2006 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06751r.pdf
After the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March
2003, two legacy enforcement agencies-the former Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) and the U.S. Customs Service (USCS)-were
among the 22 federal agencies brought together within DHS. 1 This
transformation in turn merged the legacy INS and USCS investigators 2
into the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of
Investigations (OI), and legacy INS and USCS inspectors, 3 among
others, into Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It has been nearly 3
years since the merger and efforts to integrate thousands of federal
employees within ICE and CBP continue. You raised questions about
ongoing human capital challenges brought about by the integration of
legacy enforcement employees within ICE and CBP. In prior work, we have
reported on the management and human capital challenges DHS faces as it
merges the workforces of legacy agencies, including the need to clarify
the roles and responsibilities of the new agencies, the difficulty of
legacy staff operating from separate locations, and how it decides to
allocate investigative resources. 4 Generic Agencies Fail Regulatory agencies empirically fail-inherent problems
Tibor Machan, Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman
University's Argyros School, research fellow @ Pacific Research Institute
& Hoover Institution 6/29/09"The reality of regulatory agencies" The confidence shown in regulators in the first statement seems to me to
be plainly undermined by the historical claim in the second, one that
seems to follow from a certain plausible understanding of public choice
theory, actually - ignoring rather than investigating warnings would come
naturally to those who are, whether consciously or not, embarking upon
vested interest dealing, in this instance working for regulations to
continue instead of doing what might make them unnecessary in time.
Regulators have a good job, and it is no surprise that they might work
not so much to fix problems they perceive in the marketplace but to keep
working at what keeps them employed and well fed. In free markets, to
the extent that they exist, such vested interest dealings are checked by
competition and budgetary constraints (to the extent these are not
thwarted by government policies that often produce monopolies). A shoe
repairer may be tempted to fix shoes not quite as well as they need to be
fixed but just enough that they will last a while but need to be returned
for further repair. Indeed, automobile repairers are often suspected of
this. What, apart from conscientiousness, keeps such folks on the
straight and narrow is competition, the knowledge that if they don't do
the work well enough someone else will jump in to do so. One main reason
that bureaucracies are generally sluggish and unenthusiastic about
serving the public - as distinct from private vendors - is this element
of constant competition, combined with the fact that bureaucrats gain
their income from taxes, which can often be raised with impunity by those
who hire them. What public choice theorists claim is that bureaucrats
have a far better opportunity to yield to the temptation of malpractice
than are those in the private sector. The theory does not claim that all
bureaucrats are cheats and all those in the private sector are
professionally responsible. But it identifies an evident tendency and
shows it to exist through the study of economic and political history.
Common sense supports this, as well, when most people notice that if they
go to, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles (one of the more visible
government outfits), they mostly get a reluctant, bored, at times even
curmudgeonly treatment, whereas in the private sector the routine tends
to be eagerness to serve, to generate and keep business. There is an
element about public choice theory that economists do not emphasize often
enough, namely that the objectives of regulators are often very obscure,
unclear, even contradictory. For example, governments often embark on
historical preservation but at the same time they are supposed to make
sure that building and other facilities are properly managed, kept safe,
etc. But historical preservation mostly require keeping things in their
original form, while the pursuit of safety involves making use of the
most up-to-date technology and science. One can generalize this kind of
conflict within government policies all over the place - which is what
accounts for vigilant propaganda against smoking while tobacco farmers
keep receiving government subsidies. NGO's Key Federal Sucess NGO's the number one internal to federal government success
Booz Allen Hamilton, leading consulting firm, helps government clients
solve their toughest problems "The Role of Mission Integration in the
Federal Government" Nov 5, 2008
http://www.acuf.org/issues/issue121/081201news.asp
An Increasingly Complex Environment Federal agencies are no longer
communities unto themselves-technology and globalization have created
greater interdependence between NGOs and the private sector. Respondents
in every federal sector, from agriculture and energy to defense, describe
their mission as "very complex." Furthermore, 88 percent of respondents
report that the complexity of their missions requires col- laboration
with other federal agencies or third parties outside the government
structure. The need for increasingly integrated and complex misions will
increase in the coming years. More than 84 percent of respondents
believe that their mission's complexity has increased dramatically since
2000. Furthermore, they recognize complexity and mission integration as
vital to mission success. According to respondents, joint missions will
be increasingly critical in the future for agencies to meet mission
goals. Nearly three quarters of respondents (73 percent) believe that by
2012 joint missions will play a greater role in their agency's ability
to achieve mission success. A full 50 percent of respondents believe
their missions will become "significantly more integrated" over time.
The Need for Mission Integration In an era of pervasive complexity,
mission success is increasingly dependent on mission integration.
Federal agencies need to draw on a diverse mix of specialties and
capabilities, work across organizational boundaries, and operate from
deliberate plans with accountability for clear, measurable results. Administration for Children and Families Administration for Children, has jurisdiction over asylum children
Chriss McGann June 19, 2003 "U.S. gives harsh welcome to children seeking
asylum" http://www.seattlepi.com/local/127345_juv19.html.
Responsibility of care for unaccompanied immigrant children was
transferred in March from the INS to the Office of Refugee Relocation a
division of the Administration of Children and Families in the Department
of Health and Human Services. ACF fails at implementation
GAO December 2002 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d039.pdf
ACF conducts much of its work through nonfederal service providers,
which often limits the extent to which ACF can influence national
performance goals and can seriously complicate data collection. To
address this, ACF has successfully collaborated with providers to
develop national performance goals and build data collection capacity.
This has also raised awareness of the importance of collecting and
reporting performance data uniformly Agriculture Department Agriculture department has internal problems and performance gaps
GAO-09-650T 6/29/09 "U.S. Department of Agriculture: Recommendations and
Options Available to the New Administration and Congress to Address Long-
Standing Civil Rights Issues" Summary ASCR's difficulties in resolving discrimination complaints persist--ASCR
has not achieved its goal of preventing future backlogs of complaints. At
a basic level, the credibility of USDA's efforts has been and continues
to be undermined by ASCR's faulty reporting of data on discrimination
complaints and disparities in ASCR's data. Even such basic information as
the number of complaints is subject to wide variation in ASCR's reports
to the public and the Congress. Moreover, ASCR's public claim in July
2007 that it had successfully reduced a backlog of about 690
discrimination complaints in fiscal year 2004 and held its caseload to
manageable levels, drew a questionable portrait of progress. By July
2007, ASCR officials were well aware they had not succeeded in preventing
future backlogs--they had another backlog on hand, and this time the
backlog had surged to an even higher level of 885 complaints. In fact,
ASCR officials were in the midst of planning to hire additional attorneys
to address that backlog of complaints including some ASCR was holding
dating from the early 2000s that it had not resolved. In addition, some
steps ASCR had taken may have actually been counter-productive and
affected the quality of its work. For example, an ASCR official stated
that some employees' complaints had been addressed without resolving
basic questions of fact, raising concerns about the integrity of the
practice. Importantly, ASCR does not have a plan to correct these many
problems. USDA has published three annual reports--for fiscal years 2003,
2004, and 2005--on the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in
USDA programs, as required by law. USDA's reports a