REDUCING PAPERWORK COSTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00211R000500040044-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 12, 2005
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: January 13, 1966
• Content Type: REPORT

REDUCING PAPERWORK COSTS
(Symposium of November 16-17, 1965)
"Keep Bailing" by LAWSON B. KNOTT, JR.
Administrator, General Services Administration
"The Endless Horizon" by WILLIAM D. CAREY
Executive Assistant Director, Bureau of the Budget
SPECIAL RELEASE BY
INTERAGENCY RECORDS ADMINISTRATION CONFERENCE
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REMARKS BY LAWSON B. KNOTT, JR..
ADMINISTRATOR OF GENERAL SERVICES
PAPERWORK SYMPOSIUM
9:00 A. M. , November 16, 1965
International Conference Room, State Department
We welcome you to this latest in a series of Symposiums
we have been privileged to give on the subject of making office
paperwork more efficient. Interest and participation from
both industry and Government have been very gratifying during
the series.
Much of the interest comes, I feel sure, from the massive
revolution in office practices now taking place. The increasing
use of automatic data processing machines within the office
world, plus the enlarged need for more information to cope
with our increasingly urbanized society, have started what
amounts to a paperwork explosion. Change is apparent
everywhere. Unless we constantly review our office methods,
we are in danger of being submerged under outmoded, or
hastily conceived, paperwork.
President Johnson has clearly called our attention to this
danger and to the need for continual improvement and avoiding
waste. He expressed himself on this subject in this way:
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"Controlling waste, " said. the President, "is somewhat
like bailing a boat: You have to keep at it.
How we keep at it, and thereby follow the President's
guidance, is the basis of these Symposisams.
Opportunities for bailing pa.per\Arork waste from the Ship
of State are so numerous and varied that they can not fail to
excite the imagination of the person. who puts his mind to it.
At least 10 per cent of the budget or most organizations
is used for the paperwork needed for information gathering,
maintenance, and processing. In some organizations this
figure reaches to 40 per cent or more.
Totalled for all Federal organizations and operations we
are speaking of perhaps $15 billion. What better incentive
do we need than this colossal cost?
I take a strong measure of satisfaction from the fact that
in the last fiscal year the efforts by GSA to assist Federal
agencies in their records management activities resulted in
savings to the Government of more than $17 million. This
assistance ranged from professional advice on the use of form
letters to the larger concerns of additional use of electronic
technology to reduce the paperwork burden.
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3.
But none of us can afford to let the level of paperwork rise.
We'll have to keep bailing.
Yet, while a large portion of every budget goes into paperwork
activity, it is rarely so identified. The cost is always called
something else, because it's part of something else. Also, it is
largely taken for granted. The part time of so many executives
and program people is involved, as well as full time of administrators
and clerical personnel, that cost breakdowns and specifics are
hard to compute. The pervasive, beneath -the -surface character
of the rising flood of paperwork tends to make the top executive
assume that it is somehow immutable -- a necessity that must be
endured.
We are given a lot of other reasons why executives don't wade
more aggressively into paperwork costs.
One, of course, is that they're frightfully busy with
substantive programs, and heaven knows that is true.
Another is that they hope to remedy bad situations through
the budgeting process._ In other words, restrict the funds and
let the lower level of supervisors maintain production by means
of improvement.
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Still another is the feeling that paperwork is hydra headed.,
Chopping off a few only to have new ones grow back, doesn't
seem a highly productive exercise.
Probably most important, busy executives need a handle
by which to grab a problem. Until. paperwork situations are
defined in a way that gives them such a handle, they feel that
they lack sufficient reason to proceed.
As I look back over the ]Last few yt.,ars and see how various
agencies have occasionally been able to cut paperwork costs, I
find myself coming up with conclusions like these:
1. If paperwork costs are going to be reduced, a
professionally trained staff, specifically dedicated
to this purpose, must be in existence somewhere
in the organization. This is what the Congress had
in mind when it enacted the Federal Records Act of
1950.
.
2. Such a staff needs the right. climate in which to
work. Here President Johnson has repeatedly done
us all a great service by making it clear he wants
results. He expects heads of agencies and heads of
programs to keep a good. climate going to bring about
cost reductions. I for one, am trying to carry out his
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Last year, I am happy to say, we were able to report
savings of $7. 8 million within GSA itself. We intend
to continue this momentum.
3. Such a staff needs projects. It can too easily fritter
away valuable time on a host of small jobs without ever
taking on a major paperwork area or major paperwork
problem. The small jobs are like bailing the boat with
a fork. Most of the water falls back. Major cost
reduction projects, I realize, require systems study,
often for long periods of time. They require considerable
fact-gathering and paperflow documentation. The
identification of new projects and the follow-through on
old ones are constant challenges.
Although I have been talking a good deal about paperwork
cost reduction, I am reminded that until we know what a paper-
work item, or procedure, or system costs, we don't know
whether we are getting our money's worth.
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If a payroll check costs 90 cents tc; produce, we can
hardly be expected to get exercised, for that represents
a fair minimum of effort. If it is costing $1. 60, it is
incumbent upon us to do something, for I happen to know
that there are systems which operate below the $]. mark.
If the average letter costs $1. 15, we have reason to
be pleased. Industry -- as represented by the Dartnell
organization - - expects a $2.32 figure. If it costs $2. 80,
we should set wheels into motion.
We have recently learned that man,gement information
reports cost about $300 annually per F:~deral employee.
While this figure compares almost exactly with industry
experience, I feel that it is too high. One agency is averaging
$260. Why can't we all do as well.?
This kind of thing is part of what I meant a moment ago
when I was talking about the executive getting a "handle"
onto a paperwork problem. He needs the project defined and
analyzed as to costs. Without the handle, the problem is
simply lost in the, too often uncharted, seas of paperwork.
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7.
I trust you will have a productive session. You are going to
hear about many kinds of projects that deal with paperwork
common to all agencies.
Let us all strive to use paperwork as an efficient tool of
our operations, an economic device for doing our jobs well.
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EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
BUREAU OF THE BUDGET
Washington, D. C.
Keynote Address of William D. Carey
Executive Assistant Director, Bureau of the Budget
at the
GSA Symposium on Reducing Paperwork Costs
Washington, D. C.
November 16, 1965
Everyone knows about the Texas tycoon who made his first visit to
Washington, saw all the sights, and at the end rendered that immortal
verdict: "Thank God we don't get all the Government we pay for."
Government does cost a lot these days. It's going to cost even more,
because a growing society means that the budget must grow too. We have
been successful up to now in holding the lid on the budget so that it has
stayed below the critical level of $100 billion a year, but with the
developments in Vietnam and the rising costs of interest on the public
debt, we are about to go above $100 billion a year for the first time in
history. And under these circumstances, the President is deteriutned that the
taxpayer is going to get what he pays for, in the sense that tax dollars
are going to be spent where they will yield the highest results.
This means that future budgets will be tested on a two-fold standard:
first, is this the highest and best use of the money; and second, are our
standards of administration and management wasteproof?
All this implies a major upgrading of our decision-making in Govern-
ment. Historically, Government has recognized the dim outlines of a
problem and has groped clumsily toward a solution. We did the best that
we could but often it was wide of the mark, or more costly than it should
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have been, or our timing was off. Today we just can't afford that style
of making decisions. The sheer size of the investments we must make in
domestic or defense policies is so large that the risk of malfunction or
mistake is not affordable wrien there are so many claims on limited
resources. The era of the "quick and dirty" solution is fast disappearing.
Today we have a passion for facts, for greater certainty, for measures of
return on our dollars. Hunches and, intuition will still play a part in
decisions, but a diminishing part.
This dual test of future budgets has to be supported by a management
system that will make it work. We are setting that management system in
motion now, and in turn it has two dimensions. The first is a systems
approach to planning, programming, and budgeting. The second is a parallel
emphasis on cost reduction and management improvement. Both are necessary.
The President has given orders to initiate the planning-
programming-budgeting system throughout the executive branch, and we are working at
top speed to get it organized. This is much more than simply a different
way of putting the figures together. It is a whole strategy of decision-
making and performance measurement. And the key to it is information.
This is why I feel that it is relevant to the business of this conference.
The planning-programming-budgeti.ng system has three major elements--
all of which depend on getting the right information, in the right amount,
for the right purposes, at the right time:
The first element is the existence in each agency of an analytic
capability for making in-depth continuing analyses of the agency's objec-
tives and its programs for meeting these objectives;
- The second element is the existence of a multi-year planning and
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meaningful terms essential to the making of key decisions by top managers
and the President;
-- The third element is the existence of a budgeting process which
can take broad program decisions, translate them into refined decisions in
a budgetary context, and feed the appropriate program and financial facts
to the President.
The total system is intended to do a number of things, such as
make available to top managers more concrete and specific data
relevant to broad decisions;
spell out more concretely the aims of Government programs;
analyze systematically possible alternatives, both as to
objectives and programs;
evaluate and compare the benefits and costs of programs;
produce total instead of partial cost estimates;
show on a multi-year basis the expected costs and accomplish-
ments of proposed programs; and
review objectives and conduct program analyses on a continuing
year-round basis, instead of on a crowded schedule to meet
budget deadlines.
I would say that while all these features are important, by far the
most important is the quality of the analytic work that is done by the
agencies. Here we will be focussing on the consideration and weighing of
alternative objectives and programs, in terms of the probable payoffs to
be obtained from various investments, and we will be using systems analysis
and operations research. In other words, what is now being called the
"new administrative technology" is being deliberately and consciously
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worked into the vital decision-making process that--one way or another--
must be improved in these times of relentless policy innovation and
twelve-digit budgets.
The new system will probably confront us with some very uncomfortable
choices. There is little doubt in :my mind that it will raise very serious
questions about the contemporary relevance of some Government programs that
have come to be taken for granted, year after year. It will force us to
think in terms of trade-offs between continuing existing programs, or
organizations, or installations, or procedures, and meeting new needs which
we can finance only by the process of substitution of resources. The fur
will fly, and the going will be tough. But in a purposeful society which
expects its Government to do first things first and get full value for the
dollars it spends, this is what the future holds. And I think it will be
better Government.
Now, as a corollary to all of this, the President has also made it
clear that he expects every agency head to set in motion a formal cost
reduction effort based on concrete targets for savings and specific plans
for meeting them. This is the President's War on Waste, and he wages it
every day. He has instructed us, incidentally, to show him what each
agency's cost reduction plans are before we ask him to approve the agency's
budget for next year. If your agency has not submitted a program that
meets the President's expectations, there is likely to be a very lively
telephone conversation originating from the oval office in the White House.
The President doesn't want rhetoric. He wants to know exactly what each
agency is doing to reorganize, to close out activities that are nice to
have but are not vital, to introduce efficient information-processing
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equipment, to improve the utilization of manpower, to use excess and
surplus Government property, to share high-priced ADP equipment, to join
other agencies in common services, to eliminate marginal reports and
publications, to use sampling methods for getting necessary information.
And surprisingly, cost reduction works. Over a year and a half, it
produced savings of $5 billion in Defense alone, and over $1 billion in
the nondefense agencies. I can promise you that we are going to hear more
rather than less about it over the coming year.
When we talk about reducing paperwork costs, we often are trying to
put the toothpaste back into the tube. What about cost-avoidance? We
cause most of our own grief. When we organize our public business badly,
we not only invite duplication and overlapping and administrative friction,
but we make it necessary to pile up paperwork as a desperate attempt to
compensate for organizational mistakes. A few weeks ago, for instance,
we found that four major departments of the Federal Government were getting
into the business of making grants and loans for water and sewer systems
throughout the country. This could have resulted in appalling confusion.
And so we formed a task force to work out jurisdictions and cutoffs, and
we provided for a system of interchanging information on the grants and
loans. Now we think the program will work. But how many or these situ-
ations slip past unnoticed until the harm is done? I simply want to stress
the point that cost-avoidance begins at the stages of legislative planning,
budgeting, and management analy is. Pa-oerwork is not created in a vacuum;
it is a. result of decisions that are made every day by people whose minds
are p_ other things. They are the program managers, the people in the
line, the coordinating bodies, the oversight committees, the investigating
group,&,pToan a
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progress in avoiding root causes of unnecessary paperwork, there will
have to be a lot more educating done at the points where major decisions
are made in Government--both in the executive and legislative branches.
:C suppose nobody knows what the cost of paperwork in the Government
is; and perhaps that's just as well. It would take a lot of paperwork
to find out. But we do have some idea what it is costing to modernize
that part of our information handling that is computerized. Our annual.
public investment in ADP runs at about $3 billion and even this may not
tell the whole story. The very existence of this new technology invites
its proliferation. Now there is little doubt that the Government has
saved a great deal of money, and improved its productivity, by converting
conventional information-handling over to automated systems. Our Supply
Systems, and our Insurance Operations are cases in point. We have
accomplished a great deal to improve productivity in most. of the places
where we have large concentrations of clerks. In addition we are
accomplishing tasks now that literally could not have been done without
computers--as in space, and medical research. And there are exceedingly
interesting new opportunities to extend the art in sectors of Government
operations that are going to bog down in a few years unless something
drastic is done--for example, the independent regulatory agencies, where
backlogs are a way of life and economic decisions have profound conse-
quences for a growing and healthy economy? But having said all this, we
still have to reckon with the fact that we can. make costly mistakes in
taking the long leap to computers. We must do a great deal more if this
$3 billion a year is to be spent responsibly: and this will mean a
stronger drive for machine compatibility, for equipment sharing, and for
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language standardization. 'Whether we keep our information on tapes or on
paper doesn't matter; it is all paperwork as I define it.
There is one avenue for reducing paperwork costs that does not require
/e'~xpert technical knowledge of the computer. That avenue is the common
\/ sense evaluation of the reports that the computer produces.
A common complaint is that we produce too much information and not
enough of the right kind. Right here in the State Department building
valiant efforts are being made to help the harassed men who must read huge
quantities of reports for fear of missing something crucial, but who still
complain that they don't get enough of the right kind of information.
Here again we have created our own problems. We have invented all
these wonderful ways to produce information, even including the direct
connection of the computer to the printer's press, and those of us in a
position to push the buttons succumb to the temptation to produce all the
information possible rather than just what is needed. It's the human
factor.
And the human factor keeps turning up wherever we touch paperwork.
ff I may get a little personal, I have achieved a status in my olc? age that
entitles me to write letters back to the people who write in to the
President. Each morning I can depend upon it that the big red jacket
will be on my desk, full of letters that need only my signature. I
usually have a choice: I can cover up the body of a letter and sign it
as fast as I can write my name, or I can read what I am being asked to
sign. I always contemplate that choice before I open the folder, but
after I play this little game I inevitably wind up reading the prose that
has been prepared for export.
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Now, I come from a literate organization, all things considered, and
yet I find that I am obliged to make repairs to a fair number of what we
picturesquely call "final drafts" because they just aren't the kind of thing
I wish to stake my immortality upon. (I imagine homes all over America with
framed copies of letters from Mr. Carey of the Executive Office, each a fine
blend of the best prose of the Charles and the Pedernales Rivers; and it is
an apocalyptic vision.) So I sit at my desk repairing these letters like my
grandmother used to darn socks. And I keep asking myself whatever became
of the gift of clear, concise, and responsive expression. To carry this
confession a step further, my own prose is generally improved upon by my
Director, and I have the notion that if the President himself had the time
to do it he would rewrite half of the correspondence issued by the
White House.
As a matter of fact, the President once taught English as a school-
master, and when he came to the White House and started to read staff
drafts of state documents and messages--including the Budget Message and
the Economic Report---he lost no time in distributing D's and F's. We
found that the President wanted economy not only in the field of costs,
but in the world of words, and it was a shock. Out went the Ciceronian
periods and the graceful cadences of the 19th Century, and in their place
came the short sentences, tight paragraphs, indentations, key words, and
underscoring that fitted the new President's style. Now and then somebody
still tries to launch a balloon filled with wind past the President, but
his vigilance is excellent and most of them hit the ground before achieving
enough altitude to get safely past the West Wing.
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I have a lot of sympathy for the decree issued by the present Budget
Director to his staff before he had been on the Job long enough to learn
the direction of the lunch room. He issued a declaration to the effect
that the next person to send him a paper using such passive voice expres-
sions as "it is believed" and "it is therefore concluded" would be shot
on sight. A small gesture, perhaps, but expressive of a deep agony of
literary frustration.
After all, words are delicate agents of ideas. It was Holbrook
Jackson, reflecting on the astonishing virility of the English language,
who decided that its vigor resulted from its propensity to live danger-
ously. "It is the most adventurous of all languages," he said, "coming
from anywhere and going everywhere, while paying so little homage to rules
that it seems to risk destruction by indiscriminate breeding and uncon-
trolled immigration." And in this age of specialized management, technology,
and what I call "consultantship," we are in more danger than ever of burying
understanding under an avalanche of self-important jargons and dialects.
But the greater sin is to be intentionally vague, pompous, or ambiguous.
There is an oft-told tale of the occasion when the Gettysburg Address
was submitted for clearance to an interdepartmental committee. Every agency
had a number of helpful suggestions. It is alleged that the State Depart-
ment "objected to the phrase 'our forefathers brought forth upon this
continent' on the grounds that while technically correct the phrase was
so loosely worded as to leave the impression that we thought the entire
continent belonged to us, a position in conflict with our current
hemispheric policy. State therefore suggested as a substitute the
phrase 'our forefathers brought forth in that area bounded on the north
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by 49 degrees North Latitude, on the south. by 30 degrees North Latitude,
on the west by the Pacific Ocean, and. on the east by the Atlantic.'
Defense suggested that in place of 'we are now engaged in a great civil.
war' the statement say 'we have now entered on a period of civil uncer-
tainty involving fairly full mobilization.""
In a way, I am suggesting that we will make more inroads on the
paperwork problem if we worry less about how dignified we sound and
concentrate more on telling people what they need to know. Malcolm
Muggeridge has remarked that most of our errors are committed because of
too much solemnity, rather than too much mirth. We surely cannot laugh
at the cold war, or at the hot one in Vietnam, or at poverty, or at our
stricken cities; indeed, we have been looking the other way for too long.
But it is no answer to these gigantic challenges to react by over-
administering our business, by substituting reports and statistics for
decisions, by piling one layer of control and supervision over others,
or by indiscriminately milking Xerox machines under the delusion that
this is instant efficiency.
The operation of our Government necessarily is dependent upon a web
of paperwork systems, and those systems are expensive. You have a big
responsibility. A symposium such as this to help you improve the quality
of paperwork and to reduce its cost is worthwhile.
Cost reduction--and cost avoidance--?in paperwork. management as in
most other worthwhile affairs is tough, unspectacular, and generally
unpopular work. Everybody thinks the other fellow does too much paperwork,
while his own is essential. For too many of us, it is the crutch that we
lean on.p Take the crutch away gently, so we won't fall flat on our faces,
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