IMPROVING FEDERAL REPORTING AND REDUCING RELATED PAPERWORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00390R000300160006-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 9, 2002
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: August 5, 1970
• Content Type: MF

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'OR IMMF,DIATE R',ELEASE AUGU$i~ ;, 1910
Office of the White House press Secretary
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THE WHITE' HOUSE
MEMORANDUM FROM THE .PRESIDENT
TO HEADS OF DEPARTMENTS )-',ND
AGENCIES
MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF DEPARTMViENTS AND' AGENCIES
Subject: Improving Federal Reporting and Reducing Related Paperwork
STATINTL
Since my inauguration, I have repeatedly stressed the need to streamline the
management activities of the executive branch. As an important part of this
effort, I am, requesting all agencies and departments to participate in a
Government-wide project to analyze paperwork requirements and discard
those reports that fail to meet rigorous standards of need. In addition, we
must examine our information control system and develop efficient alternatives
to traditional reporting methods.
I have therefore established two goals for fiscal year 1971:
(1) A reduction of five million man-hours in the time expended
by the public in filling out administrative forms and inquiries
under the Federal Reports Act.
(2)A reduction of 200 million dollars in executive branch funds
expended for reporting and related paperwork.
The Office of Management and Budget has issued instructions to you imple-
menting' this project. Mr. Kunzig, Administrator, General Services
Administration, will assume the lead in coordinating this project.
I expect all of you to give this effort your full support and to report your
accomplishments to me by the end of fiscal year 1971.
/s/ Richard Nixon
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FOR IMMEDIATE,RELEASE AUGUST 55, 1970
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
THE WHITE HOUSE
PRESS CONFERENCE
or
DWIGHT A. INK, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
FOR EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT', OFFICE
OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET,
AND
NORMAN S. PETERSON, STAFF ASSISTANT,
,OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
. THE BRIEFING ROOM
AT 5:20 P.M: EDT.
MR. ZIEGLER: Earlier, as you collectively know, we
issued a memorandum from the President to heads of departments
and agencies. I apologize for not having the detailed informatio
to respond to the questions on it.
.I might add that I do agree that they were legitimate
questions., I. did not have the information, however.
Mr. Ink and Norman Peterson of the Office of Managemen
.and Budget are here. They do have the information on-it and I
think they can answer your questions.
We have the questions here. I am sure you will
probably recall what they are.
There was one other point which was brought up in the
.earlier session. The question was asked by Mr. Gill whether or
not'the filling out of a form every twelve minutes by Justice
was one of the things involved here, and I said that I understood
that had been stopped.
Let me clarify that portion. In talking to
Mr. Kleindienst after this, I understand there was some question
on it. He tells me there was never a requirement to fill out
forms every twelve minutes. This is what I was referring to.
What they intend to do,and are doing was to determine
the proportion of the amount of time that is spent'on each case.
They,intend to have this process completed and phased out by
October because by that time they will have the factual informa-
tion that will allow them to go before Congressional committees
to indicate to the committees the need for lawyers for the Justic
Department to deal with cases.
The thing that Bill brought up and,that 1--responded
to, perhaps too hastily, was the twelve minute' segment. But as
you recall, at the time there was a big story about filling
'these forms out every twelve minutes. That was what was never
requested and that report was discussed, but'~that'-'is not the-.
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But the other reporting on how much time the lawyers
spend on each case is still continuing and will be'phased out
in October.
Q The thought is that the results have indicated
that they do need more attorneys to handle-the case load, is
that it?
YR. ZIEGLER: The objective of the process is to then
allow the Justice Department to have a. good report on how
much time lawyers spend on each case, and then they can use
this in their Congressional testimony as factual information
to provide to the committees who, of course, will be interested
in this to determine budgeting and so forth, for lawyers in the
Justice Department.
Q I got the impression that you were suggesting
that this would be a defense for hiring more lawyers to handle
the work involved.
MR. ZIEGLER: That is the purpose. In order words,
if it does show, they will have the data to determine how much
time lawyers spend on cases. They know how many cases they
are going to have and'then they can draw the conclusions and
discuss it with the various Congressional committees.
Mr-. Ink, I will turn it over to you now.
Do you want to begin.'with a question?
Q Yes. Can you tell us if the paragraph which
says that a reduction of five million manhours and the time
expended by the public in filling out administrative forms is
an indication that you want to streamline forms and make them
easier to fill out so that large amounts of time can be put out,
or are you going to try and cut forms completely, or what are yot
trying to do?
MR. INK: We are interested in eliminating wherever
possible forms in their entirety, although in many cases I
am sure we will r.ir311 that we are unable to do that, but can,
nonetheless, stream1"_ne z.n.d si.3c;plify the form and make it not
only easier for the public to handle, but also, in most instancef
we would hope it would cut down the amount of time that is
required on the part of Federal employees in processing forms.
Q Can you give us some examples? You must have
looked over forms that you think can be simplified?'
MR. INK: Yes. One of the tests for what we are
talking about here, a very important one, as a matter of fact,
is the effort which the President directed last year to get under
way toward streamlining the administration of assistance to
States and local governments. This amounts .to about.$27 billion
a year in the form of various kinds of aids to State and local
government.
It is an area which is characterized by red tape. It
is an area which has developed over the years in a very piecemea:
fashion, and hundreds of different programs have developed equip]
with its own set of requirements and procedures, so many require.
ments placed upon State and local governments that no one has
ever, counted it totally.
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Now, in that, we found during the past,year a number
of changes and improvements have been made. Some of you may have
seen the report, "Simplifying Federal Aid to States and
Communities." We have a few'extra copies here.
We found that in programs such as urban'renewal a
number of procedural requirements could be eliminated. We found
that different programs are asking communities for the same kind
of information, population data, over-;,and over again.
I
We find that in the accounting field we are asking
them to report funds back along a number of different accounting
breakdowns. one of the specific areas in which we have had
experience is the Partnership for Health Grant Consolidation
Program in HEW in which nine separate areas were consolidated.
That,was through legislation and as a result, nine different
systems were supplanted by one.
So, we do have some background of experience here,
and the President and Mr. Shultz are familiar with this, all
of which encouraged us to extend some of the kinds of scrutiny
of paper work and reports to other areas.
Q Can you put those two figures that are used
don't have them before me.-- in percentages or what magnitude
are they in, in terms of the total?
MR. INK: This is talking about the first year, 1971.
I think it is a fairly modest goal, but an important goal, five
million manhours, which-according to our best estimates, and I
would stress that these are not'precise figures, but our best
estimate is that the number of manhours that are expended in
filling out forms under the Federal Reports Act is about in
the neighborhood of roughly 100 million manhours.
Q Would that include local government and State
government as well as the public? That refers to the public?
MR. INXt -"Yes. "
Government?
0 Do'you mean for everything outside the Federal
MR. INK: Yes, but it does not include all forms becau
.there-are some important forms which are not included under the,
Federal Reports Act. I believe the income tax, for,example,
is not included under the Federal,Reports Act.
year?
Q' But 100 million public manhours are spent each
MR. INK: Yes, by people,outside'the Federal Governmen
Q That is five percent of the total. Are you lookin
towards an eventual goal of having a standard reporting system
such as a city, for instance, could make. up a report of the
various information one time and send copies to every necessary
Government office?
MR. INK: We hope we can-do that, and as a matter of
fact, we have a project underway now in which we have State and
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associations who are working with us over the next years, as a
part of the streamlining program, to see how far we'can go in
that direction.
It would be my guess that we cannot move from, on
the one extreme, these thousands and thousands of requirements
that I ,mentioned earlier, which no one has been able to count,
to the other ideal extreme of one standard fopm.
I doubt that that is realistic. I am confident
that we can reduce very significantly the number of different
requirements that are placed upon us.
Q Didn't President Johnson put out a similar order
to this?,
MR. INK: There have been orders in the past; however,
there has ne',er been to date the kind of broad systematic
program that we have had over the last year or so, dealing
with this $27 billion area of grants-in-aid. This is far
more comprehensive and systematic than anything which has
been done to date.
We want to extend some of that kind of activity in
other areas. Now I say some, because there are some kinds of
activities here that are peculair to the grant-in-aid programs.
For example, this effort included the establishment of common
regional boundary for socially oriented areas across the nation,
HEW, HUD, OEO, Small Business Administration, the setting
up of regional councils.
We are not talking about extending that kind of
thing. We are here talking about the specific area of forms
and reports, the paper work part of it.
Q On the reduction of $200 million, do you have
a total there?
MR. PETERSON: Yes, our best estimate on reporting
costs government-wide right now is approximately $4 billion.
MR. INK: But I would stress that the $4 billion is a
very rough estimate.
Q .'Would that include the income tax?
MR. INK: That would include the processing, the
Federal processing of the income tax, but not the public time.
MR. PETERSON: All cost figures as cited are Government
cost figures.
0 And they include processing, the Internal Revenue
Service processing costs, do they?
MR. PETERSON: Yes. The $4 billion figure is all repo:
ing within the Government.
MR. INK: But I would stress again, use the $4 billion
with caution, because the information with respect to the number
of reports and the cost of these reports.thoughout the
Federal Government is not developed to the point that those
are reliable figures.
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5? _
Q This would also not include interoffice memoranda
and-other types of paper work not under this FederaliReporting
Act?
MR. INK: No, that is right.
Q There is no chance we can presume that this simpli-
fication will be something like the IRS simplification of 1040
form, which really seemed to be more of a burden than a relief?
(Laughter)
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MR. INK: Let me answer it by saying we may find
that in some of thesteps taken to date that we have not
made a net saving, but so far all of them that we are getting
any feed-back from, State,and local people have been very
favorable, the Governors' groups, the Mayors'. groups, the
city groups. If any of you are interested, I would suggest
that you call the Conference of the League of Cities, the
Conference of Governors and those groups.
We have heard back from them that'so far the
results have been very good. We still have,a long way to
go, of course.
Q Are you in a position to give us any examples
of the kind of directives that have come from Mr. Shultz's'
office in terms of implementation?
MR. INK: We have a circular which has gone out and
on which agencies have been,over the last several webks, plann-
ing and developing plans in anticipation of this extension of
the program.
We also have nearby the Presidential Directive of
a year ago, March 27, which was in effect the kick-off of
the first important area which, as I said earlier, dealt with
streamlining the grant-in-aid process.r. These are available and
we can have one of our girls bring copies of those over
immediately following this discussion.
But in-that the President said and directed the agencies
that are most involved in State and local programs, together
with what was then the Bureau of the Budget, to undertake this
program which, among other things, would seek to eliminate every
step possible and where steps could not be eliminated, to
simplify and streamline them.
Q $5 million does not relate to the grant-in-aid
programs, or does it?
MR. INK: The $5 million is a totality of outside
the Federal Government. it could include individuals, forms that
individuals fill out, or forms that State and local Government
fill out, provided it is under the Federal Reports act. That is
out of roughly $,100 million.
As I said, these total figures -- no one has a system
developed at this point which gives precise overall numbers.
Q Has the streamlining of the.grant-in-aid program
already made some inroads'in this kind of thing you are trying
to do here?
MR. INK: During the last year, yes, it has.
0 Can you give us some idea?
MR. INK: We do not have totals drawn together yet.
We have the number of examples and again, this will give you
some indication of that.
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P 7- Q How about the census forms? Does this look to
a more simple form than the one that had so many,-embers of
Cong essclimbing the walls?
PNR. PETERSON: I believe that is excluded, also.
111. INK : We will check that ? for you.
MR. PETERSON: On the public reporting,which seems to
catch everyone's interest, that Act that we keep'referring to
assigns to the Office of 2'aD%gement and Budget a responsibility
to clear most forms that are imposed on the public as reporting
requirements.
However, Congress saw fit to exclude in that Act a
number of specific types of reporting. One is the IRS require-
ments and another is many of the banking forms and so forth.
Largely, those things that are included with the independent
regulatory agencies make up the exclusions.
As far as the basis of the manhour reductions, we are
talking about an inventory slightly in excess of 5,000 reports and
forms that1we control that are required from the public and this
is the basis that we?hope to take out the 5 million manhours that
the publiclis presently putting into that base of 5,000 reports.
Q Can.you give us a figure of how many reports you A:v
might end up with, less than 5,000, when you get through with
your process form?
11R. PETERSON: This is public reporting and our early
explorations make this difficult to answer because we find --
and I,do not have these figures on the tip of my tongue -- but we
find'that generally speaking it is, relatively few reports out of
the 5,000 that are causing most of the manhours to be consumed.
This is why we chose and recommended to the President that he
use manhours as a goal, because if you just talk about reports
it might not mean very much, but if you talk about manhours we
havea pretty good measurement.
PMR. INK: Yes, using the number of reports as a
criterion, number one, there is this problem that one might
leave pretty well intact the reports that are creating the most
problem and drawing most heavily upon the time of people and
State and local institutions, and secondly, getting back toyour
earlier point, we also want to provide an incentive for cutting
down on the amount of time that has to go into report fs.lling,
.even when the report cannot be eliminated,,so the manhotzpis?;a
means of doing that.
We will have, however, a count at the end of the year,
as to how many reports have been eliminated, even though our
objective is stated in terms of manhours. We will have both
accounts of-the number of reports eliminated and.the number of
reports which have been streamlined.
,Q Ron.may have given this background, but what
Mr. Peterson's title?
MR. INK: He is on my staff. He also works with the
President's Advisory Council on Management Improvement,
`~ "?
whom we have worked, by the way, on some aspects of this. I
.might also say that we are looking to the Archives group in the
Gene r p pp
,ek gLc &V3a0k 0 86.tn the
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paperwork part of this under the broad cognizance of the Office
of Management and Budget.
MR. ZIEGLER: 'I think all the questions that came up
that I could not answer have been answered,, except for the
fact that John Osborne asked what the genesis of this particular
memo was; it come from the Office-of Management and Budget?
I think that is self-explanatory.
MR. INK: The original genesis is,from the President.
This particular proposal came from the Office of Management
and Budget as',a?further response to the President's March
directive. in part, however, that was the initial thrust of
it. It resulted also from a meeting several of us had. with
the President over a year ago in Which he stressed his concern
about the amount of paper work, not only in the Federal Government,
which he thought was creating a hidden cost in the activities
of the Federal Government, but also the burden that it placed
upon the general public and upon State and local officia
He asked us to do something about'it with the caveat that they
not follow the traditional approaches which he thought had not,
for the most part, been effective.
Some of them had been useful, but he felt they did not
dig deep enough or had not gone far enough. He has developed this
far-reaching effort which was the rst stage, which has had very
promising results and the paperwork part of that now we are
extending in other areas.
I would like to also say that some D F;xtrnto do have
paperwork efforts'underwa
y, some of them quite''u'seful and some
of them not-,very useful and this is a coordinated,concerted attack
on paperwork. We hope after the first year's experience we can do
even better'next year.
Q That $4 billion, is that the total cost to the
Government of all paper work?
MR. INK: Not all paper work.
Q Is it all "red tape"?
MR:.PETERSON; The National Archives and.Records Service
which by statute has responsibility for advising the President in
this area,'thei'r best estimate is that the cost of all reporting
in the Federal Government today is'in the area of $4 billion.
They estimate the current cost of,all paperwork in the Government,
including the reporting, to be in the area of $8 billion to
$10 billion. But I emphasize, these are educated gueses.
MR. INK: That is right. We do not regard this all as
"red tape." There is a lot of "red tape" in it,'in our judgment,
but some of,thes3 are very necessary.
.MRS , PETERSON : 101r.-Ziegler wants me to remind you that
that figure includes the Congressional paper work, also.
.MR. ZIEGLER:'That is Government-wide, not the Executive
Branch. We~are going to follow this procedure and cut our postings
by five percent.
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