“A Modernized Office of Executive Management:  A Option for Broadening the “M” in OMB” by Dwight Ink


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Executive Summary

The Executive Organization and Management Panel of the National Academy of Public Administration has been discussing three structural options to assist any presidential administration interested in increasing its capacity to quickly execute policies and programs.  These are: (a) strengthening current capacities within the existing legal framework of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), (b) establishing an independent Office of Federal Management (OFM) separate from OMB, and (c) establishing a modernized version of the earlier Office of Executive Management (OEM) within OMB. Academy Fellow Ronald Moe has written an excellent paper in support of an OFM.  This paper provides a brief description of the OEM option.

The heavy demands that the budget places on OMB make it virtually impossible for OMB leaders and staff to devote the necessary effort to management issues not directly related to the budget process. OMB also finds it difficult to balance long-range gains in program performance and life-cycle costs with short term budget pressures, despite well-intentioned efforts to do so.  Congressional actions to strengthen the “M” in OMB have had few significant results.

Much of the earlier OMB management leadership capacity has been lost except for those functions for which an OMB organizational home is prescribed by law.  The author proposes that the existing OMB legislative mandate be amended to require a similar organization home for major management functions that were in the earlier Office of Executive Management within OMB, but have since disappeared.

He recommends that the existing OMB Deputy Director for Management wear a second hat as Director of a new Office of Executive Management within OMB, and that there should be a statutory requirement that the Deputy Director have significant prior federal operating experience at a senior level.  Utilizing existing OMB functional authority, this new statutory organization would encompass all the existing OMB management components, such as the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, that are now protected by special laws.  This organization would also include lost functions such as organizational design expertise, administrative and program management capacity-building and simplification, and the coordination of policy execution that requires inter-agency and/or intergovernmental management.

The author believes it important to establish an OEM type of organization that would equip future presidents with those lost management capacities that could be of great help in moving forward quickly with new initiatives.  He also believes this action is needed to bring the executive branch in full compliance with the intent of Congress in agreeing to the establishment of OMB and in enacting the CFO Act of 1990.

Related Resources

EOM Panel Minutes:
Topic presented at EOM Panel on February 16, 2007.

And further discussed at EOM Panel on March 16, 2007.

Associated Presentation Materials:
OFM Testimony 2000
Non-Institutional Options for Improving Presidential Management Capacity by Jonathan Breul

Other Related NAPA Materials:
See related issue papers by Charles Bingman and Ron Moe.