Reduce internal regulations by at least 50 percent over the next three years. The President should issue an executive order to all departments and agencies--including central management agencies such as OMB, OPM, and GSA--to cut the number and the pages of their internal directives and regulations in half. An exception can be made for agencies that have already recently met the goal, such as certain parts of GSA and the Air Force. The Office of Management and Budget should be tasked with ensuring sustained support of this deregulation effort, including exchanging information, coordinating efforts, sharing solutions, and identifying training needs and methods. To implement this executive order, departments and agencies should develop plans for deregulation that include these four steps: 1. Purge agency internal regulations. Excise everything but the highest level policy guidance plus the requirements of laws or other immutable outside guidance, requirements of health and safety, and requirements where national uniformity is absolutely required. 2. Establish an objective output measure for each policy. Agree on terms.(22) Define the measure and show a sample bar chart as part of the policy, so that it is evident what will be tracked and how. Incorporate user satisfaction and economic measures as appropriate. These measures may change with experience--plan for flexibility and periodic review. Update measures in other systems (e.g., Chief Financial Officer Act) as measures are proven to be successful. 3. Provide useful handbooks of best practices, technical assistance, and other optional help. Get field practitioners to write the handbooks rather than headquarters policy staff. This tends to provide appropriate language and real help, and ensures that writers do not have vested interests in inserting requirements into these publications. If economical, publish the handbooks along with the policies electronically or on CD-ROM. 4. Allow field staff to identify authorities and systems for decentralization by requesting waivers from regulations. The presumption is that most waiver requests will be granted, and the requests will identify areas needing permanent decentralization. Both the top-down deregulation and the bottom-up waiver requests are needed so there is a "push-pull" effect, with deregulation driven both by the headquarters and the field (also see SMC08: Expand the Use of Waivers to Encourage Innovation). Agency heads should establish a speedy timetable and provide the continuing resources, emphases, and conflict resolution needed to complete successful regulatory reform. Agency heads must also ensure that no "shadow" systems develop to retain decisionmaking at higher levels. Agency heads must also guarantee that once a high-level policy is established, there is rigorous, uniform enforcement and that performance assessment is pursuant to the new standards.
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