Reduce Number of Regulations by Half

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.