Overview[]
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) (formerly the National Performance Review) was an interagency task force designed to fundamentally change the way the federal government works. President Clinton announced the creation of NPR on March 3, 1993. The President asked Vice President Gore to report on the findings of this national performance review within six months.
Unlike past efforts that relied on outsiders, the Vice President gathered experienced federal workers and organized them into teams to examine federal agencies and issues that cut across agencies, such as personnel, procurement or budget policies. The goal: identify problems and offer solutions and ideas for savings. In addition, the President asked each cabinet secretary to organize a "Reinvention Team" to work from within each agency and to create "Reinvention Laboratories" where experiments in new ways of doing business could begin immediately.
The Vice President and the National Performance Review teams sought input from people across America. Vice President Gore spoke with workers at every major agency and at federal centers around the country. He visited programs that work and companies that have implemented new practices, dramatically changing their operations and decreasing costs while increasing profits in the process. The Vice President and the National Performance Review teams learned from the state and local leaders who have put many of these ideas into practice and they listened to the very best experts in the country — from business, government, and the academic academy — at special conferences in Philadelphia and Nashville. And, they listened to the American people whose letters and telephone calls were invaluable.
The National Performance Review focused on how government should work, not on what it should do. The National Performance Review teams examined every cabinet department and ten agencies. A "bottom-up" review of the Department of Defense and the work of the Health Care and Welfare Reform Task Forces at the Department of Health and Human Services both covered areas that the National Health Review did not.
The NPR's final report, "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less," was issued in September 1993.