Abstract
The Office of Chief Executive, whether in the national, state or large municipal governments, has gone through a striking evolution, especially during the last twenty-five years. This development turns principally on two considerations: 1) The more increase in number of operations performed by administration for which the Chief Executive is responsible; 2) the shift in the office of the Chief Executive from a primarily political agency, as it was practically without exception until about 1900, to an authorithy which combines both political leadership and administrative responsibility. Broadly speaking, the developments of the last quarter century have tended to magnify the administrative duties of the office of Chief Executive, without, however, in most cases detracting from the position of political leadership, historically associated with it. An exception must be noted, however, with reference to the offices of City Manager and County Manager, now found in about 450 American cities, large and small, and in about twenty counties.
These are almost exclusively offices of administration and are not concerned with political leadership.
Faced with this shift in emphasis, with a growing demand for economy and retrenchment, and with the rapidly increasing amount of business required to be transacted, the Chief Executive, national, state, and municipal, has been obliged to create auxiliary agencies or to ask for their creation by the legislative bodies in order to enable him to perform his work. The simple type and minimum degree of office work characteristic of the position of Governor in most American states prior to 1900 and of Mayor in most American cities prior to 1890, and even of the White House prior to 1900, has been completely changed by extraordinary developments since these years. The President, the Governors in the larger states, the Mayors and City Managers in the larger cities now have a whole series of auxiliary agencies, or in the custorary American phrase « staff agencies, » the description and consideration of which form the purpose of this series of studies.
— Definition of Auxiliary Agencies
In order to make clear at the outset precisely what is meant by the auxiliary agencies, the following definition is proposed.
Scrutiny of the administrative organization of the United States government reveals a large number of agencies (departments, commissions, corporations, offices) whose aims and purposes are the specific enforcement of a regulatory statute or the actual accomplishment of an administrative service. The Interstate Commerce Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission illustrate the former; the Post Office and the Reclamation Service illustrate the latter. This class of agencies is usually referred to as the « line » agencies.
Another group of administrative agencies exists to perform a subsidiary service on behalf of these primary organizations, services which might be conducted independently by each, but which experience has indicated are most effectively performed for all by a specialized office. This group is illustrated by the purchasing agency, which supplies commodities for all branches, and by the Civil Service Commission, which in the United States and in Great Britain examines and certifies personnel to the various departments. The are sometimes incorrectly referred to as staff agencies. They are better called auxiliary agencies (the continental phrase) or institutional services (W. F. Willoughby).
The term « staff » is properly used in a more restricted sense, as formulated in military practice. The basic legislation providing a military staff in the United States reads as follows:
« That the duties of the General Staff Corps shall be to prepare plans for the national defense and for the mobilization of the military forces in time of war; to investigate and report upon all questions affecting the efficiency of the Army and its state of preparation for military operations; to render professional aid and assistance to the Secretary of War and to general officers and other superior commanders, and to act as their agents in informing and coordinating the action of all the different officers who are subject under the terms of this act to the supervision of the Chief of Staff; and to perform such other military duties not otherwise assigned by law as may be from time to time prescribed by the President » (1).
57th Congress, Sess. II, Ch. 553, Feb. 14, 1903 (32 Stat. L. 830).
« All officers detailed in said corps (General Staff Corps) shall be exclusively employed in the study of military problems, the preparation of plans for the national defense and the utilization of the military forces in time of war, in investigating and reporting upon the efficiency and state of preparedness of such services for service in peace or war, or on appropriate general staff duties in connection with troops, including the National Guard, or as military attaches in foreign countries, or on other duties not of an administrative nature, on which they can be lawfully and properly employed…
Provided further, That the War College shall remain fully subject to the supervising, coordinating, and informing powers conferred by law upon members of the General Staff Corps » (2).
64th Congress, Sess. I, Ch. 134, June 3, 1916 (39 Stat, L. 166),
This language describes an organism primarily devoted to thinking about the relevant problems. It is a type of organism which in American civil administration has not yet been developed as a separate agency, although the process of planning and of taking thought may be readily discovered in many official circles.
In the following description of auxiliary agencies in the civil arm of the United States government, attention will be given to such offices as those dealing with general coordination, preparation of plans, financial control, purchasing, and the control of personnel. Some are entitled to be called staff agencies in the precise sense of the term; others merely serve to facilitate the operations of the line departments.
In the sense of the term employed in this report, auxiliary agencies include those agencies whose function it is to plan, study, and advise on a super-departmental level; agencies whose duties insolve primarily coordination of policy and of administration; and agencies which are designed to perform a specialized function for the major operating units of administration, such as the purchase of supplies.
By 1910 many large scale industrial organizations had already begun to develop organisms similar to the military general staff, and most if not all of the huge industrial combinations now operate with the aid of a staff mechanism.
Not until some years the introduction of a general staff in the Army of the United States was the idea of a general staff brought forward for the civil service. Civil administration remained relatively disorganized and disintegrated. The position of the Chief Executive was not nearly as well defined in the civil administration as in military affairs. Even today, despite substantial progress in the last fifteen years, a civil counterpart of the military general staff still remains to be worked out, although the elements have been largely brought into existence, comprising the several staff agencies and auxiliary organisms of the present civil organization.
The problem of auxiliary agencies to the Chief Executive was first discussed in a comprehensive way by the Commission on Efficiency and Economy appointed in 1911 by President William H. Taft. This Commission in a series of reports appearing in 1912 and in 1913 nade many recommendations for the improvement of government business, and among other recommendations included a plan for a budget agency which in the minds of the authors of the report was broadly conceived as an auxiliary and coordinating agency. Favorable consideration of this plan, postponed for nearly eight years, was eventually secured largely by reason of the great increase of debt and expenditures during the war. In the following paragraphs the main points in the development of the present transitional situation are made clear.
— The Cabinet
Within limits the President's Cabinet is a coordinating agency. Its members represent the ten great departments of state. The independent establishments such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Trade Commission, the Veterans’ Administration, and the New Deal agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Farm Credit Administration, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, and others, are not represented. The Cabinet, therefore, can not possibly act as a general coordinating agency because its representation is too narrow. Furthermore, the traditional role of the Cabinet has been to advise the President on matters of contemporary policy and politics rather than to deal with matters of administration. It is certain, however, that problems of administration are by no means absent from the deliberations of the Cabinet.
The Cabinet suffers, however, from another defect. It has no secretariat. There is thus an absence of a continuing mechanism, only partly supplied by the President's secretaries and aides.
The Cabinet, furthermore, is an agency particularly unfitted for staff purposes because its members do not represent the qualities of expertness and professional preparation for their respective posts. They are selected because they have the confidence of the President in large matters of policy or because they represent important groups in the country which the President desires to have represented in his immediate entourage. Their term is brief. Cabinet members in many matters of administration act only with the aid of theid professional assistants. While, therefore, the Cabinet is a useful body in the development and reformulation of the general program of the administration of the government, it has not been and so far as one can judge is not likely to become a staff agency of serious importance.
— The President's Secretariat
The White House secretariat is another potential staff agency which has never been developed to its maximum usefulness. In 1900 President Mc Kinley had one private secretary and one branch telephone leading into the White House. Today the President has three private secretaries and over 100 main trunk telephone lines leading into the White House. This development, however, has by no means kept pace with the necessities of the situation. The White House Secretariat does not function as a major coordinating agency, and so far as one can judge it is not intended to function in this capacity. The Secretariat, however, is entitled to recognition as one of the auxiliary agencies of the Chief Executive. By virtue of its intimate connection with the President himself, it has, of course, very considerable influence. The Secretariat is not recognized, however, as having organic connection with the departments and independent establishments or with the New Deal agencies. Nor it is recognized as having capacity to initiate with respect to administrative operations. The White House Secretariat is primarily a group of men engaged in handling the routine business of White House correspondence, in dealing with the many phases of public relations, in maintaining liaison contacts with Congress and especially with the members of the majority party in Congress, and to a lesser extent in dealing with administrative matters.
— The Bureau of Efficiency
In 1913 a new step was taken by the creation of an Efficiency Division within the Civil Service Commission. This Division was soon given independent status as the Bureau of Efficiency, and from its inception until its final abandonment in 1933 it made many studies of operating efficiency in the several departments. It never, however, served as an auxiliary agency to the Chief Executive. It swung away from its natural orbit and sphere of influence into the orbit of the Senate. The Bureau became well known as having special connections with a group of Senators, and it failed to establish itself as a coordinating agency among the several departments. Its work was conceived on a relatively narrow scale, dealing with rather minute matters of operating efficiency, rather than with the major issue of the reconstruction of a badly organized administrative machine.
— War Coordination
The whole problem of auxiliary and coordinating agencies was given new impetus with the outbreak of the World War. Shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, the Council of National Defense was established. This body comprised the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, and was designed to coordinate industries and resources for the national security and welfare. The Council failed to perform its major task of acting as a central coordinating staff agency. It branched out into a multitude of sections, divisions, and committees, each designed for some immediate emergency task, but neglected the primary task of general coordination.
One of these committee proved to have greater value and significance than the Council itself — the War Industries Board, an organization which in 1918 became an independent organ. It acted as a central clearing house for procurement of supplies, reorganized the industrial resources to meet emergency conditions, determined priorities with respect to production, delivery and use of materials and supplies, fixed prices when necessary, prevented waste of materials and labor, and purchased for the Allied Powers.
The Central Bureau of Planning and Statistics was established by Executive Order of December 30, 1918 (No. 3019-B), and performed important duties in preparing material for the American delegation to the Peace Conference.
These war-time executive agencies were rapidly dismantled at the close of hostilities and have only an historic interest, although the present Emergency Council is patterned to a certain extent on the former Council of National Defense.
One additional coordinating agency which was destined to become permanent is the National Research Council. Founded in 1916, it was given continuing status in 1918, serving as an agency to secure, classify, and disseminate scientific, technical, and industrial research information. It is a quasi-public organization.
— The Bureau of the Budget
At the close of the War, in this country, as in other countries, an ardent desire for a return to normalcy was felt. Most of the elaborate coordinating machinery which was set up in the face of the emergency situation was rapidly abandoned and it appeared for the moment that the civil organs of government would return to their historic position of peace-time independence. A new agitation, however, developed in favor of stronger budgetary institutions. In 1921 Congress enacted the Budget and Accounting Act, establishing a Comptroller General with broad powers of auditing and accounting, and establishing also the Bureau of the Budget, endowed with a wide range of authority: a) to prepare an annual budget for submission to the President, containing all financial requests to be presented to Congress; b) to study and investigate the operations of the respective departments and independent establishments; c) to exercice pressure upon the departments to secure improved methods of operations and greater care in the expenditure of funds. These powers and the use made of them will be developed in greater detail in succeeding sections of this report.
Here it may be said that while the Bureau of the Budget has been effective in coordinating the fiscal program of the departments and in reducing effectively the requests of the several spending agencies, it has not succeeded in creating for itself the position of a major staff agency. Perhaps the chief explanation of this is the fact that the Bureau of the Budget has applied to itself the rule of parsimony with respect to expenditures and has thus made it impossible for it to act on a large scale. It is owing primarily to the failure of the Bureau of the Budget to develop into a major staff agency that the United States still finds itself in a state of imperfect achievement in this respect.
— Coordinating Committees
Between 1921 and 1924 a considerable number of very important coordinating agencies, commonly known as coordinating committees, were established within the Bureau of the Budget. These coordinating committees operated partly in Washington, partly in the field, and served to harmonize many of the business operations of the respective departments and establishments. Their work was exclusively in the field of administration, having nothing to do with large questions of public policy or administrative policy. They were unusually effective in their field of operations and undoubtedly served to knit together the spending agencies more effectively than ever before in their history. In connection with the economy program introduced in 1933, the coordinating agencies were abolished, their functions being in part transferred to the Procurement Division of the Treasury.
As a part of the work of the coordinating committees, so-called Federal Business Associations were established in all the large population centers. These Associations enabled representatives of all of the federal field agencies in a given locality to meet periodically, to study improved business methods, and to devise means of more economical transaction of public affairs. Some of these Associations are inactive, but others still do much good work in connection with the Procurement Division.
For several years (1922–1929) about 2,000 higher officials in Washington were convened semi-annually by the President to receive from him a statement of his general financial policy and admonishment against waste and unnecessary expenditure. This meeting, known as the Business Organization of the United States, was discontinued by President Hoover.
— Agencies for Centralization of Purchasing
The first step toward central purchasing by a single agency for the respective departments and establishments was taken in 1910 with the establishment of the General Supply Committee. From 1910 to 1929 the General Supply Committee was a contract-making agency awarding annual contracts for supplies needed in the District of Columbia by two or more departments. In 1929 Congress appropriated to the General Supply Committee $ 300,000 for direct purchasing. In 1933 the trend toward centralized purchasing was emphasized by the replacement of the General Supply Committee by a new administrative agency in the Treasury Department, known as the Procurement Division.
The Procurement Division acquired the function of determining policies and methods of procurement, warehousing and distribution of property, equipment, stores, and supplies. The essential power of the Procurement Division is given in the following quotation from the Executive Order establishing the Division:
« In respect of any kind of procurement, warehousing, or distribution for any agency the Procurement Division may, with the approval of the President: a) undertake the performance of such procurement, warehousing, or distribution itself, or b) permit such agency to perform such procurement, warehousing, or distribution, or c) entrust such performance to some other agency, or d) avail itself in part of any of these recourses, according as it may deem desirable in the interest of economy and efficiency. When the Procurement Division has prescribed the manner of procurement, warehousing, or distribution of any thing, no agency shall thereafter procure, warehouse, or distribute such thing in any manner other than so prescribed ».
By the terms of this Executive Order the Procurement Division was empowered potentially to expand its activities over all requirements for the government offices in the District of Columbia. The amount of centralized purchasing has steadily increased since the promulgation of the Executive Order creating the Procurement Division.
— Coordination of Personnel
Prior to 1883 each department and agency had complete responsibility for the employment, supervision, and control of its employees, subject to the law of public employees as defined by Congress. In 1883 the enactment of the civil service law creating a new administrative agency known as the Civil Service Commission, introduced for the first time some coordination in the management of establishments. The Commission was authorized to hold examinations for certain specified categories of employees, and by successive Executive Orders its jurisdiction has been enlarged to the point where it now has under its jurisdiction 460,000 federal employees.
The work of the Civil Service Commission for many years was almost exclusively devoted to examination for the junior positions. Although the law authorized the Commission to enter the field of promotional examinations, few such examinations have ever been given. An early effort to set up a systematic promotion plan was defeated by the opposition of the departments.
New aspects of coordination of personnel have developed within the last fifteen years. In 1920 Congress enacted a civil retirement law, the administration of which is now in the hands of the Civil Service Commission.
In 1923 Congress enacted a classification law which for ten years was administered by a Personnel Classification Board, one of whose three members represented the Civil Service Commission. In 1932 the Personnel Classification Board was merged with the Civil Service Commission, and this important aspect of personnel work is now conducted by the Civil Service Commission.
By Executive Order in 1921 President Harding sought to establish a Council of Personnel Administration. This effort came to naught. The idea of a Personnel Council was renewed, however, in 1931, when President Hoover by Executive Order established the present body known as the Council of Personnel Administration. This agency, the chairman of which is the President of the Civil Service Commission and the Executive Officer of which is the Director of Research in the Civil Service Commission, is a loosely organized coordinating agency in which personnel policies are discussed. The Council is advisory to the Civil Service Commission.
Over a period of fifty years, therefore, there has been considerable coordination and organization of personnel work. The present situation in the federal government represents a greater concentration of authority over presonnel than is to be found in continental countries generally.
The Civil Service Commission, however, is not recognized as a part of a general executive staff agency. It is an independent establishment, indeed the oldest of the independent establishments. It has no organic connection with the Bureau of the Budget or with other auxiliary agencies.
— Crisis Coordination
The economic crisis crystallized a new need for better coordination of the respective administrative organs of the national government, especially as those organs began to increase in number and to diversify in scope subsequent to the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933. In the early stages of the present administration a minimum degree of essential coordination was secured through the personal advisers of the President, some of whom later came to be known as members of the Brain Trust.
These informal means of coordination quickly proved inadequate. By Executive Order No. 6202-A, July 11, 1933, the President established the Executive Council, the purpose of which was to coordinate the new governmental agencies, and especially to make more effective the program of the National Industrial Recovery Act and of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The Executive Council comprised the members of the President's Cabinet, the Director of the Budget, the Administrator of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and heads of several other important new agencies.
In order to coordinate the field agencies designed to promote industrial recovery, the President by Executive Order of November 17, 1933, created the National Emergency Council, the Executive Director of which had primarily the function of coordination of the many aspects of policy involved in the recovery program. The National Emergency Council itself comprised the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Labor, the Administrator of Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Administrator of Federal Emergency Relief, the Administrator for Industrial Recovery, the Chairman of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the Governor of the Farm Credit Administration, and a representative of the Consumers’ Council.
The work of these two Councils was similar, and by Executive Order of October 29, 1934 (6889-A) the President combined them under the title of the National Emergency Council, the Director of which has been referred to as an Executive Vice President or Assistant President. This description is, however, an exaggeration.
The function of the Director in the coordination of government policy and administration is still too undefined and too new to make it possible to state with any precision whether an adequate staff agency has finally been established, or whether on the contrary the National Emergency Council is merely one in a series of transitional efforts to secure the proper coordination of the respective agencies of the administration through staff and auxiliary services. Present evidence indicates that the Emergency Council is only a temporary and transitional organism.
— The Central Statistical Board
Meanwhile, two other coordinating agencies in special fields have been established which deserve brief notice. The Central Statistical Board was created by Executive Order of President Roosevelt in 1933 for the purpose of better coordination of the statistical agencies and the more effective utilization of their statistical output. It replaced a Federal Statistics Board in the Bureau of the Budget (1931–1933). The Central Statistical Board is itself a representative agency, its thirty members being drawn from the great statistics producing agencies of the federal government. In its field the work of the Central Statistical Board has been successful and efforts are now in progress to place it on a permanent statutory foundation.
— The National Planning Commission
The National Planning Commission, also established by President Roosevelt early in his administration, is an experimental body of very considerable interest. Its membership is partly ex-officio as represented by three Cabinet members, and partly appointive. The National Planning Commission has been interested both in the better utilization of natural resources and also in the basic considerations of national planning in the field of economic and social structure. The name of the National Planning Commission was changed in 1934 to the National Resources Board, but its functions remain the same. Several significant reports have already been published. Unlike the other staff agencies, the National Resources Board is primarily interested in the coordination of policy and in the development of comprehensive programs, the various parts of which will fit in with each other instead of conflicting with each other. Coordination of policy will inevitably mean the broad coordination of administration, but other agencies are essential if the close coordination of administration is to be achieved.
— Conclusion
As we survey the national scene in 1935 from the point of view of the gradual emergence of auxiliary agencies, we are led to the conclusion that while there has been considerable development in the last twenty-five years the national administration still lacks an effective service of general administration. Many elements of staff work may be found, and a considerable number of administrative organs whose business is partly of the nature of staff work exist. They themselves, however, are not related effectively one to the other, nor are they related effectively to the office of the President of the United States. Much closer coordination of the coordinators must be worked out before an effective staff agency will be achieved. The complex operations which the national government now discharges and the unexampled scope of its operations make more effective staff work very important.
Staff work in the specific sense of the term as used in military circles scarcely has an institutional existence in civil administration, although the National Resources Board bears some resemblance to a general staff from certain points of view. Much concentrated effort in planning and research in the field of public administration takes place, nevertheless, especially within the newer agencies of government. It is often individual effort, sometimes official, sometimes semi-official or even unofficial. It is relatively discontinuous, and although often effective for the immediate occasion, bears too little fruit in the long run. A separately organized, specialized thinking agency, manned in large part by special detail from the established agencies but with a central permanent core, is still to be achieved in civil administration, although generally accepted in military administration.
In summary, the existing staff and auxiliary agencies of the federal government of the United States include:
The President's Secretariat;
The Civil Service Commission (1883);
The Bureau of the Budget (1921);
The Council of Personnel Administration (1931);
The National Emergency Council (1933);
The National Resources Board (1933);
The Procurement Division of the Treasury (1933);
The Central Statistical Board (1933).
This enumeration indicates how scattered are the principal agencies which aid and assist the Chief Executive in his administrative functions. Close observers agree that the President needs a better organized agency of planning and coordination than has yet been developed, and that the auxiliary agencies need to be more closely articulated with the office of the Chief Executive.
In 1929 a proposal for a service of general administration was worked out in Washington by a representative group at the head of which was Mr. W. F. Willoughby, then Director of the Institute for Government Research. The fundamental ends sought by this proposal were: 1) giving the President a more effective agency to meet his responsibilities as head of the administration; 2) the general improvement of the administrative branch through reduction of the number of independent establishments and giving the executive departments more nearly a uni-functional character; 3) the better coordination of the staff work which was brought together in a single service of general administration.
The proposal envisaged four major bureaus in the general staff agency designated as follows: Bureau of the Budget, Bureau of Personnel Administration; Bureau of Material; Bureau of Investigation. This proposal was presented to President Hoover but no action was taken with respect to it. It remains, however, even today the most comprehensive program for a staff service auxiliary to the President which has been proposed (1).
This proposal is stated in Public Personnel Studies, Vol. 7, page 166–179, including the draft of a Bill to establish the service of general administration.