2. From

PPE to PPB

DAVID HOWELL, MP

This morning I have just concluded a breakfast meeting with the cabinet and with the heads of federal agencies and I am asking each of them to immediately begin to introduce a very new and very revolu- tionary system of planning and program- ming the budgeting throughout the vast Federal government, so that through the tools of modern management the full promise of a finer life can be brouirht to every American at the lowest possible cost.'

Thus President Johnson in happier days —25 August 1965, to be precise--giving his official blessing, Texan style, to the Programming-Planning-Budgeting System (PPBS) in Federal government.

Averting one's eye from the split in6nitive and forgetting for a moment the widesn ead feeling amongst officials that LBJ had once again grossly over-sold a far from flit!), tested idea, the fact remains that the former President was taking a highly sitrnificant and controversial -step. In doing so he opened the flood-gates for a debate which has raged in the United. States with increas- ing ferocity- Since interest in PPBS (or at any rate- in systems _analysis and output• budgeting which .are all akin to it) is now growing in British government—and, indeed, in almost all western governments —it seems a sate prediction that a similar kind of deoate will shortly flare up on these shores. The columns of the SPECIA1OR seem an excellent place to start the ball roiling, so here goes.

First, tnen, what's it all about? The PPBS cult—tor such it has become—has many apostles and not all their gospels match. But one would probably get oroad agreement for the claim tnat the PPB system is a loimal set of procedures for analysing the (luxe- lives of an organisation, allocating expet.dt- tures to them, reviewing them regularly and evaluating alternative methods of achieving them.

instead of telling you how much a department costs to run in terms of wages, salaries, grants to other bodies and ..on- sumption of paper clips (inputs, vide the present Civil and Defence Estimates) tie system measures what the money is actual*, for—the amount of people treareu hospitals built, the numbers of children in each category in schools built (i.e. the objectives or outputs in the PPB jargon).

It sounds dead simple, purely technical, and strictly for the bureaucrats. In fact it is none of these things and this is where the debate begins.

First, by breaking away from the tradi- tion of departmental cash accounting Pea has a direct impact on the parliamentary and political processes. But, say the sceptics, is it any business of systems analysts to define the objectives, or 'outputs' of various -government activities, such as the education programme or the housing programme or defence spending? Saying what the end results are, or are meant to be, is a highly subjective business which surely belongs in the realm of politicians, political bargaining and debate. So does the question of decid- ing on the right organisations and institu- tions to fulfil the purposes defined. 1 hese things cannot be and should not tte depoliticised or wrapped up in pseudo- scientific jargon.

Now of course this is right. Too often the voluminous literature of PPBS gives the impression that the aim is to by-pass the nasty, messy, political process. Every con- ceivable activity of government, some PPa-ers seem almost to be saying, can be defined in terms of end results, quantified, costed, compared and traded off against other programmes in a blaze of triumphant rationality.

This is dotty and the wiser and more sober advocates of PPBS know it. They are

perfectly well aware that by the very act of analysis they are entering into the political process and influencing the way in which decisions are finally taken. (In fact they seem a good deal more aware of their position than the rather awful kind of econometrician we know so well in this country who is for ever asserting the objectivity of his highly political views and advice.) To pretend that systems analysts, any more than economists, are not in politics. is as dishonest as pretending that the permanent under-secretary in a White- hall ministry is not in politics—which he most emphatically is and in a big way too.

The second kind of attack on PPB is easier to make The contention is simply that does -not work. Look at Vietnam—the most carefully-measured -and- the- most -unsuccess- ful war poor old America has ever become entangled in. If that is what PPBS is, forget it. .A variant of this argument comes in an the opposite tack. It works too well. One wrong judgment at the top and the whole beautifully structured macnir.e magnifies it grotesquely, whirring and clicking its scientific way towards its output with deadly efficiency. No thank you. Not for us.

These are not, frankly, points of view which I would care to challenge too bo!dly on the Berkeley campus on a hot Saturday afternoon with Governor Reagan's heli- copters buzzing overhead. They are, none- theless, in my view muddle-headed and half- baked. The Vietnam tragedy sprang from a series of good old-fashioned political boobs in Which analysis of objectives, let alone future costs, played precious little part.

One forgets too, just how badly out of anybody's control the whole us military machine was getting by the beginning of the 'sixties. So much so that even the mild Ike felt constrained to warn against it in his last presidential utterance. At least the new budgetary methods helped to bring the really monstrous bloomers well out into the open early on. At least the costs, and par- ticularly the over-running costs, of pro- grammes and projects stand a better chance of being stopped in time. At least PPB has done more than any campus revolt to pre- vent the American military getting further out of control.

There is one more anti-PPs line of thought which again comes primarily from the student constituency. It is that pro- gramme budgeting and systems analysis and all the rest are the final provocation in an over-organised world. The more systematic the processes of government become, the more its workings are costed and controllzd, the more it will provoke anti-politics in the form of extra-parliamentary rebellion and violence.

One can make what one likes of this. it is probably a nice thing to believe on the campus or even in a Washington drawing room. Yet if one holds any brief at all for responsible government and for making the present political system work, PPBS—or at least the attitudes which lie behind it—must surely be a plus.

By throwing up information systematic- ally about what is being brewed up at various levels of government, at what cost and why and what the cost will be two, three or four years from now, the PPBS gives more knowledge and therefore more control to the men at the top. It forces a clearer definition of responsibilities and aims at the various tiers of the bureaucratic hierarchy and to that extent constrains and improves the performance of officialdom. The gain is that the vast and ever-expand-

ing administrative wing of government is brought more under control. The price is that the more powerfully equipped con- trollers-- under our system ministers and

politicians- -acquire a better decision- making capacity (i.e. more power).

Quis custodiet etc.? Is this good or bad? Should this grener power be more widely shared with Parliament and the public?

Can it ever be so? These are quest'ons which PPBS throws up. They may well he

reasons for proceeding with programme budgeting very cautiously rather than in the Johnson way. They are undoubtedly the

reasons why the new techniques will be . strenuously resisted in certain predictab'e quarters. But they are certainly not reasons for throwing this particular baby out with the bathwater.