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Every other Wednesday, before the sun comes up, thousands of people in my neighborhood stumble to the end of their driveways with bins full of old cans, bottles and newspapers. They are participating in what has become a community ritual — recycling. It wasn't always this way. There was a time when we blissfully threw all that stuff directly into the garbage and thought nothing of it. Now we treat some of our garbage as though it were precious. We meticulously separate it and wash some of it. We store it for up to two weeks. Then we take it out in a special container. Garbage just isn't what it used to be!
It was the government that got us to change how we think and act when it comes to garbage. The government has gotten us to comply with a new set of expectations and norms. But it has done so without resorting to the usual set of compliance tools. There are no recycling inspectors. There are no recycling police or recycling tickets. You can't be hauled off to a recycling court. There isn't even a 12-step program for recovering non-recyclers. Yet the level of compliance with our community expectations about recycling is very high. 50-80 percent of households recycle regularly. Recycling has indeed become a community ritual.
The aim of governmental compliance activities is to get individuals or organizations to act consistently with community norms and expectations. Compliance activities are everywhere in government. Taxation, environmental protection, health and safety, police, and traffic enforcement are just a few examples. There is probably no aspect of government that doesn't involve some degree of compliance.
The results achieved by these compliance activities vary. 90 — 95% of us comply with the tax laws. But only 60-70% of us comply with speed limits on interstate highways or mandatory seat belt laws. And only about 50% of stores comply with prohibitions on the sale of alcohol to minors.
Most government organizations rely on enforcement — detecting and punishing violations in order to deter inappropriate behavior - as the principal tool for achieving compliance. Enforcement is a well-established tool. It is also relatively expensive and based on coercion. As the example of recycling suggests, there are other powerful and effective tools for achieving compliance.
Before learning about these tools, however, we must first understand accountability in the public sector and then how accountability differs in compliance and service functions. With those understandings in place, we can proceed to explore how to win, not just enforce compliance.
Accountability
Accountability means being in a position to experience the consequences (good and bad) of one's actions.
Everybody talks about accountability, but few public organizations are organized in ways that really promote it. In public organizations we equate accountability with supervision, rules, regulations, audits, inspections, enforcement and punishment. In short, we tend to equate accountability with our most commonly used compliance mechanisms. While these mechanisms can contribute to accountability, most of them are indirect, lack immediacy and rely on outside forces to promote effectiveness within an organization.
Most public organizations have systems that promote vertical or hierarchical accountability, through the chain-of-command. Thus, in most public organizations accountability has come to mean compliance with the will of the "boss." This is a very narrow understanding of accountability. In particular, it fails to take advantage of the significant power of horizontal accountability, to one's customers. To strengthen accountability, then, it is important to have a clear understanding of how the "customer" metaphor can be appropriately used to make accountability in the public sector really powerful. Compliance is a part in this expanded and strengthened notion of accountability.
Accountability works best when:
- Organizations are directly accountable to those whom they serve - their customers;
- Performance expectations, based on what the customer values, are clear;
- Performance can be monitored regularly by performers and customers;
- Performers have the freedom to make the changes necessary to improve; and
- Customers have the ability to make performance matter.
In most public organizations, one or several of these conditions does not exist. As a result accountability is weak and performance suffers.
Strengthening accountability requires finding appropriate ways to make the customers powerful. For government this means:
- Understanding the difference between its service and its compliance functions;
- Clarifying who the customer is for each function;
- Putting customers in a position to get quality results from government activities by assuring that they have the power to make both success and failure consequential with rewards and penalties.
- Winning voluntary compliance with policies and regulations as often as possible, while enforcing it when necessary (see below); and,
- Using influence to promote policy aims in arenas not under government's direct control.
Service vs. Compliance
The first step toward improving public accountability is to understand the difference between those activities that are focused on delivering services and those that are focused on achieving compliance with laws or regulations. Both kinds of activities are important. When organizations try to do both functions at the same time they produce neither outstanding service nor outstanding compliance. Worse, they reinforce the mixed message embodied in the phrase "I'm from (the government or headquarters) and I'm here to help you." Service and compliance are not the same thing. They both need to be done well if public organizations are to be effective and accountable.
Most public organizations carry out a host of different activities. Each is designed for a specific purpose, to serve specific customers. "Customers" as used here are the chief beneficiaries of a governmental activity — they give the activity or function its purpose. No function in government exists for itself. Some activities are designed to directly serve individual customers, to meet their specific needs. These activities serve individuals or individual groups. These direct services have both external customers (higher education, highways, and drug abuse services fall into this category) and internal customers (purchasing and accounting are good examples).
Other governmental activities are designed to serve the community as a whole. Individuals may be affected by these activities but it is the collective interests of the community that the service is designed to benefit. Examples include pollution control and law enforcement. Most of these are regulatory activities involving permitting and enforcement. The goal of these activities is to achieve compliance with established rules or norms. Citizens of the community (collectively) are the customers. If that is the case, then what do we call those who are obligated to comply with the rules and regulations? We call them compliers. A government's compliance functions serve its customers–the community–by getting individuals or groups (compliers) to comply with laws and regulations.
Direct service functions succeed by effectively delivering services to individual customers. Compliance functions succeed by effectively delivering obligations to individuals or groups on behalf of the community as a whole.
For a direct service function like higher education or purchasing, serving the customer means providing an outstanding experience to each and every student or buyer. For a compliance function like pollution control or the highway patrol, serving the customer means getting as many industries or drivers as possible to fulfill their obligations under the law. Enforcement or traditional policing is one way to achieve this goal. There are other, even better, ways (see below). Regardless of the means, accountability in a compliance activity is to collective interests, not to the interests of individual compliers.
For service functions customers can express their desires and their reactions directly to their service provider by using more or less of the service or paying a higher or lower price. For compliance functions we rely on various means of collective expression. Most often this is done through elected or appointed representatives. Generally, then, elected officials represent the voice of the customer in a compliance function. The policies they set and the rules they promulgate are intended to represent the collective interests of citizens.
Service vs. Compliance
| |
Service |
Compliance |
| Customer |
Individuals or groups |
Community as a whole |
| Interests served |
Individual |
Collective |
| Service goal |
Quality service |
Maximum compliance |
| Accountability |
To customers |
To community representatives — elected officials |
Winning Compliance
Most traditional compliance functions operate on the assumption that enforcement is the most effective means of achieving compliance. Enforcement requires rules that specify expectations, an inspection process, mechanisms for adjudicating disputes, and intervention strategies to coerce compliance from those found "guilty."
The main problem with this approach is not that it lacks effectiveness. Rather, the problem is that it is based on a set of assumptions that don't apply in most cases (though they clearly apply in some). Enforcement assumes the worst, and often gets the worst, from the people who are expected to comply. Enforcement means forcing people to do something they don't want to do. However, the majority of people want to comply with what is expected of them. When they don't comply it is often because they didn't know what they were supposed to or how to do it. The typical compliance process cares little for the cause of non-compliance - only about the fact of its existence. Further, most compliance activities are based on mistrust and rely on fear as the primary motivation. While fear may be needed in some cases, people are more often motivated by a host of other factors, including pride, peer pressure, and reward and recognition.
Alternative Assumptions for Achieving Compliance
| |
Enforcing Compliance |
Winning Compliance |
| Willingness to comply |
People will only comply if they are forced to |
People want to comply with what is expected of them |
| Why people don't comply |
Because they don't want to |
Because they don't know they are supposed to or don't know how |
| Trust |
People can't be trusted |
People can be trusted |
| Motivation |
People need to be coerced |
People need to be encouraged, recognized and rewarded |
Recycling provides a textbook example of how these alternative assumptions can be used to win compliance. There is very little, if any, enforcement associated with achieving compliance with our recycling expectations from individual citizens - and yet the level of voluntary compliance is very high. Recycling programs have relied on a host of different tools to win compliance. First, a community norm or expectation is established by highlighting the environmental consequences of not recycling. Next, recycling advocates use extensive education (especially in schools) and community advertising to win support for recycling and to inform residents about what should be recycled and how. Local communities make compliance relatively easy through the distribution of recycling bins and the establishment of a regular collection cycle. The bins also have the powerful effect of mobilizing peer pressure by making compliance, or lack thereof, public. Everyone in a neighborhood can keep track of who has their bins out and who doesn't! Finally, citizens are often recognized and thanked for their participation by a small credit on their solid waste bills. By using these tools we have achieved a very high rate of voluntary compliance without resorting to enforcement approaches that are expensive as well as antagonistic in their design and implementation.
Based on our review of compliance efforts around the world, The Public Strategies Group, Inc. has identified eight strategies that can form the basis of an effective compliance effort:
- Build Support for Standards - Build support among the intended compliers for community norms and expectations, often by engaging them directly in the standards-setting process.
- Make Regulations Performance Based - Create performance-based rather than prescriptive, process-based regulations. Seek compliance with a result, not with how the result is produced.
- Educate Compliers - Invest heavily in educating compliers on how best to achieve compliance.
- Make Compliance Easy - Make compliance as easy as possible. Simplify processes and provide mechanisms that facilitate compliance.
- Make Agency Delivery to Compliers Consequential - Establish standards for agency performance of its compliance process, publish the standards so that compliers will know what to expect when they deal with the agency, offer guarantees about meeting the standards and provide redress to compliers when the standards are not met.
- Report Compliance Information - Regularly collect and publish performance information regarding levels of compliance.
- Base Complier Treatment on Performance - Treat compliers differently based on their past performance, their motivation to comply, and their ability to comply. This is also known as "situational compliance."
- Employ a Continuum of Consequences - Apply consequences for compliance along a continuum from public recognition and reward for those who comply to application of penalties to those who - after being given the opportunity to avail themselves of the preceding steps - refuse to comply.
These eight strategies constitute opportunities to improve the way public organizations attempt to win compliance. These strategies can be used as a basis for the review and redesign of compliance activities throughout government. Maine's approach to OSHA compliance offers a good case study of these ideas in action.
Maine Top 200
In policing the nation's workplaces, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has traditionally relied on inspections and after-the-fact fines for violations. The Maine Top 200 Program takes a radically different approach. It encourages employers to identify hazards themselves and take corrective action before they lead to injury or illness.
The Maine Top 200 program started in 1993, after OSHA examined state workers' compensation data and recognized that enforcement efforts were not targeted to the firms registering the highest worker compensations claims. The mismatch was particularly troubling because of the state's relatively high incidence of injury and illness. In 1990 Maine's workplace injury and illness rates exceeded the national average by 63 percent. Injuries resulting in lost work time were 71 percent higher than the rest of the country.
The area director of OSHA in Maine, determined to reduce escalating injury and illness claims, developed a new way of doing business. First, OSHA selected the 200 Maine companies with the highest volume of worker injury claims. The firms represented only about 1 percent of the state's employers, but accounted for 45 percent of the workplace injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. OSHA then offered each employer on the list two options. The employer could choose to work with OSHA by identifying and correcting hazards themselves and also by implementing comprehensive safety and health programs to sustain the effort. The employer's other choice was to increase traditional OSHA enforcement inspections. Nearly all the firms chose to enter into partnership with OSHA.
Today, the employers draw up action plans outlining steps they will take to reduce injuries and illnesses and comply with OSHA regulations. They conduct a comprehensive survey of hazards in their own plants and are expected to correct most of them within 12 months. Each quarter, the employers file a report with OSHA outlining progress. Employers who fail to fulfill their obligations at any time during the program are marked for a comprehensive inspection.
The new effort has not only enabled OSHA to focus on places where the largest number of serious injuries and illnesses occur. It has also changed the agency's definition of success--from the number of inspections, citations, and fines issued to reductions in hazards, injuries, and illness and increases in company safety and health programs with employee involvement. OSHA compliance officers no longer function exclusively as regulatory "cops." They are now health and safety consultants to the state's employers.
But the most impressive aspect of the Maine Top 200 Program is what it has persuaded Maine's employers to do. Over the eight years before the program, OSHA identified about 37,000 hazards at 1,316 work sites. By contrast, in the program's first two years, employers identified 174,331 workplace hazards and had corrected 118,671. More than half of the employers had decreased their lost work time, injuries, and illness in part because they focused their efforts on the major causes of workplace hazards.
OSHA has achieved greater compliance by "winning" it than by relying exclusively on enforcement.
SUMMARY
The traditional approach to compliance relies mostly on enforcement, because it assumes the worst - and often gets the worst - from those who are expected to comply. By altering the assumptions and adding more tools to our compliance tool box, we can achieve much higher levels of compliance while holding down or even reducing both direct costs and the costs of aggravation and lost public support.
The key is for each governmental organization to develop its own comprehensive "winning compliance" framework based on the seven strategies. Ideas for putting these strategies into action include the following:
1. Build Support for Standards
- Produce a video, advertisement, and/or CD-ROM portraying the future without a change in behavior (motorists stuck in traffic, increased pollution, etc.).
- Convene meetings of compliers to discuss best and worst outcomes from changing or not changing compliance and to develop compliance norms and expectations.
- Convene "fish bowl" or focus group sessions of citizens to discuss compliance concerns — have the discussions observed by compliers to give them a sense of citizen concern and urgency.
2. Make Regulations Performance-Based
- Using feedback from compliers (see above) rewrite individual regulations based on the outcomes to be achieved.
- Permit compliers to obtain a waiver from existing process based regulations by accepting accountability for specific outcomes.
3. Educate Compliers
- Develop a handbook to show compliers how to comply.
- Collect and publish examples of "best practices" in achieving compliance.
- Produce "toolkits" that compliers can use to assist them in meeting compliance objectives.>
- Convene/sponsor/present at/attend conferences and workshops to highlight "best practices" in achieving compliance.
- Create a web site with an on line "assistant" to help with compliance issues.
4. Make Compliance Easy
- Consolidate related processes into a single application
- Create one stop permitting or compliance centers
- Establish "complier reps" to guide compliers through the process
- Allow submission of compliance information electronically.
5. Make Agency Delivery to Compliers Consequential
- Create a service standard regarding how quickly the agency will reach a decision on completed compliance submissions.
- Publish information on agency performance vs. its standard.
- Create a redress mechanism (i.e., compensation of some kind like returning a permit fee) for use when an agency does not meet its standard.
6. Report Compliance Information
- Create a publicly reported "scorecard" on levels of compliance.
- Distribute a symbol of compliance to all that achieve the required outcome.
7. Base Complier Treatment on Performance
- Create a "fast-track" approval process for compliers with a history of achieving compliance.
- Apply greater scrutiny to those with a poor track record.
8. Employ A Continuum of Consequences
- Provide financial rewards or other incentives to those who comply successfully.
- Provide a help desk to those who try, but miss the mark.
- Provide direction to those who miss the mark a second time.
- Prosecute those who consistently fail to comply and show no willingness to try.
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