Government Agencies, Programs and Policy Evaluations - Coursework Example

Government Agencies, Programs and Policy Evaluations Government Agencies, Programs and Policy Evaluations Introduction Government agencies are numerous and normally formed by the government of the day to perform specific functions as directed by the boards or the president. Normally they can either be temporary or permanent. The following are the eight major types of US agencies: Customs Service This agency is in charge of the collection of revenue on behalf of the government. They also control exportation and importation of different goods out and in the country respectively. Because of the nature of their task, they are also charged with monitoring and ensuring no harmful materials get smuggled into US or any other country that uses the same structure. It is through this customs that a country also controls trade with other countries as well as immigration and emigration and through which the data on the same is collected and stored. This agency is being privatized due to corruption cases in some countries (Chowdhury, 2006). Forest Service The US forest service is headed by the Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment. Its original mother agency is the US Department of Agriculture. It is divided into; National forest system, state and private forestry Business operations and the research and development. The agency ensures the protection of the natural forest from illegal logging, fires and working towards ensuring a sustainable environment. The organizations here are further subdivided into national forests, districts forests, region forest, research stations, and private forestry (Egan, 2009). Secret Service This agency gathers secrets or intelligence data, analyzes them to give a useful information. This duty may be different depending with a country and so is the name. The United States Secret Service operates under the US Department of Homeland Security from the year 2003. Before then, it was under the department of the treasury. It is headed by the executive director and answers to the White House. The agency protects US designated leaders, prevent currency fraud, cybercrimes, impersonation, money laundering and major protection of US President and vice president and their families (Adams, 2013). It has about 136 field offices with its headquarters being in Washington DC. Gaming Control Board This is also called gambling in some sectors and is charged with the responsibility of regulating casinos and other gaming businesses by enforcement of a gaming law. They define how the gaming activities are to be done by licensing which is a little regulated compared to other businesses. In US, this regulation varies according to the state that formulates their regulations. Public Utilities Commission In USA, it is charged with checking the rates and services of the public utility. In some countries, it is called ‘public oversight commission the utility, in this case, may be public, state-owned or a co-owned utility. Again, this varies with states and are commonly headed by a commission. In California State, this commission is headed by the president and is comprised of five commissioners. Generally, this agency controls the operations of companies like, natural gas, transportation network, electricity, telephone companies, water and others that fall in the above categories. Internal Revenue Agency The parent agency is the department of treasury and is headed by the Commissioner Executive for Internal Revenue. It is headquartered at Washington DC. It collects taxes and administration of internal revenue code. Currently, internal revenue agency operates in four divisions; large business and international division, the small business division, the wage and investment division and tax-exempt and government entities divisions, criminal law enforcement division. It currently runs ten centers in the country. Law Enforcement Agency This agency operates in North America and is tasked with enforcing the law. It may also be called the sheriff in some parts of US and the police in different countries. These officers are geographically limited to their countries of operations unless if it an international law enforcement agency like the Interpol. National or state police are divided into many levels. In US, every metropolis, state, county, or city has a local law enforcement agency to it. US law enforcement agencies is divided into federal, tribal, state, county, city, village, town and special units. Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Service This is an independent agency created by the Government of United States of America to handle the provision of postal service in the country. It is headed by a postmaster. This is one of the agencies whose operations are entrenched in the constitution of United States of America. It is governed by the postal reorganizations act. This also the entity that is obligated to serve all US citizens regardless of their geographical locations. This means they literally have their offices located nationwide. It should be noted that it also operates as a business entity using its profits to fund itself (Dettaven, 2010). Independent agencies The government of US has been keen in creating independent agencies free from the influence of the president and includes the postal services. They are headed by boards or commissions whose members, the president appoints subject to the approval of the Senate (Pierce, Shapiro, &Verkuil, 2009). These agencies are normally formed as they are seen to be less biased towards any political divide and free executive control. However, they are subject to certain expected conducts against which they may be removed from the office (Verkuil, 199). They are established through a separate statutes passed by the congress and this explains the goals it will be working to achieve. They have a statutory requirement of bipartisan membership requiring the commission to be representative of all parties. Government Foundations Foundations are created to donate or grant other nonprofit organizations. They help by distributing their incomes to charitable purposes. It is for such `reasons that they get exempted from paying taxes. Foundations directly or indirectly support the community around them by playing a role in the movable and immovable assets. This may be in the form of direct support, sponsorship or services at reduced or subsidized rates. Examples may be private foundations like Bill Clinton foundation or faith foundation-churches (IRS, 2015) which are formed for philanthropic purpose by those individuals or faith groups. Other examples are the public foundations or the government foundations which are formed to support initiatives that are of interest to the government like education grants to support education in US. Quasi-Government Organization Examples of quasi-government organization in US are but not limited to: world institute on disability-which is a nonprofit policy organization that champions independence of disabled people with focus on providing tailor-made technology, different forms of assistance including accommodation. There is also the US department of veteran affairs, department of labor, justice, health and human services, department of agriculture, centre for disease control and prevention, census bureau, administrative and aging and many others. They are those organizations that are supported by the government but managed privately. They normally perform commercial and watchdog functions and enjoy operations independence from government although they are normally created and supported by federal government. Constraints Faced by Decision Makers in Budget Process Decision making during budget process faces different constraints with regards to uncertainties. Budget making process require gathering of information about so many factors including different governmental organizations financial requirements and the other activities sponsored by the government so that correct amount of money may be awarded. This requires time, personnel, and political support that the decision makers are not always lucky to have (Floyd & Holiday, 1997). Decision makers also face the constraint information. There is normally not enough information to inform the proper allocation process amongst the different functional units of government. Some of these tasks are reserved for the congress which may not be very impartial since they serve political offices. These are political offices that will obviously lack impartiality hence the third problem of the budget process in addition to the lack of political goodwill and much-separated procedures which consumes a lot of time.. Approval Process of the Federal Budget It is initiated when the president presents a budget request to the Congress. This budget is drafted over a period of months by the help of management and budget office between the first January Monday and the first February Monday. Then other committees with budgetary responsibilities will also during this time present the request to the budget committee. Then in the subsequent month, the CBO will then publish the presidents budget proposal and do the same on their website. In the same month, the budget committee following the CBO report will consider the presidents budget proposal; submit a budget resolution to its house by April first. The senate and the house may make amendments at this stage if necessary. With no passed budget resolution, the previous resolution may be used. Differences between the house and senate proposals are then harmonized by a select representatives or senators, the product of this deliberations will then be accepted by both the house and the senate and forms the guiding structure for the appropriation process. Then through the next acts by Congress, budget authority is appropriated by the respective committee of appropriation that decide on the funding levels for the House and the Senate appropriation committees. The appropriation committees then draft the appropriation bills to be presented at the house and senate. At the availability of the final budget, the appropriation committees then allocate the amount amongst their sub-committees which will in turn allocate the amount among the projects they control. Once the conference bill passes both houses, the president may then sign it into law or decline. In brief, this difference between policy maker, appropriators and authorizers bring a time lapse and may not be very efficient. Roles of congress in federal budget process The congress receives budget proposal from the president. The congress board then considers the proposal by publishing it and uploading the same publication on their website for public view. The CBO then submits it to the house and together with the senate may make necessary amendments. They also enact acts that allow for the appropriations of the budget authority. They are also charged with debating conference bills developed by the appropriation committees and presenting it to the president for enactment. The Congress may define and redefine the eligibility requirements for entitlement programs. These are political offices that will obviously in addition to performing the above tasks, will also do politics. Evaluation and Policy Change Program evaluation is the systematic procedure of gathering information analyzing them to check if the projects aims are being or have been met by the program. It checks the effectiveness of the program. Significant problems involved in evaluating public programs It, however, experiences problems related to difficulty in designing an evaluation that can yield the highest standards available. Most of the evaluation require the project to be ongoing before they are initiated which leads to wastage of time. Secondly, the problem of the budget constraint also prevails. These constraints always result because the mother project was not properly designed to cater for the cost evaluation thereby requiring the company to outsource this cost again. Then there is the problem of data and time constraints. Data constraints result because the evaluation is done later on after the project has been done. This also true to time constraint. Finally, there is the challenge of project complexity, dynamism and language barriers especially when the financiers speak a different language to the one spoken by the people he/she sponsors. Components of the policy evaluation process The two major components of policy evaluation process may include an assessment of the situation and determination of the causation. This will help to know if it is the program causing the changes being observed or not. The steps taken in evaluating public programs They are majorly three in number and may include; Establishing a mission---At this stage, the evaluator may ask the stakeholders of the program to define kindly the mission of the project. This may help in making them understand that they may be having different ideas about the projects mission. Taking stock--At this stage, the participants may be asked to generate or list the project activities they consider key and important. Then they will then be asked to rate the activities they identified in a scale of say 1—10. Where 10 is, say the most important. Future Planning--At this stage, the participants are asked for a suggestion on how to improve the key programs they identified. The goals set in step one are then aligned with the key project in step three. These steps are interlinked (Bamberger, 2004). Types of Goal Changes in Policy Evaluation.. The type of goal changes that occur during policy evaluation may be both capacity building and advocacy goal changes so that benchmarks and indicators may be established for long-term goals. This is better achieved by getting funders on board. The goal of the project may be changed to a more realistic and attainable but which all stakeholders can relate with. Programs are not very easy to measure considering the reasons quoted above. Majorly, it is because the measurement process and program implementation process are never concurrent. The former comes later after the program implementation has been started. Language and culture barrier coupled with data and time constraints just make it even more difficult. The complexity nature and dynamism also hinder the ability to measure a program. Substantive Policy Issues A policy of any kind may generally be defined as an intended system of principles to govern and direct decisions in a manner aimed at achieving rationality. It may be in form of statement of intention that is implemented procedurally and gets adopted by the whole organization or government as a whole. Normally the people responsible for decisions on whether to adopt a policy or not are the apex officials like the board of directors and or senior managers for organizations that lack board of governors. Examples of policies used by corporate sectors may include purchasing/procurement policies that dictate the procedures and guidelines that should be used by the respective departments to purchase any goods or service above certain value. A company may have as its substantive policy to only purchase second hand cars from certain dealers which have specific mileage as a condition. Stages of policy formulation may range from agenda/problem identification, where the organization acknowledges the presence of a problem that needs to be resolved. Then the policy formulation/analysis stage where the organization analyzes alternative courses of actions. Then there is the policy instrument development and consultation stage where the stakeholders are consulted. These processes require keen coordination to ensure the smooth running of the process. Then there is the decision making stage, then the implementation stage and finally the evaluation stage where the policy is evaluated for any impacts. The policies are divided into four types according to Theodore J. Lowi. They are; distributive, regulatory, constituent and miscellaneous policies. However, policies have challenges that vary depending on the formulation procedures and the type of policy (Theodore, 1968). They include; Improper definition of the policy making it hard to implement and identify with. The fact that policy effectiveness cannot be confirmed before implementation increases uncertainties since there is no guarantee that the policy will solve the current problem or yield the desired results The fairness and adequacy of the results/solution can’t be objectively quantified. References Adams, B. (2013, January 10th). President Obama will have secret service protection for the rest of his life. Retrieved May 1st, 2015, from Trail Blaze Blog: Dallas morning News: http:www.theblaze.com Bamberger, M. (2004). Designing impact evaluations under budget, time and data constraints. American Journal of Evaluation. Chowdhury, F. (2006). Corupt Bureaucracy and privatisation of customs in Bangladesh. Dhaka: Padhok Samabesh publishers. Dettaven, T. (2010, Novemeber). Privatizing the U.S Postal Service. Retrieved May 1st, 2015, from Cato Instsitute: Downsizing the federal government: http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/usps Egan, T. (2009). The big burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America. Harcourt: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Floyd, J. L., & Holiday, W. C. (1997). Budget constraints and decision making. Alexandria: IWR Publications. IRS. (2015, April 15th). Private Foundations. Retrieved May 2nd, 2015, from IRS: http://www.irs.gov/charities-&-Non-Profits/charitable-organizations/Private-Foundations Pierce, R., Shapiro, S. A., & Verkuil, P. (2009). Administrative law and process. Foundation Press. Theodore, L. J. (1968). Four systems of policy, politics and choice: public administrative Review. American society for public administration, 3, 298-310. Verkuil, P. (199). The purpose and limits of independent agencies. Duke law Journal, 257-275. Read More