It couldn't have been easy for President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to keep straight faces the other day when they announced plans to streamline the bureaucracy.

Yet another attempt by a yet another administration to make government less muddled and more efficient. Yeah, sure. You could almost see the thousands of eyes rolling around Washington's many departments, commissions and agencies.But this time it will be different, Clinton and Gore insisted at their press briefing, as if clued in on the skeptics.

"This is not a gimmick," Gore said. "It's not just another study that will collect dust on a shelf."

Yeah, sure.

Americans have become pretty cynical when it comes to proposals for more government efficiency, but you see, we've had some experience. No institution on Earth is as bungled on such a grand scale as your federal bureaucracy. (The Soviet Union was the top bungler for years and look what happened to it.)

Must we be reminded that the Medicare system is so complex recipients are hiring private firms to untangle the mess?

That infant mortality problems have been handled by 20 different agencies through 93 different programs?

That the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates telecommunications policy, used rotary dial telephones until the end of the 1980s?

And that in 1988 the Labor Department listed $2 billion in liabilities while the department's own inspector general calculated liabilities of $25 billion?

There's no big mystery behind this disorder - nor behind the ill-fated efforts under Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to clean it up.

Keep in mind that many politicians, their rhetorical outrages notwithstanding, don't much care whether or not government works. It's not in their professional interest to investigate Washington's telephone systems or accounting practices - matters that are of scant concern to the folks back home.

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Institutional streamlining is not impossible, as General Motors and other big companies have been learning. Despite upfront costs - and resulting personnel cuts - the paybacks in productivity and improved efficiency can be large.

How much in Washington's case is impossible to say right now (governments, unlike companies, can't be measured by revenue or earnings), but estimates range from $5 billion to $10 billion - perhaps much more.

And along with any cost savings would come an improbable bonus: a slimmed- down, service-oriented government where someone can call or visit a federal office, actually get what's requested in a minimal amount of time, and come away a satisfied citizen/customer.

Yeah, sure.

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