Statement Announcing a Broadened Management Role for the General Services Administration, and Selection of Administrator and Deputy Administrator

ONE OF the great challenges of governing well today is to make the institutions of government an efficient servant of the people, rather than simply a mammoth machine running by its own momentum. It is a task that demands all of the modern management skills we can muster.

In creating the Office of Management and Budget in 1970, I took a major step toward upgrading the effectiveness of management in the Federal executive branch. My proposals to consolidate and streamline the domestic Cabinet departments point in this same direction.

I am now taking additional action to improve the caliber of management in the Federal Government. I have directed that the General Services Administration assume a broader management role by becoming the President's principal instrument for developing better systems for providing administrative support to all executive branch activities.

This shift of responsibilities is being accomplished as follows:

--By Executive order [11717], I have transferred to the General Services Administration many functions previously exercised by the Office of Management and Budget in the areas of financial management systems development, procurement, contracting, property management, and automatic data processing management. GSA now has overall leadership responsibility for developing Government-wide policy in these areas and for seeing that such policy is carried out within the departments and agencies. It has assumed these responsibilities under the broad policy oversight of the Office of Management and Budget, drawing upon OMB's assistance in resolving major policy issues.

--I am also transferring from OMB to GSA the Relocation Assistance Implementation Committee, which provides Government-wide leadership in assuring uniform, fair, and equitable treatment of persons displaced by Federal or federally assisted programs. The Committee will be chaired by the GSA Administrator.

--Finally, now that Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1973 has been cleared by the Congress to take effect on July 1, transferring to the President all functions presently vested by statute in the Office of Emergency Preparedness or its Director, many of the functions of that agency will be delegated to the General Services Administration. These will include functions in the areas of civil defense, emergency preparedness planning, continuity of civil government, resources planning and analysis, and strategic materials stockpile planning-many of which are closely related to functions already performed by GSA. All these changes will equip the General Services Administration to act as a strong partner of the Office of Management and Budget and the Civil Service Commission in carrying forward a coordinated effort to improve Federal management.

GSA's broad new mission calls for strong, experienced leadership in the top command. I am pleased to announce my intention to nominate Arthur F. Sampson for the post of Administrator of the expanded agency. Mr. Sampson has already served with distinction as Acting Administrator. Dwight A. Ink, a career official whose wide Federal executive experience includes service as an Assistant Director of OMB since the establishment of that office, will become Deputy Administrator of GSA.

In addition, I will expect all other Federal department and agency heads and their organizations to cooperate fully with GSA as it undertakes its new responsibilities.

By imposing greater order on fragmented and overlapping Federal management efforts and by establishing greater uniformity of administrative processes throughout the executive branch, the reorganized General Services Administration should make a significant contribution toward cutting red tape and achieving a more economical, effective, and responsive Federal Government.