Presidents often need this kind of cutting edge; they and the Nation are well served by public advisory commissions which do original research and place fresh and different proposals on the public agenda. The Congress uses public advisory groups too; as I mentioned, Chairman Rivers subsequently appointed a public advisory group, also of distinguished members, to provide an independent review of the draft situation for the House Armed Services Committee.

SUMMARY

I would sum up, then, by saying that a historical review shows that both interdepartmental committees and public advisory commissions are not only legitimate but perhaps even indispensable tools of the Presidency. The question is, Are they organized and used effectively? On this point, I know that public administrators like myself in the executive branch will welcome the independent review which this subcommittee will conduct.

Mr. MONAGAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Patterson.

Incidently, you said that the commission to which you were referring had a budget of $300,000.

Mr. PATTERSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. MONAGAN. What was the term of the life of the Commission? Mr. PATTERSON. Ten months, as I remember; from July 1966 to May 1967.

Mr. MONAGAN. The staff was eight and the secretarial group was 19. Mr. PATTERSON. Yes.

Mr. MONAGAN. The consultants were brought in on what basis? Did they come on a per diem basis?

Mr. PATTERSON. WAE per diem basis. Each was given a specific assignment; a paper to write; a given day on which to present it to the commission.

Mr. MONAGAN. That was a model, I would say.

Mr. PATTERSON. I do think so, I would say, both in terms of a tightly organized group and the effect, which has, I think, been beneficial for the Nation in terms of exposing these issues for public discussion, which, of course, is still going on.

Mr. MONAGAN. I do not know whether you heard the previous testimony of Mr. Ink

Mr. PATTERSON. I heard some of it.

Mr. MONAGAN. He was talking about the distinction between a task force and an advisory committee. Where would you place the Commission that we are talking about here?

Mr. PATTERSON. It is hard to spot it on the spectrum of characteristics of public advisory groups. It was formally called a Commission in the President's Executive order, but its ad hoc nature was an important characteristic of its effectiveness. Everybody knew we had a deadline and had a job to do and had to get it over with.

I do not think it could be called a task force but you get into semantics here. The important point was that it was ad hoc. It was temporary. It had one specific set of terms of reference. Very specific. And a deadline. This, I can testify, was something in the back of every commission member's mind. They knew there was a time when the re port was due, and that was it.

The idea of wasting time or postponing decisions-this was a builtin stimulus not to postpone decisions or waste any discussions.

Mr. MONAGAN. You had a subject that required some action and then you also had a specific time limitation and also an interest in what the results of the study would be, so that I think these contributed, too. Do you have any questions, Mr. Clesner?

Mr. CLESNER. Yes, sir. Did the Cabinet at that time, itself, act as a council for domestic policy questions?

Mr. PATTERSON. That is correct. Of course, national security affairs were left to the National Security Council which, itself, dates from 1947.

Mr. CLESNER. Also, were all other policy questions that are dealt with presently today by Cabinet subgroups also dealt with at that time at the Cabinet level?

Mr. PATTERSON. Yes, insofar as they were handled in a committee style. Some of them, of course, were presented to the President unilaterally by the department head through the White House staff and did not have committee discussion at all, but those which had committee discussions, in front of the President, came to Cabinet. I believe there was a third group of what is now called the quadrid. (Then it was called the triad.) They met with the President, as his principal domestic economic advisers.

Mr. CLESNER. Sub-Cabinet group.

Mr. PATTERSON. It was Cabinet level. That was a very delimited area. That existed in President Eisenhower's time also. Other than that, the Cabinet was the group used.

Mr. CLESNER. To serve the Cabinet and other Cabinet panels, do you think a staff of two is adequate?

Mr. PATTERSON. Well, that depends on what you mean by "serve." Our job was to serve the Cabinet, in the full sense, and to keep a substantive eye on the major panels which we identified as about to deliver important things to the Cabinet. There were, as I mentioned, about 48 of these committees of policy interest to the President but we would single out about maybe 10 and then, by keeping watch on them-I mean literally; I would go and attend their meetings; I would sit in the corner and listen and bring back a memory and notes and a conception of the substantive issues with which they were wrestling-and through a memorandum, a private memorandum to Sherman Adams or to the President, would make sure the substantive issue did not get overlooked when the Cabinet matter came before the Cabinet.

This, of course, took time. We handled maybe a selective group of five or 10 subordinate committees; for that kind of "watching"; to be applied to a wider number might take a few more. My opinion is that by judicious use of one's time and informal as well as formal observations, this can be done with a minimum of staff.

Mr. CLESNER. Mr. Chairman, that is all.

Mr. MONAGAN. Any questions?

Mr. FREED. Was anyone giving any managerial expertise to these committees at that time?

Mr. PATTERSON. You mean to the public advisory committees like the Marshall Commission?

Mr. FREED. Yes.

Mr. PATTERSON. No. I think the managerial expertise really was in the hands of the chairman and the executive director. It was up to them together to organize the commission's work and get it going. My impression is that this is generally true of public advisory commissions. The Bureau of the Budget always stands ready-I think Mr. Ink's is the office that does this-to offer advice. We did not actually call on them but did get their help in arranging for the emergency fund financing. The Bureau is an office available for management advice when called upon.

Mr. FREED. You did not have any civil service-type assigned to the committee to look after the minutes, the filing of minutes or to keep score on the chits that were written against your appropriation or

Mr. PATTERSON. I was the civil service type and the staff under me were. We had a very good executive officer, a crackerjack from the military named Major Cannon, and he had an assistant, Roger Fredericks, and the staff were all civil servants, I think, so the answer is: Yes; we had a small, tight staff who kept watch on finances as well as on policy and the development of policy papers. There was, you might say, a little cadre there.

Maybe I should anticipate your next question. You are thinking maybe this kind of cadre is useful for committees, generally. Mr. FREED. That is my next question.

Mr. PATTERSON. I would begin by answering: Each commission certainly has to have this kind of staff; a person concerned with its policy and following the development of its policy papers; a person or persons concerned with its budget and financing.

Whether there could be a pool, so to speak, available-this is an intriguing idea, just speaking personally. My analogy is the Department of State in the late forties, where we had a central committee secretariat staff of 12 persons and we serviced, in Mr. Clesner's full sense of the word "serviced"-took notes, circulated papers, worked with the chairman-maybe 50 to 75 State-chaired interagency committees every committee chaired by a State that was interagency and many internal State committees. The 12 of us operated out of one small suite and had one small central reproduction unit. We were all experts in committee management, as such. We were a cadre.

We sent the first officer to give secretarial services to the American delegation to a ministerial level international conference. A lot of pioneering was going on in the Department at that time. The committee secretarial staff was a new idea. State blazed the trail for this. I do not think they do it now quite as much as they used to. I have not seen this copied by any other agency. I can testify from having been one of the 12 that this is a very feasible and efficient operation. State did not, with few exceptions, have any other executive secretaries or other committee establishments in State except for this one central one.

I might add one other thing. When the Secretary or Under Secretary wanted an idea of what was going on in his establishment in terms of the development of policy questions which were being handled in different offices in a committee sense, he only had to go to one place: our committee secretariat. We could give him a memo stating everything that was happening. That was a certain usefulness.

Mr. FREED. You would recommend it for consideration by the President?

Mr. PATTERSON. I would recommend it for consideration certainly by the director of this new Office of Management and Budget.

Mr. FREED. I have no further questions.

Mr. PATTERSON. I think it is an intriguing idea.

Mr. MONAGAN. Thank you very much.

The next witness is Mr. Raymond Jacobson, Director of the Bureau of Policies and Standards of the Civil Service Commission. Welcome, Mr. Jacobson. We would be glad to have your statement. STATEMENT OF RAYMOND JACOBSON, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF POLICIES AND STANDARDS, CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION; ACCOMPANIED BY ANTHONY MONDELLO, GENERAL COUNSEL, CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION; AND MORTON HORVITZ, ACTING CHIEF, SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE, BUREAU OF POLICIES AND STANDARDS, CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION

Mr. JACOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce my colleagues who are with me. On my right is Mr. Tony Mondello, General Counsel for the Civil Service Commission. On my left is Mr. Morton Horvitz, a member of the staff, of the Planning Staff of the Bureau of Policies and Standards of the Commission.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you in connection with your inquiry into Presidential committees and commissions. With your permission, I should like to have placed in the record Chairman Hampton's letter of January 22, 1970, to the chairman of this subcommittee.

I understand that you are especially interested in the use of consultants by the Federal Government and how the Civil Service Commission fits into the picture. I hope I can provide some enlightenment in what is a very complex area.

Mr. MONAGAN. You wanted to put this letter in the record. Where is the letter?

Mr. JACOBSON. We will be glad to supply a copy for the record. Mr. MONAGAN. That may be placed in the record at this point. (The document referred to follows:)

Hon. JOHN S. MONAGAN,

JANUARY 22, 1970.

Chairman, Special Studies Subcommittee, Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Room B377, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. MONAGAN: This is in response to your January 14 invitation for me, or my designated representative, to testify before your subcommittee on January 21 on the general subject of Presidential committees and commissions. We gather from your letter that the focus of the hearing will be on the appointment of consultants as members of advisory commissions and panels, although the letter goes on to express some interest in the criteria for consultant employment in the executive agencies.

The Commission has no jurisdiction over members of advisory commissions and panels. Actually, many of them are members of ad hoc groups which may exist for no more than one or two meetings, and may not in fact be employees of the Federal Government.

In the matter of consultant employment by the executive agencies, we have some jurisdiction-though it is limited. Section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, is the basic authority for the appointment of experts and consultants. The

statute explicitly excepts them from the competitive service appointment procedures and the classification statutes which the Commission administers. The Commission's primary role is to assure that persons appointed as experts and consultants are in fact experts and consultants and that the positions to which they are appointed are actually expert or consultative in nature. In short, the Commission's responsibility is to see that the expert and consultant authority is not used as a device to circumvent the rules applicable to positions in the competitive service.

The Commission has no jurisdiction over how experts and consultants are selected, who is selected, how many are employed, and how much they are paid. These are all the responsibility of the employing agency within the requirements of the authorizing statute.

I understand from my general counsel that your subcommittee quite recently sent each executive agency a rather extensive questionnaire and solicited information about all types of advisory committees. These replies undoubtedly provided much of the information sought in the second paragraph of your letter. I am sure you will agree that, even if time permitted, there would be no point to our attempting to conduct the same or a similar survey.

With respect to the two bodies referred to in the penultimate paragraph of your letter, the Distinguished Service Awards Board and the President's Commission on Personnel Interchange, I am attaching separate memorandums describing such information as we have available, the nature of each of those bodies, the Executive orders on which they are based, and additional information relating to their composition and functions.

Notwithstanding the Commission's lack of jurisdiction with regard to appointments to Presidential committees and commissions, as well as our very narrow jurisdiction on consultant employment by the executive agencies-we want to be of maximum assistance to your subcommittee. We therefore are furnishing you all possible regulations, directives, guidelines, and statistical data that appear to be relevant to the subject. These include material from the Federal Personnel Manual on employment and compensation of experts and consultants, conflict of interest, standards of conduct for special Government employees, as well as whatever statistical information we could pull together.

It may be that these materials will provide the desired information. If not, please let us know specifically what else is needed and we will make every effort to develop it for you.

Sincerely yours,

ROBERT E. HAMPTON, Chairman.

SPECIAL INFORMATION ON EXPERTS AND CONSULTANTS

Policy guidance for employment of experts and consultants is set forth in the Federal Personnel Manual 304-3.

COMMISSION JURISDICTION

The Commission is responsible for determining what duties and responsibilities constitute an expert or a consultant position. Specifically the Commission must determine if the position is excluded from the Classification Statute 5 United States Code 5103 and from Civil Service Act, 6.1(b). If these conditions are met then the provisions of United States Code 3 109 may be applied.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Experts and consultants are considered to be "special Government employees", that is, an officer or employee of the executive or legislative branch of the U.S. Government, of an independent agency of the United States or the District of Columbia who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform with or without compensation, for not to exceed 130 days during any 365 consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full time or intermittent basis, or a part-time U.S. Commissioner.

Agencies are responsible for obtaining from each expert and consultant a statement of employment and financial interest. This statement must be reviewed and a determination made that there is no conflict of interest. The CSC is responsible for assuring that the statement has been received and reviewed by the Agency. Agency officials are required to report to the CSC each quarter and to certify that no conflict of interest exists.