Interdisciplinary Task Force Marks Three Decades of Studying Whether Task Forces Should Exist

A Milestone in Administrative Excellence

The Federal Interagency Working Group on Interagency Working Groups (FIWGIWG) celebrated its pearl anniversary this week with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Marriott Crystal Gateway in Arlington, Virginia. The task force, originally convened in 1994 to assess whether the federal government's proliferation of task forces represented an efficient use of taxpayer resources, marked the occasion by announcing the formation of its fifteenth subcommittee.

"We're tremendously proud of what we've accomplished over these three decades," said Dr. Margaret Holloway, the task force's current co-chair and former assistant deputy director of the Office of Strategic Initiative Coordination. "When we started this journey, we had one simple question: Do we need all these working groups? Today, I'm pleased to report that we're closer than ever to beginning the preliminary phase of potentially answering that question."

The Numbers Don't Lie

Since its inception, FIWGIWG has produced 847 pages of documentation across three major reports: "An Initial Assessment of Assessment Protocols" (1999), "Midterm Findings on the Findings Process" (2010), and "Comprehensive Review of Review Comprehensiveness" (2019). The working group has also generated twelve white papers, forty-three position statements, and one commemorative coffee table book featuring photographs of conference rooms where meetings took place.

The task force's budget has grown from an initial allocation of $2.3 million to its current annual operating cost of $18.7 million, which officials describe as "a testament to our expanding scope of inquiry."

"People ask me what we've learned after thirty years of study," explained Dr. Robert Chennault, senior research coordinator for the Subcommittee on Subcommittee Effectiveness. "I tell them that's exactly the wrong question. The right question is: What have we learned about learning what we need to learn? And the answer to that is: We're learning."

Structural Innovations

Over the years, FIWGIWG has pioneered several organizational structures that have become models for other federal initiatives. The task force currently operates through fourteen specialized subcommittees, including the Subcommittee on Committee Formation, the Working Group on Working Group Nomenclature, and the Panel on Panel Sustainability.

The most recent addition, the Subcommittee on Meta-Analytical Framework Development, was established in response to concerns that previous subcommittees weren't sufficiently examining their own examination processes.

"We realized we needed a group to study how our groups study things," said subcommittee chair Dr. Patricia Vance. "It's really quite elegant when you think about it. We're not just analyzing analysis—we're analyzing the analysis of analysis."

Stakeholder Perspectives

The task force has garnered praise from across the federal bureaucracy. The Department of Administrative Coordination recently cited FIWGIWG as "a paradigm of sustained inquiry" in its annual report on paradigms.

"They've shown remarkable consistency in their approach to inconsistency," noted Harold Pemberton, director of the Institute for Institutional Studies. "Year after year, they've reliably failed to reach conclusions while simultaneously concluding that more study is needed. It's actually quite impressive."

Not everyone shares this enthusiasm. Senator Rebecca Martinez (R-Arizona), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, has called for the task force to "wrap things up" and "maybe try reaching a conclusion."

Dr. Holloway dismissed such criticism as "premature." She explained, "Senator Martinez fundamentally misunderstands our mission. We're not here to rush to judgment. We're here to carefully, methodically, and comprehensively evaluate whether rushing to judgment about rushing to judgment is something we should rush to judgment about."

Looking Forward

As FIWGIWG enters its fourth decade, leadership remains optimistic about future progress. The task force recently approved a five-year strategic plan to develop a framework for creating frameworks that will guide the development of future frameworks.

"We're at an inflection point," Dr. Chennault observed. "After thirty years of studying whether we need task forces, we've determined that we need a task force to study our task force. It's really quite circular, which, coincidentally, is the topic of our newest subcommittee's inaugural white paper."

The working group's latest initiative involves commissioning an external review to determine whether external reviews are necessary for groups that review the necessity of reviews.

"Meta-analysis is the future," Dr. Vance explained. "We're not just thinking outside the box—we're thinking about whether we need to think about the box, and whether the box itself needs a committee to determine if boxes are still relevant in today's post-box environment."

The Anniversary Gala

The anniversary celebration concluded with the presentation of the annual FIWGIWG Excellence in Working Group Excellence Award, which went to the Subcommittee on Award Criteria Development for their outstanding work in developing criteria for developing award criteria.

In his keynote address, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs William Thornfield praised the task force's "unwavering commitment to commitment" and announced that the White House was considering forming a presidential commission to study whether presidential commissions should study things that task forces are already studying.

"The beauty of FIWGIWG," Thornfield concluded, "is that it perfectly embodies the question it was created to answer. Do we need more working groups? Well, they've created fourteen of them just to find out. If that's not government efficiency, I don't know what is."

The task force is scheduled to reconvene next month to begin planning the preliminary discussions for their eventual final report, tentatively titled "Conclusions About Drawing Conclusions: A Comprehensive Assessment of Assessment Comprehensiveness." Publication is expected sometime in the late 2030s, pending committee approval.