Our Commitment:A Long-term Investment in Change
The process is not easy，nor will it be quick.There are changes we can make immediately，but even if all of our recommendations are enacted，we will have only begun to reinvent the federal government.Our efforts are but a down payment—the first installment of a long-term investment in change.Every expert with whom we talked reminded us that change takes time.In a large corporation，transformation takes 6 to 8 years at best.In the federal government，which has more than 7 times as many employees as America's largest corporation，it will undoubtedly take longer to bring about the historic changes we propose.
Along the way，we will make mistakes.Some reforms will succeed beyond our wildest dreams;others will not.As in any experimental process，we will need to monitor results and correct as we go.But we must not confuse mistakes with failure.As Tom Peters and Robert Waterman wrote in In Search of Excellence，any organization that is not making mistakes is not trying hard enough.Babe Ruth，the Sultan of Swat，struck out 1，330 times.
With this report，then，we begin a decade long process of reinvention.We hope this process will involve not only the thousands of federal employees now at work on Reinvention Teams and in Reinvention Labs，but millions more who are not yet engaged.We hope it will transform the habits，culture，and performance of all federal organizations.(https://www.daowen.com)
Some may say that the task is too large;that we should not attempt it because we are bound to make mistakes;that it cannot be done.But we have no choice.Our government is in trouble.It has lost its sense of mission;it has lost its ethic of public service;and，most importantly，it has lost the faith of the American people.In times such as these，the most dangerous course is to do nothing.We must have the courage to risk change.
Note:
Red tape is the symbol of excessive formality and attention to routine.This has its origins in the red ribbon with which clerks bound official documents in the nineteenth century.The ribbon has disappeared，but the practices it represents linger on.However，Herbert Kaufman found that the term“is applied to a bewildering variety of organizational practices and features”.Organizations create and retain such seemingly rigid“practices and features”because they promote efficiency and equity on the whole—even though this may not be true in many individual cases.After all，“one person's‘red tape’may be another's treasured procedural safeguard.”Kaufman concluded that“red tape turns out to be at the core of our institutions rather than an excrescence on them.”