'Mess Chart'

The chart at the left could be a diagram of a complicated computer's electronic circuitry. Or the schematic plan of a vast railway network. In fact it is just a glimpse of the programs run by a single division of a huge federal department--Health, Education and Welfare.

HEW runs more than 400 programs, employs 129,000 people and spends $118 billion, nearly one-third of this year's entire federal budget. To show its present snarl of red tape--and the need for reform--President Ford had a "mess chart" prepared on the health services provided by the department. The entire chart is shown on the opposite page (actual size: 4 ft. by 11 ft.). The adjoining segment is reproduced to give a closeup idea of its complexity.

The boxes at the top of the chart describe the basic "statutory authorities"--no fewer than 30 of them. They include the Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Act and the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Act. Simple enough, until the lines of authority begin to move back and forth. At first, they are as clear and as easily traced as a mountain stream. Then they flow downward--through eight agencies, such as the Social Rehabilitation Service and the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Administration; 20 bureaus, such as the Office of Native American Programs and the National Heart and Lung Institute; and 40 programs, including Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act contracts and the Area Planning and Social Services Programs for the Elderly.

Soon the lines begin to intersect and merge until they form broad and turgid rivers of money and authority, sometimes augmented and rechanneled by state agencies. In a nearly futile attempt to keep the lines distinguishable on the chart, they are rendered in eight varieties--including dots, diagonals, dashes, and dashes and dots. At the bottom, where the confusion is such that arrows are necessary to direct traffic, await the beneficiaries of the programs voted by Congress. They are divided into a mind-boggling 59 categories: Residents of Rat Infested Areas of Selected Cities, Residents of Critical Health Manpower Shortage Areas, Special High-Risk Minority Groups etc.

"I think," says Ford, "that there will be an improvement in the method by which we handle this without any cutback in the money." And, he predicts, "the Governors will wrap their arms around this idea."

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