This was the first time a federal agency had used an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, to help its employees start their own company, and it can be a model for future privatizations. To sum up, only ten percent of the recent downsizing was achieved by RIFs, and I think that was a major accomplishment. Equally important is the fact that, despite a smaller workforce, efficiency and customer service have increased. And I don't have to tell you at FEMA about that, since you've been pioneers in using computers to provide faster, better customer service. But, as important as automation is, improved leadership is the key to reinvention.
Automation is a tool, but leadership is the heart and soul of good government.
That can be true in government too. Just as FEMA's reputation has dramatically improved in the past four years, so has that of government as a whole. One reason for this rising public support is that people understand that the government is smaller now and they also are starting to feel the impact of improved services. Yet public opinion was also influenced by two events over which we had no control. The first, a little more than two years ago, was the cowardly and criminal bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, which took 168 innocent lives and injured thousands more.