The Pataki administration has taken what may have been the most antiquated, cumbersome, convoluted personnel system in America and brought it to the brink of respectability. However, there's a lot of work remaining to be done. Finally, while classification and hiring have improved, the state still takes a rather rigid approach to motivation and reward. Unions remain more interested in grievance procedures than in helping to make the new performance-appraisal system work. There is no real statewide strategic plan in New York.
Agencies create their own plans, with a wide variation in quality.
The State Board of Regents, to its credit, has a plan and specific goals and strategies for meeting it. But other agencies are preparing little more than mission statements or puff pieces without targets or strategies. A statewide effort to require performance measures was a dismal failure and was formally repealed in 1992. The Pataki administration says it is committed to expanding the use of performance measures, but after four years in office, there's no central initiative, and performance-based approaches have been adopted only sporadically by individual state agencies. The State Police, on the other hand, still rely rather clumsily on numbers of arrests and citations issued by category and type.