No one would say that downsizing of this magnitude is easy, but we have tried to carry it out with consideration for each employee. We have used attrition to downsize whenever possible. We have used buyouts whenever possible. We have carried out aggressive career transition programs to assist departing employees. Moreover, this historic downsizing is achieving its second goal, of increased efficiency and productivity, despite the reduction in our federal workforce.
Modern technology is one factor.
Another factor in improving customer service has been the changes initiated by the National Performance Review, such as procurement reform and the elimination of unnecessary regulations. For these and other reasons, not only have efficiency and customer service improved in the past four years but the American people agree that they have improved. Vice President Gore recently cited a Roper poll which shows that public confidence in government, which had been in steady decline since the mid-1960s, has since 1993 rebounded by nearly ten percent. If that rising public support is in part because of the Administration's reinvention of government, I believe that in part it also resulted because of 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.