TSM: ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONAL ROLES

A hypothetical organization is proposed where the operating agency is also closest to the financing source and thus should be responsible for resource allocation and its associated trade-offs. This agency understands, better than any other, the needs of its system and the demands of its user constituency. The manner in which each operating agency makes its decisions on services in its system would be reviewed by the supervising agencies, but the supervisors' involvement would be limited to advising operators on appropriate considerations and approaches in such decisions. The supervising agencies would be lead agencies for decisions requiring coordination among the individual systems that they supervise. Such decisions should include active participation by each operating agency whose system will be directly affected by the decision. Except in extreme cases, however, the agreement of all participants in such coordination decisions should be obtained before implementation. Higher-level supervising agencies should be responsible for the review of lower-level supervising agency performance, except in the case where they are either coordinators or operators. This means that the federal and state agencies should not be deeply involved in the management process. (Author)