Permissive or mandatory solicitation or receipt or advice of a nonbinding nature
Mandatory performance in accordance with instruction of another agency
Joint pursuit of policy goals by co-ordinate agencies
The center sphere, into which and from which the others spill, represents the kind of inter-agency relationship in which one agency performs a mandatory, nondiscretionary function at the direction or “request” of another. Flowing into it, from the left, is the sphere in which agencies are permitted or compelled to receive advice from, to consult or confer with others, but are under no obligation to follow the advice received. The third sphere is that in which two or more co-ordinate agencies share active responsibility and authority for the pursuit of a common policy goal.
If the interagency relationships provided for by statute are scaled according to the binding quality of the advice received by one agency from another or according to the degree to which two or more agencies share authority and responsibility for program administration subtle nuances of interagency relationship are revealed. Advice received may be purely of an informative and nonbinding nature, or the statute may be so worded as to indicate that “advice” from one agency to another amounts virtually to direction. In the sharing of program authority and responsibility, one agency may perform ministerial functions at the direction or “request” of another, or, at the opposite extreme, interagency personnel, judgment, and resources may be fused toward the accomplishment of a common goal.
Communication
Herbert A. Simon’s definition of communication “as any process whereby decisional premises are transmitted from one member of an organization to another,”[660] generally describes the kinds of legislative provisions which will be reviewed in this section, with the exception that we are here concerned with the transmission of decisional premises from one agency to another. The transmission may be permissive or mandatory. The information or advice conveyed may or may not be related to the framing of a particular decision; it may or may not be binding upon the recipient agency.
Communication Unrelated to the Framing of a Particular Decision
Permissive Consultation: Provisions for communication are perhaps seen in their mildest form in the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which established the right, although clearly not the duty, of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Postmaster General to accede to the request of the Librarian of Congress that they provide the librarian with copies of foreign printed matter excluded from the United States under congressional statutes.[661]
Must Receive Advice: The 1938 Naval Reserve Act created a Naval Reserve Policy Board, at least half the members of which were to be naval reserve officers called to Board duty from inactive duty status, which was to be convened annually for the purpose of advising the Secretary of the Navy on the formulation of Naval Reserve Policies.[662] Here a definite obligation to communicate, and a special agency for communication are established, and the Secretary of the Navy is by inference required to receive proffered advice, although he is not obligated to act in conformance with it.
Must Confer or Consult: Dictionaries tend to regard the words “advice” and “consult” as synonyms. And it may be that the Congress tends to employ these terms interchangeably. Yet it is reasonable to suppose that the legislature does not regard the transmission of decisional premises as an invariable one-way process. If this be true, it is possible although not demonstrable that “advise” as employed in statutes connotes the offering of counsel or opinion, recommending as wise or prudent—the communications process flowing in one direction; and “consult” implies a two-way communication process, “talking over a situation or a subject with someone to decide points in doubt.”[663]