The Impact of the Governance System

The Impact of the Governance System

Introduction

Women, Infants & Children (WIC) are a federal government program that embodies the intergovernmental system. A relations metaphor suggests that the national and state governments are highly interwoven and interdependent. The definition of intergovernmental literally means of, between, or involving different levels of government. WIC's success depends on its cooperation with many different levels of government.

The Elements of Intergovernmental Relations

States partner with the federal government and this ensures that the federal financial support and reasonable oversight when combined with state initiatives, flexibility, and accountability. This allows for the improvement of the lives of those Americans that are served by these programs and help make the administrative systems more efficient. These programs provided to the various state agencies have been successful with a high degree of reliability and accurateness. Many of these programs have achieved high performance levels in their ability to serve customers and meet strict program requirements. They then partner with various local agencies in order to serve the citizens that are involved or enrolled with these programs. Without cooperation from local government many of these programs may not have had the desired outcome.

The many levels of government involved

WIC is a Federal grant program and is overseen at the Federal level by The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), who controls the nutrition assistance programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This agency is in charge of many other nutrition programs to ensure that needy families receive the help they need by providing WIC, Food Stamps, the school breakfast and lunch programs, and the needy family program which distributes food on Indian Reservations.

The only way this program could have been as successful as it was, is by partnering with the States that decided to participate in its program. State governments determine the administrative details of distributing the food benefits and the eligibility of participants, while the FNS provides funding to cover most of the States' administrative costs.

FNS has ensured it success by going into partnership with 90 different WIC state agencies, through approximately 47,000 authorized retailers. WIC operates through 1,900 local agencies in 10,000 clinic sites, in 50 State health departments, 34 Indian Tribal Organizations, the District of Columbia, Northern Mariana, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands (WIC 2010). The State WIC programs also ensure that the checks are used at local area authorized food stores who joined with the state and local government must transcending intergovernmental relationships to that