Moving to fulfill a promise made in his inaugural address, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday ordered that a top deputy in each city agency spend three weeks in another agency in an attempt to improve management habits.

The initiative, called “First Deputy Exchange,” is modeled after Mr. Bloomberg’s own initiative at the financial services firm he founded, Bloomberg L.P. The goal, Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement on Tuesday, is to ask each deputy to parachute into another area of government, then to report directly to the mayor in recommending any changes or new ideas.

“Doing more with less means finding new ways to make government more productive, effective and efficient — and a key way to do that is to bring a new set of eyes to each agency,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Innovative management is more important now than ever.”

The program will most likely be mentioned prominently in Mr. Bloomberg’s State of the City address, which he is scheduled to deliver on Wednesday in Queens.

Mr. Bloomberg sketched out the idea in his Jan. 1 inaugural address ushering in the beginning of his third term — a term that even supporters have fretted could be dogged by complacency. To guard against that, Mr. Bloomberg first suggested that perhaps a third of his commissioners would be replaced.

While initial reaction to the idea was generally positive, some City Council members and others have said that three weeks may not be enough time to get a good handle on the internal politics and processes at a different work place. And there are no plans, for now, to go beyond the three-week experiment, said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg.

The agency swaps are not intended to be disruptive, or the equivalent of taking potshots from an “Up in the Air” kind of management consultant, unfamiliar with the workings of an agency. Instead, each assignment was made with something specific in mind, according to Mr. Bloomberg’s statement.

For instance, Alba Pico, the first deputy commissioner at the Department of Consumer Affairs, is swapping spots with Douglas Apple, the first deputy commissioner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, to work on the city’s efforts to prevent foreclosure. And Lori Benson, director of fitness and health education at the Department of Education, is switching with Liam Kavanagh, first deputy commissioner at the Department of Parks and Recreation, to work on children’s recreation and efforts to stem childhood obesity.

In other switches based on some of the shared similarities among agencies, the Fire Department’s first deputy commissioner, Frank Cruthers, will do a stint at the Police Department, while George Grasso, the first deputy at the Police Department, will spend time at the Office of Emergency Management.

(Source: NY Times)