GovernmentExecutive.com

One thing it's important to remember in yesterday's tragedy is that there were heroes who took risks, and prevented the shootings from being worse than they could have been. Chief among those heroes is Sergeant Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer, and an American Federation of Government Employees member, who shot Major Nidal Hasan four times, stopping his rampage, even though she'd been shot herself. We forget, too often, that it's impossible to separate civilian federal employees and the military. Their pay raises are debate separately. They receive wildly different amounts of prestige in American society. Most of the time, the military takes risks to protect civilians, whether they work for the federal government or not. But yesterday, it was a civilian federal employee who stepped in, and took a bullet, to protect members of the military on American soil.

The Washington Post has a profile of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man who killed 13 people at Fort Hood yesterday. My first thought is for the families of the people who died and were injured, and for Hasan's family, who must feel tremendous guilt and confusion. But the case also raises questions for me about how the military should deal with people who are clearly unable to serve and stay sane.

I don't think it's possible to build a psychiatric evaluation system that catches everyone. And I understand that the military signs contracts with people, and relies on those contracts to keep the ranks full--it's a serious matter on both sides. But it's not actually beneficial for the military to keep people on who can't serve effectively, or who will melt down while serving. There needs to be some balance between a system that allows people to fake mental illness to get out of contracts they simply don't want to fulfill, and a system that misses people who are too ill to handle the pressures of service. I don't know what that balanced system looks like. But I hope the military has better ideas than I do.

The news about the shootings at Fort Hood is dreadful: at least 12 people are dead and 31 are wounded. One of the shooters is still at large. If you're in the Texas area and want to help, Scott & White Memorial Hospital, the one nearest the hospital, which is accepting shooting victims, needs blood donations. Details about the donation center are here.

By Robert Brodsky

Interesting moment this morning at the administration's Tribal Nations conference at the Department of Interior.

President Obama was questioned, possibly for the first time, on potential changes to the Small Business Administration's 8(a) Business Development contracting program. The 8(a) program carves out several unique contracting exceptions for Indian tribes, Alaska Native Corporations and Native Hawaiian Organizations. But, those procurement advantages have come under close scrutiny recently by Senate lawmakers.

The final question to Obama was posed by Leslie Lohse of the Paskenta Nomlaki tribe in California, who asked about potential changes to the 8(a) program.

"And another thing that I'd like to ask you to do is to take care of our 8(a) program because those of us -- those that are landless out there can develop economic development opportunities through the 8(a) contracting program, and that may ease some of the burdens that some of the landless tribes are, because you don't need to have land to operate that," Lohse said. "And there is an attack on our 8(a) program -- I perceive it as an attack -- because it is limiting. We just barely started three years ago with ours, and we're starting to get rolling, and now they want to change the rules. So I ask that you pay mind to that -- that we not inhibit our growth in that way so that we can purchase some of our lands back and grow from that, instead of being dependent on gaming."

Obama did not directly respond to comment, but directed conference participants to speak directly with departmental and agency leaders that are in attendance.

"Present to them your concerns, your specific recommendations," Obama said. "They are here to listen and to learn and to advise."

By Robert Brodsky

Tomorrow is April Stephenson's last day as director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. But, Stephenson, was has been under fire from lawmakers for a pair of damaging GAO reports on DCAA operations, appears to have landed on her feet.

According to an internal e-mail obtained by Government Executive, Stephenson will begin a new role on Monday at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, assisting in a review of the department's Enterprise Risk Management program. Stephenson will also be tasked with providing recommendations for improving the program.

"By effectively embedding risk management techniques into our day-to-day operations, DFAS will be better equipped to identify and prevent events that might affect our ability to carry out our mission and to meet our established goals," wrote DFAS Director Terri McKay. "Ms. Stephenson's career has provided her with the unique combination of leadership, auditing, accounting, and finance knowledge and extensive experience necessary to be successful in this assignment and add value to our great organization. I know you will give Ms. Stephenson your full support as she takes on this new assignment."

I'm blogging from home today with a cold (telework really does make folks more productive!), which gave me a chance to read colleague and frequent contributor to this blog Robert Brodsky's fantastic feature in our November issue about how the Obama administration's desire to cut contracting is colliding with its expansion of government activities. And Rob makes the point that the administration's goals may never have been realistic even absent the Recovery Act's need to spend money very quickly (which basically mandates contractors):

As it has in the health care debate, the administration is betting that widespread inefficiencies permeate the procurement system and streamlined and reengineered business practices can save taxpayers billions. But some fear the lack of concrete implementation guidance and accountability measures in the Orszag memo could lead agency officials to treat it as little more than a theoretical exercise.

....

Rooting out 7 percent in inefficiencies could be easier said than done. For more than half a decade, agencies have employed chief acquisition officers whose primary goal has been to monitor the performance of contracts, to increase full-and-open competition and to manage procurement policy strategically. Some suggest the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of contract savings might have been plucked long ago.

Anyway, read it all. It's very, very good.

You'd have to be a real Oscar the Grouch to argue that the show, designed and kept alive with private, foundation, and federal funds, hasn't been one of the better federal investments of all time. In honor of the show, here's one of my favorite segments of all time:

On reading this Washington Post story about the Army Corps of Engineers work in New Orleans:

1. Why has it taken so long to *break ground*, much less finish, new protections for the West Bank of New Orleans, especially given that the population was returning to earlier levels?

2. What are the rules about residents returning to areas threatened by catastrophic flooding, as the West Bank is?

3. What should West Bank residents do to make sure they'll be prepared for Katrina-level storms, since it's clear that the Army Corps isn't going to have the systems to prevent flooding in place at least until 2011?

At Wired Workplace, Brittany Ballenstedt highlights an Office of Personnel Management memo on improving information sharing between folks who work on human capital issues in the agencies, state and local government, tribal authorities, and the private sector. All of which makes me wonder if OPM has considered establishing an internal research unit, like the one at the Merit Systems Protection Board, which conducts studies and publishes public reports. Right now, much of that research work on human capital is left to other government audit units like the Government Accountability Office or to external organizations like the Partnership for Public Service. It would let OPM target research in areas it's curious about, and establish its own best practices recommendations in a form other than memorandums, and do its own data analysis on its own schedule. Just a thought, but an intriguing one, I think.

On January 30, President Obama signed a slew of executive orders on labor relations issues involving federal agencies, contractors, and their employees. Yesterday, he released an executive order amending one of them. Apparently, the order had been construed as banning agencies and contracting departments from treating the money contractors spend on maintaining relationships with their employees as money they could be reimbursed for, even though the order was only intended to ban them from being reimbursed for money they spent specifically on fighting or encouraging unionization drives. The language has been clarified to read as follows:

"Contracting departments and agencies shall treat as allowable costs incurred in maintaining satisfactory relations between the contractor and its employees (other than the costs of any activities undertaken to persuade employees to exercise or not to exercise, or concerning the manner of exercising, the right to organize and bargain collectively), including costs of labor management committees, employee publications, and other related activities."

The order is smart, and recognizes that labor relations is a programmatic budget line item, not just a philosophy. Does it mean an executive order on labor-management relations within the departments and agencies and partnership councils is due soon? I honestly don't know. I'm surprised that it's taken this long, but the administration is reviving the Federal Labor Relations Authority, so perhaps it's just that change takes time.