GovernmentExecutive.com

"The problems at Walter Reed were caused by bureaucratic and administrative failures. The system failed you, and it failed our troops. And we're going to fix it."

--President Bush in an address to caregivers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center today.

Looking for help in kick-starting the retirement planning process? OPM's got some Web video for you.

HUD is blocking Wonkette, and Wonkette is not amused. (Neither, it appears are the "angry multitude" of HUD employees who wrote in to complain abut the move.) For what it's worth, I can sympathize. Some agencies mysteriously block GovExec from time to time, for reasons I can't understand. What better use is there for taxpayer dollars than to browse our offerings?

Oooh, FedSmith's Ralph Smith is stepping into a minefield today. In a piece on federal compensation, he notes:

There is little doubt that many readers believe that federal employees receive considerably less than those in the private sector. That is no doubt true in many cases. But one feature of federal employment that is sometimes not considered is that, in addition to the average salary increase that is reported every year, federal employees also have a number of other features in the federal human resources program that also add to their average pay.

Smith goes on to list some of the features: cash awards, time off awards, promotions and within-grade step increases.

"Put your big-girl panties on."

--Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' advice to White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino, upon learning that Perino would temporarily take over for Bush spokesman Tony Snow while he undergoes treatment for colon cancer.

If you were hoping to score some USDA prime horse meat, think again. AP reports that a federal appeals court has barred the Agriculture Department from conducting horse meat inspections, which effectively shuts down the only remaining horse slaughter operation in the country. Congress had blocked funding for the inspections in 2005, but USDA got around the ban by devising a fee-based system. (How's that for entrepreneurial government!) But a judge ruled that the agency didn't follow federal rules in setting up the fee system.

A blogger who goes by "Nitpicker" weighs in with an amazing anecdote about GSA Administrator Lurita Doan's testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today: After the committee adjourned for a vote following testimony by Doan, she told one of her advisers to remove the water glass she had been using, so panel members wouldn't be able to get her fingerprints from it. I found this story hard to believe, so I checked the video of the hearing, and sure enough, it's true. As she confers with her aides, Doan clearly says:

"Take my water and my glass. I don't want them to have my fingerprints. They've got me totally paranoid."

(Hat tip: Wonkette.)

"It's very rarely that a bureaucrat is prosecuted. We've reached a point where someone has to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

--Rep. Terry Everett, R-Ala., during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on an inspector general report detailing FBI officials' abuses of the authority to issue "national security letters" to access data on Americans without subpoenas or court orders.

Telecommunications entrepreneur Walter Anderson was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison for dodging federal and District of Columbia taxes, AP reports. He was ordered to repay $23 million to the city, but nothing to the feds -- even though he's estimated to owe the IRS $100 million to $175 million. That, said U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, was because the Justice Department's plea agreement with Anderson listed the wrong statute. Not to worry, says Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office. The IRS "has ample civil remedies available to recoup the money."

Looks like the National Treasury Employees Union and the American Federation of Government Employees are back in a state of open warfare. As GovExec's Jon Marino reported yesterday, AFGE chose to respond to NTEU's announcement that it had chartered a chapter of Transportation Security Administration employees by releasing a statement during NTEU's conference call saying that AFGE has been fighting for TSA workers ever since the agency was created five years ago. And it wasn't just any statement. Here's a sampling of the phrases employed by the AFGE folks to characterize NTEU's move:

• "amusing and appalling"


• "imitation is flattering"


• "they have been nowhere in sight"


• "NTEU should be ashamed"


• "demeaning and offensive"


• "pitiful farce"

More evidence that federal management issues are becoming a major issue in the 2008 election: In a piece in American Thinker, Steven M. Warshawsky reports that the "main theme" in Republican contender Mitt Romney's stump speech is "the need for greater efficiency and accountability in government." And, he adds, "Romney's message is not one about shrinking the size of government."

I'll have a column on how the 2008 race is shaping up in the April 15 issue of Government Executive. But between now and then, I'll bet we see even more evidence that this race is shaping up to be a battle over who can best manage the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, now published by our sister publication, The Atlantic.)

It's not the plain ol' Education Department headquarters any more -- or worse, the "federal building located at 400 Maryland Avenue Southwest" in Washington. It's now officially the "Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building."

Our own Tech Insider has a scoop: an advance copy of GSA Administrator Lurita Doan's prepared testimony for her appearance tomorrow before a House oversight committee. Read all about it here.

Ryan Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, is passing on the pomp and ceremony of a Foggy Bottom swearing-in ceremony, the Washington Post reports. Instead, Crocker will fly directly from Pakistan to Baghdad, where it's unclear which embassy functionary will get the privilege of swearing him in.

"I think that every Cabinet official has to ask themselves every day, 'Is it still appropriate for me to lead a Cabinet department?' It's something that I've been asking myself more lately than perhaps others."

More than 770 contractors have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in 2003, the Chicago Tribune reports today. The figures on contractor deaths are tabulated by the Labor Department's Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Division, based on workers' compensation claims. But the statistics don't include contractors killed when on off duty status. And the numbers, as always, don't tell the full story of how harrowing it can be for family members to see the bodies of their loved ones shipped home without the same respect and care with which uniformed service members are treated.

In what can hardly be characterized as surprising news, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence M. Small has resigned. Small has been under fire ever since an internal audit in January concluded that he had made $90,000 in unauthorized expenses. Last week, CongressDaily reported on a Senate vote to withhold a $17 million increase in the Smithsonian's budget until the Budget Committee determined that certain conditions related to the secretary's spending had been met. Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, has been appointed acting secretary while the Smithsonian's Board of Regents searches for a permanent replacement.

The New York Times has one of those "life is tough for inspectors general" stories that appear from time to time, focusing on Justice Department IG Glenn Fine. Best tidbit in the piece: Fine was drafted by the NBA's San Antonio Spurs in 1979, but passed up the opportunity to take a Rhodes Scholarship instead. That's pretty impressive, but I'm guessing it wasn't that tough a decision. After all, 5'9" players drafted in the 10th round out of Harvard face some pretty long odds of making it in the NBA.

New National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is making some organizational changes in his office. In an announcement today, McConnell said he wants to "better clarify responsibilities and authorities, create a true community of professionals, radically transform tradecraft, accelerate information sharing and modernize how we do business." To that end, he's:

• Creating a new deputy director position focused on acquisition, to "increase technological agility and better posture the intelligence community to achieve acquisition excellence, streamline acquisition policies and processes, and enhance the professionalism of the acquisition workforce."


• Creating a new deputy director for policy, plans and requirements, taking over the responsibilities of the current deputy director for requirements and the assistant deputy directors for strategy; plans and policy; training and education; and security.


• Establishing an executive committee, made up of senior leaders in the intelligence community, the undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, and representatives from the State, Treasury, and Homeland Security departments. The idea is to improve coordination across the community.

The Washington Times reports today on the testimony yesterday of Karen P. Tandy, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, before a House subcommittee. Tandy said the agency needs a $110 million budget increase over last year's request in order to "sharpen and expand" enforcement efforts. Here's the full quote:

"As our base budget has gradually eroded over time due to pay raise absorptions, rescissions and program reductions, we have been unable to maintain adequately our infrastructure or agent and support staffing at their previous levels. This has put us at an enforcement disadvantage. We must regain our financial footing. We must have the ability to sharpen and expand the enforcement tools and techniques that have helped us establish our drug-enforcement leadership role."

Just how much does the presence of federal operations mean to a local economy? In the case of Denver, $6.6 billion, according to a study commissioned by the Denver Federal Executive Board. The study, reported in the Denver Post Thursday, found that 160 federal agencies operate in and around the city, employing nearly 40,000 workers. The biggest employers include the Postal Service, Buckley Air Force Base, a Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey. Larry Grandinson, executive director of the Denver FEB, says the city has the highest number of federal agencies outside Washington, and is in the top five in terms of number of federal employees. (Hat tip: FedSmith.)

"Worn carpet, damaged floor tiles, leaking roofs and cockroach infestations": Those are among the problems at 1,400 Department of Veterans Affairs clinics and hospitals, according to the results of new inspections. Sen. Patty Murray's take: This shows that the military health care system is broken. VA Secretary James Nicholson's take: This is just "normal wear and tear," and the fact that VA undertook the inspections shows the agency wants to tackle the small problems before they turn into big ones like Walter Reed.

I missed former U.N. ambassador John Bolton's appearance on the Daily Show this week, but caught up with it on their Web site. You've got to give him credit for walking into the lion's den and facing some tough questions and a hostile audience. Bolton, not surprisingly, took a hard line on how the executive branch should be run. Some excerpts from his remarks:

It is not the case that the government should be staffed by people who like the bureaucracies they're serving in. ... The president ought to have people philosophically attuned to his way of thinking, and if you've got a problem with that, I would say you've got a problem with democratic theory. ...

The whole point of electing a president to preside over the executive branch is to give the people a choice on the direction the entire executive branch is going, and you can't pick it apart -- and I think that's what some in Congress are trying to do, to make it impossible for the president to run the administration. That's what a president is for under the Constitution. ...

When the bureaucracy fights against the elected president's policies ... the way it should work is that people follow the policies as long as they're lawful, and part of the president's problem in Washington is fighting against permanent bureaucracies that have a very different point of view than his.

(Thanks to D.P. for the tip on this one.)

Attention illegal aliens: Look up. There might just be a U.S. Customs and Border Protection unmanned aerial vehicle watching you from overhead.

The long-running saga involving Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the heirs of Charles and Marie Robertson -- who gave the school $35 million in 1961 to develop future government leaders -- has taken another turn. Robertson family members have sued the university, saying Princeton didn't make good on its pledge to use the original donation -- which has since swelled in value to $650 million -- to actually turn out very many civil servants. Today, the Washington Times reports that Princeton has returned nearly $800,000 to the Robertson Foundation. University officials say the funds weren't misspent, only that they failed to inform the foundation that the money would go to academic departments "closely related" to the Wilson School. William Robertson, son of the original donors, called the payment just a "drop in the bucket" of what is owed and "another shameless act of duplicity" by Princeton.

Flight deck crewmen prepare to launch an F/A-18C Hornet from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the North Arabian Sea on March 16:

View image

I keep being told that NCAA basketball tournament pools are a rarity in the federal sector. But that just makes me wonder whether the people actually particpating simply aren't saying anything because don't want to call attention to their activities. Such concerns, of course, wouldn't stop former feds from talking about the practice -- which is exactly what FedSmith's Ralph Smith does today, making the following admission:

When I worked at the Office of Personnel Management a number of years ago, someone would fill out a form and copy the brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament games. I always put in my dollar. I never won but always hoped to win the jackpot and having some money at stake made the games more interesting.

"When I testify to you as a government scientist, why does my testimony have to be reviewed, edited and changed by a bureaucrat in the White House?"

--James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, at a House hearing yesterday.

Here's John Catoe, the new general manager of Washington's Metro system, in an interview with the Washington Post Express, on the subject of riding the rails to work:

Overall, my commute has been good. Of course, a couple of times I've been caught in delays on the rail line. I've talked to the head of rail about the need for the train operator to provide more specific information to the passengers of a delayed train. For example, what do you mean by a short delay?

One thing that's amazed me on my commute is the etiquette practiced by the customers during boarding. Everyone is very good about waiting for the train to unload before boarding. It is great to have that cooperation and it helps us keep the trains moving on time.

Why exactly does such behavior "amaze" Catoe? At most stations during rush hour, passengers have no choice but to wait for others to exit the train before boarding. Otherwise, there'd be no room at all Metro's cattle cars, in which the concept of personal space is a distant memory.

Which 2008 presidential candidate would be most likely to put federal management issues on the agenda and push for a bureaucratic overhaul? Maybe one who's not officially in the race yet: In a piece about former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who headed the then-Governmental Affairs Committee during his tenure on the Hill, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, writes that "the federal government's inability to function effectively would likely be a major theme" in a Thompson campaign. "Audits have shown we've lost control of the waste and mismanagement in our most important agencies," Thompson says. "It's getting so bad it's affecting our national security." And that's not all:

The next president, according to Mr. Thompson, needs to exercise strong leadership "and get down in the weeds and fix a civil-service system that makes it too hard to hire good employees and too hard to fire bad ones." He doesn't offer specifics on what to do, but notes the "insanity" of the new Congress pushing for the unionization of homeland security employees only five years after it rejected the notion in the wake of 9/11. "Should we tie ourselves up in bureaucratic knots with the challenges we may have to face?" he asks in wonderment.

Lots of presidential candidates run against the bureaucracy, but it's not every election cycle that one opens his campaign by getting down into the weeds of agency audits and civil service reform. Of course, Thompson's not officially a candidate yet. He's only said he's "looking at" running. (Hat tip: Kausfiles.)

Looks like the effort to create a U.S. Public Service Academy has hit another speed bump. Chris Myers Asch, who has lobbied for legislation to create the institution, reported in an e-mail to supporters today that a press conference scheduled for tomorrow to introduce such a bill has been postponed until Thursday at 3 p.m. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., along with Reps. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Chris Shays, R-Conn., were scheduled to introduce the legislation.

Civilian nurses working at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton in California are not happy, the North County Times reports. They say their counterparts at nearby Naval Medical Center San Diego make as much as $17,000 more per year for the same work. A spokesman says the reason for the differential is that the Camp Pendleton facility has "not had a problem with retention or recruiting nurses." One nurse, Melissa Cappuccilli, has filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel alleging wage discrimination.

USA Today weighs in today with a backgrounder on the job competition for support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Of course, if you're a regular GovExec reader, this is old news to you. If you're not, here's a quick refresher on some of the stories Jenny Mandel wrote about the long-running competition during 2006, long before the story hit the front pages earlier this year:

• Several competitive sourcing provisions dropped from Defense bill (Sept. 27)
  
• Measure to block Walter Reed outsourcing fails in Senate (Sept. 8)


• House votes to block Walter Reed outsourcing; Army moves forward (June 23)


• Army denies employee appeal of Walter Reed outsourcing (March 23)


• GAO declines to hear protest of Walter Reed competitive sourcing decision (Feb. 24)

"Washington Bureaucrats: Dumb as a Box of Hair"

OMB has just announced the list of federal programs to be examined this year using its Program Assessment Rating Tool. Most, if not all, of these should be repeats, since officials say that almost all programs have been PART’ed over the past five years. We’ll have more to come on how programs were selected for re-review.--Jenny Mandel

The federal government may be playing catch-up with the private sector in a lot of areas, but here's one where Uncle Sam is ahead of the curve: leave donation. Frank Greve of McClatchy Newspapers reports that programs allowing employees to donate unused leave to co-workers, which have been available to federal employees for decades, are starting to catch on at companies across the country.

Check out the correction appended to this story from Slate on the new dollar coin series. I'm guessing they'll ultimately correct the correction, so I'll quote it here for posterity:

Correction, March 16, 2007: This piece initially referred to the United States GAO as the General Accounting Office. It has changed its name to the General Accountability Office.

Ken Krieg, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, met with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday. Here's the first thing he talked about in discussing reform efforts of the past year:

Goal 1: a high-performing, agile, ethical workforce, in particular dealing with those issues of -- you know, we've got about 134,000 -- one of the hard things in government, as you all know, is it depends on how you count -- but about 134,000 people in the acquisition workforce. About 85 percent of them are civilians; the remainder are military. Of the civilians, their average age is about 48 or 49, and so -- and we didn't hire many during the '90s.

So thinking through how one manages a workforce of that scale in a business that's inherently an intellectual property business -- we are; we manage the procurement of incredibly complex activities -- how do you get ready for that when you have the time to get ready for it? And so a lot of work we've been doing in Goal 1 is around that effort. We issued a strategic plan outline a year ago. We'll be issuing the second version of that with more data in it, with more specific initiatives.

And one of the challenges you have at this kind of scale is -- you know, most of the people who are hired into the Department of Defense are hired into the camps, posts and stations around America. In OSD, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics, we don't hire many people. And so how do you set a strategy that federates activity throughout the enterprise in a way that gets work done as you need it?

Some of the rooms at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are quite nice, USA Today reports. You probably won't be surprised to learn that they're the ones reserved for the president, the vice president, federal judges, members of Congress and the Cabinet, high-ranking military officials and foreign dignitaries.

When is an earmark not an earmark? The New York Times explores this philosophical conundrum.

It looks like Shirlington Limousine & Transport, which has been under investigation for allegedly providing prostitutes to public officials through a bribery ring, will no longer be providing services for the Homeland Security Department. The company had lodged a protest with the Government Accountability Office when it lost its bid to renew the DHS transportation services contract. Among other objections, Shirlington argued the contract should have been issued as a set-aside for a business located in a historically disadvantaged area, as it had been set up previously. GAO ruled that DHS's decision to instead use a small business set-aside clause was appropriate in this case, since it was unclear that more than one qualified company would bid for the location-based preference. That company, of course, was Shirlington.--Jenny Mandel

It's just like Bill Parcells and Terrell Owens: Reporters could not succeed in getting President Bush even to utter the name of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during the president's trip to Central and South America, the New York Times reports.

Hmmm...the Lurita Doan situation is certainly getting more interesting, with this news from Federal Computer Week that a House Government Reform and Oversight hearing into allegations of misconduct on the part of the GSA administrator has been postponed without explanation.

Remember the case of Shang Hsiung, the Transportation Department employee who stole his co-workers' credit card numbers and used them to pay for escort services while on government travel? Well, he's not going to prison, but he won't be traveling much for awhile. AP reports that Hsiung has been sentenced to six months' house arrest and three years' probation.

If you haven't noticed it yet, we're debuting a new feature of the site today: Tech Insider, a blog about what's happening in the federal IT community. You can read all about it here, and learn more about its editor, Allan Holmes, here. Tech Insider is just the beginning of an ongoing effort to beef up our IT coverage. We're hoping that it will jump-start a dialogue among all of the folks with an interest in the federal IT world -- which, when you think about it, is just about everybody who cares about the government. So let us know what you think of it, and how we can make it better.

The comments are starting to roll in on my item about NCAA tournament pools in federal offices. So far, the consensus is that these office pools don't exist in the federal sector, or are at least very well covered up. Anybody want to offer any evidence to the contrary? If so, add your voice to the comments.

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan has found a new communicatons director: Edward Blakely, who previously headed the Department of Strategic Communication for former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. There "he created a virtual communications, marketing and advertising agency using existing state personnel and resources," GSA says, so that the state didn't have to contract out such activities. Blakely also will head up GSA's Office of Citizen Services.

Apparently, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace's new policy on his personal opinions about moral issues can be summed up as follows: "Don't ask, don't tell."

The U.S. Agency for International Development has embarked on what it's calling the Afghans Building Capacity Program to strengthen the performance of government ministries, businesses, non-governmental organizations, universities and local governments in Afghanistan. And how is it going to accomplish this goal? By giving $218.6 million to BearingPoint.

Well, there's one senator and presidential candidate who's apparently not too concerned about the effect of NCAA tournament pools on workplace productivity: That would be John McCain.

Witness the headline on this Transportation Security Administration press release: " TSA Launches Airport-Wide Security Surge." The TSA surge is a little less ambitious than the Iraq operation, though: It involves deploying 160 transportation security officers, aviation security inspectors, air marshals and other personnel to beef up security operations at five airports. One result of the new push? "A sharp increase in random, unpredictable screening of employees in secure areas," TSA says.

The Office of Personnel Management's decision last summer to drop a requirement that charities participating in the Combined Federal Campaign spend 25 percent or less of their total revenue on administrative and fund-raising expenses is continuing to draw controversy. Earlier this year, charities themselves stepped up their campaign against the change. Now, the Washington Post's Steve Barr reports, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has added his voice to the opposition, causing OPM Director Linda Springer to weigh in with a promise that charities involved in the CFC will be scrutinized to make sure they're legitimate. The campaign "remains a program that federal employees can support with confidence," Springer insists. Update: Springer's statement is now online.

The State Department says that putting up three GAO auditors in Iraq for three months would represent "a serious challenge to mission resources," TPMuckraker reports. State officials grudgingly made a counter-offer: a two-week visit. In response, 22 Senate Democrats have upped the ante, demanding a six-month audit.

There's a nice little piece in Slate today on the death of paper brackets in office NCAA basketball tournament polls. It's by Dan Kois, who in his career as a film executive and literary agent devoted countless hours to running such pools. An actual federal-related quote from the story:

But what truly ate up my time were the brackets. Oh, God, the brackets. My life became an endless torrent of paper. The brackets carpeted the floor, festooned the couch, covered the computer keyboard. We received them by e-mail as PDFs, Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets. We received brackets via fax, including a handwritten one on U.S. Senate letterhead with a note claiming that "No taxpayer dollars were wasted on the creation of this bracket." And we got brackets in the mail, one of which arrived in an envelope reading: "ATTENTION FEDERAL POST OFFICE EMPLOYEE: ILLEGAL GAMBLING DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED."

Over here in the private sector, productivity takes a bit of a dent every year during March Madness. That has me wondering: Is the same true in the federal world, or are people too sqeamish about gambling in the office on Uncle Sam's dime? Anyone care to enlighten me (and others)? That's what the "Comments" button below is for.

When President Bush told agencies to start purchasing "green" computers as part of an executive order on cutting energy consumption, did he know he was endorsing a "fringe tree-hugging hippie concept"?

The Defense secretary's grace period with the media hasn't ended yet, if this New York Times story is any indication: "New Defense Chief Eases Relations Rumsfeld Bruised."

I guess Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is serious about this "Independent Democrat" thing. According to a press release from his office, Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chairman and ranking member, respectively of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have taken "their commitment to non-partisanship to an alternate plane." They're boldly breaking with the tradition of having panel members sit on opposite sides of the dais for hearings. Now it'll be Democrat-Republican, Democrat-Republican on both sides of the aisle. "We want the American people to see us sitting side by side as our committee members work together make our nation more secure and our government more efficient,” the two senators said. They give freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., credit for coming up with the idea.

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, federal agencies are increasingly telling people, "We can't find what you're looking for," ScrippsNews reports. At the FBI, 74 percent of requests for information last year were denied on the grounds that no records could be found. Six years ago, the figure was 56 percent. Other agencies had similar declines over the same time period:

• State Department: 54 percent to 35 percent.


• Commerce: 67 percent to 52 percent.


• Securities and Exchange Commission: 46 percent to 35 percent.

You'd think that the General Services Administration, headquartered in Washington, would do its part to support the local NFL franchise, the Redskins. But apparently the agency doesn't play favorites. Yesterday, GSA extended its contract with the Staubach Company and Horne Engineering Services for construction management and real estate brokerage services. That's Staubach as in Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer and Redskins' nemesis Roger Staubach.

"Automatic weapons, grenades and grenade launchers:" Those are the types of weapons that drug- and alien-smuggling gangs along the Mexican border have, Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., the sheriff of Zapata County, Texas, tells the Washington Times. Last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 400 people in connection with a Mexican drug-trafficking organization, and seized $45 million in cash and 100 weapons. And this was the haul in recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids near Laredo, Texas: "two completed improvised explosive devices, materials for making 33 more, 300 primers, 1,280 rounds of ammunition, five grenades, nine pipes with end caps, 26 grenade triggers, 31 grenade spoons, 40 grenade pins, 19 black powder casings, a silencer and cash."

In a widely distributed statement that was sent to many news organizations, including GovExec, GSA said it would be "inappropriate" for the agency to comment on an investigation by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., into the activities of GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. Apparently that admonition does not apply to Doan herself. In an e-mail to Federal Computer Week she said she is "delighted to have the opportunity to set the record straight and provide a full and complete record to Congressman Waxman and the committee, and refute these scurrilous allegations."

After the war itself, fixing the problems associated with care for our wounded must be our highest priority. I believe it's important that we look at this from the perspective of the serviceman or -woman, and not from the perspective of the bureaucracy.

Attention professors and students: Interested in writing about the history of the Postal Service? There's money in it for you.

Honest mistake or evidence of a godless federal bureaucracy? The folks at the U.S. Mint struck a whole bunch of the new presidential dollar coins without inscriptions along the edge, including "In God We Trust," AP reports. (Hat tip: Wonkette.)

In doing some research for an upcoming story, GovExec's Karen Rutzick uncovered this gem in Bob Nelson's book, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees:

When an employee reached her 25th anniversary with the Office of Personnel Management in Washington, DC, she was asked what she would like to do to celebrate. She said she had always wanted to ride and elephant, so they asked the local zoo if it would be possible to arrange a ride. It was, and they did, taking pictures of the event and creating a day to remember for this loyal long-term employee.

Americans increasingly view the federal government as secretive, according to a new survey commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Only 25 percent of those polled said they think the federal government is either "very open" or "somewhat open," while 69 percent said it's either "somewhat secretive" or "very secretive." Last year, 33 percent thought the federal government was open and 62 percent thought it was secretive. On the other hand, clear majorities of people think their state and local governments are open to scrutiny.

Horticulturist David W. Ramming of the Agricultural Research Service's San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center in California has won the agency's highest technology transfer honor for developing a technique to nurture the undersized embryos of experimental seedless grapes into strong, new plants:

View image

The consensus is that the federal Thrift Savings Plan is an exemplary model of a retirement investment system. So why not let all Americans in on it? That's the question Christian E. Weller raises in a new report from the Center for American Progress. The report addresses the issue of the comparatively high fees small employeers and their workers pay to 401(k) managers, and suggests the following solution:

A more promising approach for small employers and their employees is for the U.S. government to set up a large, but very basic 401(k) plan so that these businesses and their workers can take advantage of these economies of scale, too. Our nation’s small business community could then also offer their employees a low-cost option to save for retirement.

How would such a system work? The easiest solution would allow private sector employees to join existing 401(k) programs run by state governments and the federal government for their own employees. The underlying model here is the Thrift Savings Plan, or TSP, which offers federal employees a limited range of investment options and services in exchange for low fees.

Daniel Pulliam will have much more on this later, but I couldn't resist a little preview: The House Government Reform Committee has made public a choice excerpt of the correspondence between GSA Administrator Lurita Doan and her friend Edie Fraser -- to whom, you'll recall Doan is alleged to have attempted to steer a $20,000 contract. It's from an e-mail from Fraser to Doan, and it's almost poetic:

Lurita, I will do anything for you and will do for the rest of my life.

Bottom line, want relationship with GSA and will keep delivering as you know.

But I have spent so much time at GSA from the report planning to these sessions

with ZERO $$

How do we solve

In the meantime, Doan's personal PR campaign appears to be paying off. She has won the support of former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert L. Livingston, in the form of an op-ed in today's Washington Times. In the piece, Livingston portrays Doan as a martyr to the cause of cost-cutting in government. "Mrs. Doan is new to Washington politics and government bureaucracy," he writes, "but she should have known any effort to actually cut federal spending would be fiercely resisted."

The latest from NASA: We'd love to track all of those killer asteroids that might strike the earth, but we just don't have the money. Even the hunt for the biggest ones, which could theoretically wipe out civilization, is behind schedule.

“I don’t know how the decision is made to engage the A-76 process.”

--Acting Army Secretary Peter Geren, when asked at a House hearing yesterday who gave the final go-ahead to privatize base operations at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The sight FEMA officials saw upon arrival after last week's tornadoes in Enterprise, Ala.:

View image

(Mark Wolfe/FEMA)

It's always good to remember the limits of congressional knowledge about the operations of government. In challenging a series of panelists at a House hearing today to explain the ramifications of a decision to put support jobs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center up for competition, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., made reference to OMB "Circular 76." He was quickly advised of the actual name: A-76.

"Mistakes were made, and I was in charge."

-- Maj. Gen. George Weightman, recently ousted head of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, during a House hearing today, on a "failure of leadership" at the facility.

Get ready: The Walter Reed story is about to take a turn that will connect it with the Bush administration's "competitive sourcing" effort to put federal jobs up for bids from private firms. Army Times reported Saturday on a memo written last September by Peter Garibaldi, garrison commander at Walter Reed, to Maj. Gen. George Weightman, who was recently fired as head of the facility. The House Government Oversight and Reform Committee is interested in the memo for its hearing that's going on right now.

Key section of the story:

The memorandum “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel,’” the committee’s letter states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

Jenny Mandel, who's been following the Walter Reed privatization for Government Executive for some time now, is at the hearing and will weigh in later today with a full report.

Do as we say and as we do, the Office of Personnel Management says. The agency responsible for improving processing of security clearance applications across government is touting Office of Management and Budget data showing that OPM itself stands in second place on the list of agencies with the fastest background investigation completion times, at 18 days. The top slot went to the National Science Foundation, at 15 days.

The honeymoon's not over for Robert Gates at the Pentagon, the Washington Post's Tom Ricks reports. He's still getting gushing reviews, especially since firing the Army secretary as a result of the Walter Reed scandal. But former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft sounds a note of caution: At this stage people still like Gates not so much for who he is but who he is not -- Donald Rumsfeld.

The Patent and Trademark Office is taking several steps to deal with its difficulty in keeping up with the pace of patent applications. For example, they're adding examiners by the hundreds and seeking to make room for them by encouraging a telework program. Now PTO is about to get even more creative: A front-page story in the Washington Post today details a new pilot project aimed at building a system to collect outside opinions on patent applications. It would include a community rating system aimed at pushing the most important applications to the top of the pile. Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and IBM already have signed up to have their patent applications reviewed online. So how do you keep people from gaming the system? The designers of the patent project are talking to the folks at eBay about that.

Attention residents of Indiana: Got a spare $125? Then you could be the proud owner of a wild horse or burro, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management. The agecy is holding a special adoption event at the Hoosier Horse Park in Edinburgh, Ind., on April 14. Adoption fees start at $125. But BLM officials issued this disclaimer: "While the adoption process is simple and straightforward, anyone considering adoption of a wild horse or burro should remember that the animals are wild and require gentling and training."

Courtesy of the Census Bureau archives, a look back at the good old days of government information processing:

View image

That's the latest stop on the Office of Personnel Management's TV campaign to highlight career opportunities in the federal government.

The Office of Personnel Management was able to hold down average premium increases in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan this year by dipping into financial reserves. But that didn't help all participants in the plan. Some federal employees and retirees in California saw steep increases in their premiums, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, because, for technical reasons, giant HMO Kaiser Permanente didn't benefit as much as other FEHBP providers from OPM's move.

Congress has appropriated millions of dollars for the U.S. Marshals Service to provide for courthouse security and witness protection efforts. But $4.3 million of that money ended up being used for fitness centers and firing ranges, according to a Justice Department report obtained by USA Today. David Barnes, who oversees courthouse space for the agency, was warned several times by the Office of Management and Budget not to spend the money, and allegedly concealed the spending from higher-ups.

The mess at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has already turned into a rather large black eye for the Army, and yesterday cost the commander of the facility his job. But it's worse than that: This is shaping up to be perceived as yet another example of bureaucratic failure on the part of a large federal institution. Witness this column yesterday in Slate by Phillip Carter, a Los Angeles attorney, former Army officer and Iraq veteran. Key quote :

Military bureaucracies (and their civilian brethren like the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency) also do a terrible job of reacting to crises. Large bureaucracies like the Army provide a systematic, uniform, mediocre response to chronic problems. But where time is of the essence, bureaucracies often fail spectacularly. On the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer last week, [Army Surgeon General Kevin] Kiley tried to deflect blame by calling the mess at Walter Reed "a very large, complex process," which required a nuanced approach to bureaucratic, medical, and contractual problems. But such a bureaucratic response misses the point when the bureaucracy itself is the enemy, as it is for the soldiers in Building 18.

Kiley's also the guy who called the recent Washington Post series uncovering conditions at the facility a "one-sided representation." (Thanks to Danger Room for the tip on this one.)

Attention Pentagon employees: Over at his new "Danger Room" blog at Wired, Noah Shachtman is on the hunt for the military's lamest Web sites -- "the ones that make you cringe in their total indifference to public understanding, and good government."

I daresay that folks on the inside will be in a better position to expose these sites to the light of day than anyone else. So what do you say, people? Can we help him out?

Often those "senior administration officials" you see quoted in news stories are anonymous because the White House sets ground rules for press briefings requiring that they not be identified. But sometimes the transcripts of such sessions makes it easy to figure out who's doing the talking, the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" noted yesterday. (Thanks to Fishbowl D.C. for the tip.)

While the Homeland Security Department is getting at least a slight case of cold feet about pay-for-performance, the National Nuclear Security Administration is moving ahead with a pilot program to test the concept on its workforce. FedNews OnLine reports that all but 20 bargaining unit employees at NNSA headquarters will participate in the pilot, which is scheduled to last five years.

The Postal Service is quietly removing clocks from all 37,000 post offices around the country, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reports today. It's all part of a "retail standardization program," says Stephen Seewoester, a Dallas Postal Service spokesman. "We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock." Some branding and marketing experts told the paper the move isn't that unusual. Casinos have led the way in removing timepieces, and other retail organizations, from grocery stores to banks, have followed suit. Other analysts said the move was unlikely to reduce postal customers' frustration of waiting in long lines.

If I see a murderous fellow sharpening a knife cleverly, I can borrow his way of sharpening the knife without borrowing his probable intention to commit murder with it; and so, if I see a monarchist dyed in the wool managing a public bureau well, I can learn his business methods without changing one of my republican spots.
--Woodrow Wilson

(Thanks to Don Kettl, who included this in an essay in a new report for the IBM Center for the Business of Government, "Reflections on 21st Century Government Management.")