GovernmentExecutive.com

Remember that case I wrote about back in October, where a veteran who had been denied a job the Defense Department filled with people from the Federal Career Intern Program sued the department on the grounds they hadn't appropriately factored in his veterans' preference? It looks like the veteran in question, Stephen Gingery, got a pretty good Christmas present. The federal circuit court panel that was hearing the case has reversed the Merit Systems Protection Board decision that DOD had not violated veterans' preference by filling the jobs with FCIP candidates. No word yet on how the court views the Bush administration's sweeping claims of executive power to determine which jobs are competitive and which are not, a central element in the administration's defense in the case.

A little reminder, courtesy of the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

Hat tip: BoingBoing

Back in July, I wrote about an article in the Fergus Falls, Minn. Daily Journal concerning a town resident who became royally irritated about having to sign in at a "computer doodie" at a local Social Security office, and then having to wait 10 minutes to see a representative.

Well, it turns out that was the fourth most popular story of the year on the Daily Journal's Web site. I think you, the readers of Fedblog, deserve all the credit. I'm sure your clicks on the link to the story boosted its ranking immensely.

I suppose it's nice that Paul Krugman gave a shout-out to the concept of good government in his column today, but I wish he'd spent a bit more time talking about what is actually needed to make good government happen, and cut the paragraph ragging on the Obamas for choosing a nice Christmas rental house. I have no problem with people calling politicians out for hypocrisy, for cautioning against pork in bills that must be targeted carefully, or whatever. But Krugman could have done his readers a better service by explaining the lack of oversight in the bailout so far, and precisely why such oversight is important, with examples.

Instead, he tosses about references to whistleblower rights and explains "goo-goo" as a nickname, and doesn't say anything in particular. My sense is that voters know that they want government to deliver more to them, and to deliver it better, but they don't have a terrific sense of what policies and procedures make that kind of service delivery possible. Explaining those inner workings in detail would have been helpful.

The Federal Reserve has a new game up on its website! And it's flash animated! I'm betting that most kids will be somewhat more entertained by whatever the hot new toy is this year, but just in case you've got a budding fiscal policy junkie on your hands, this looks perfect.

One question about GSA's new policy on smoking in and around federal buildings: Will it apply at the White House? According to the president-elect, the answer is yes.

President Bush has asked all of his appointees to submit their resignations in anticipation of the transfer to the Obama administration in January, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who's sticking around after the transition, wants some of his underlings to be exceptions to the rule.

The Washington Times reports that Gates has asked many of the 250 appointees at the Pentagon to stick around until the Obama team finds replacements for them.

"I have received authorization from the president-elect's transition team to extend a number of Department of Defense political appointees an invitation to voluntarily remain in their current positions until replaced," Gates said in an e-mail sent Friday.

But at least three appointees have been told that they won't get to stay, and need to vacate their offices by Jan. 20. And Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England already has announced that he won't be sticking around.

Want to see a debate over the role of contractors in war zones up close and personal? You'll need to visit the latrine on a U.S. military base in Kuwait.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press is out with a comprehensive report on President Bush and public opinion. I was particularly struck by this chart:

And by this explanation for it:

What might have damaged Bush’s legacy most was his administration’s mixed record of competent governance. Between Iraq, the government’s flawed relief effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and more minor missteps over the Dubai ports issue and other matters, the government “brand” deteriorated badly during the Bush years. In late April 2008, just 37% expressed a favorable view of the federal government, about half of the percentage of five years earlier (73%).

Wondering who your new political boss will be during the Obama administration? You may not have to wait long to find out, even if you work deep in the bureaucracy. Paul Light notes today in the Washington Post that "all signs point to a record-setting pace" of subcabinet appointments in the coming weeks.

Obama's transition team "is moving apace to find and vet candidates for most of the key deputy secretary, undersecretary and assistant secretary spots in the administration," Light writes. "Expect his big tranche the week after his inauguration, largely due to the pre-clearance of 50 to 100 senior aides before the election."

Obama will be shooting at a modern-day record set by his predecessor, who sent 111 nominations to the Senate in his first 100 days in office. Of course, 48 of those came on the 100th day.

Interesting profile in the Washington Post Style section today of Alyssa Mastromonaco, Barack Obama's director of scheduling and advance, who will retain that title in the Obama White House. But she won't be overseeing the kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation that she headed up during the campaign.

Here's how the Post's Shailagh Murray described what Mastromonaco has to look forward to:

In her new role, Mastromonaco will execute elaborate protocols that have been in place for decades, and her immediate staff of about 35 will include a "diarist," responsible for recording every one of Obama's moves -- the telephone calls, the meals, the basketball games. Each step in the White House scheduling process, from request to approval, must be documented in writing. Decisions are made by committee -- a very large committee of administrative heavyweights from the national security and domestic policy offices, speechwriting, catering, the first lady's and vice president's shops, the Secret Service and so on. Advance teams involve casts of hundreds, swarming into each of the locales, here and abroad, that a president will visit.

Little wonder that Mastromonaco has this to say about her situation: "The government feels a little weird right now."

Blogging will be happening, but on a reduced schedule for the two weeks, as I'm home and technically on vacation. But can I say that all I want for Christmas is for the New York Times to stop writing stories describing jobs in federal agencies as if they are rare, magical creatures?

The American Federation of Government Employees becomes the first federal employee union to weigh in on Obama's selection of Hilda Solis to run the Labor Department. And they're super-happy about it:

“The selection of Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis represents a monumental shift from the policies of the past administration. Solis knows that unions are vital to the strength of our communities and that workers are the bedrock of our economy and of good government,” said John Gage AFGE national president. “We believe that Congresswoman Solis will inspire our members in the Department of Labor and rightly refocus the agency’s mission to defend workplace rights.”

Solis won't have jurisdiction over the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, or the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, so she won't necessarily transform federal labor relations. But I'm betting the AFGE mine inspectors are pretty excited about their new boss.

OPM's just released the 2009 salary tables, and Bush has released the pay executive order. More details once I have a chance to go through the numbers.

The most famous whistleblower of all time, Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, has died, the Washington Post reports.

As I wrote back in 2005, when Felt revealed he was the infamous leaker, he was, like so many whistleblowers, a complicated figure -- genuinely angry and concerned that the Nixon White House was undermining the FBI and obstructing the investigation of Watergate, but also disgruntled that he had been passed over for the top job at the agency.

And Felt was hardly a constitutional purist. As Slate's Jack Shafer has noted, "while leaking to [Bob] Woodward about Watergate in 1972 and 1973, Felt was also authorizing illegal break-ins in the search for Weather Underground bombing suspects."

By the way, here's the oddest part of the Post's obit of Felt, whose long career in government actually began at the Federal Trade Commission after he graduated from law school in 1940: "Felt was assigned to ask consumers about their impression of the Red Cross brand of toilet paper. He disliked the job, and in 1942, he joined the FBI."

If any of you are taking some time off over the holidays and are so inclined, there's a new project up and running to collect the stories of government workers to combat negative attitudes the public has towards government. Called I Am Public Service, the campaign follows both the Office of Personnel Management and the National Treasury Employees Union in trying to humanize federal department and agencies.

I've often though an apt metaphor for public perception of federal employees might be a kind of reverse Picture of Dorian Gray. Rather than hiding away a portrait that ages and is corrupted while Dorian stays forever young, the public has an image of the federal workforce that fluctuates with the current mood, but that frequently bears little resemblance to the actual lived experience of feds on the job. I don't know how to bridge that divide in perception, but I'm always interested in what individual people's experiences have been. So if you do post over at I Am Public Service, let me know, so I can point our readers there!

And by OMB analyst, I mean California Rep. Hilda Solis, who the AP is reporting is Obama's pick for Labor Secretary, and who used to work at OMB. How many other Obama picks have that kind of management background?

We've had a fair number of discussions here about the wisdom or lack thereof as using the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program as a model for a public option in health care reform. Today comes the news, via Education and Labor Committee Chairman Rep. George Miller that there have been discussions (where, he doesn't say) about the viability of opening up the Thrift Savings Plan to Americans looking for a stable investment option:

I don't want to overstate the talk, but yes. That has been raised. You have the same discussion going on [with health care]. If you can't get an adequate plan, President-elect Obama has talked about federal employees' health-care plan being the default plan. I think when you look at the thrift savings plan, it meets a lot of criteria about a low-cost, limited-choice approach for people.

I wrote yesterday that some of the leading healthcare thinkers in the Democratic Party are reconsidering the idea that FEHB is the best model for health care reform. I have no idea if Miller's thoughts on the TSP will go anywhere. But I do think it's intriguing that, in their quest to provide health and retirement security to the rest of America, Democratic lawmakers are opening up discussions about the quality of federal benefits. One hopes that in those discussions, they consider the quality of those benefits for federal employees, too.

Man, this is not something you see everyday: the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and Florida Republican Rep. John Mica in agreement! I kid, partially, although during Congressional hearings on the impact of the pay and work rules former FAA Administrator Marion Blakey imposed on the controllers, I think it would be fair to say that Mica was distinctly unsympathetic to the controllers' position. But when it comes to keeping airports in Florida safe, Mica and NATCA are on the same page.

In this case, they're teaming along with a bunch of other Florida lawmakers up to ask Hank Krakowski, who runs the Air Traffic Organization, to pause deconsolidation of air traffic control facilities in Orlando. Currently, Orlando controllers can alternate between working in the airport's air traffic control tower and the terminal radar approach control (TRACON). They say that's a good thing because controllers learn how both tasks work, so they operate with a good understanding of what their coworkers are up to, and because more controllers have the skills to work both places, so they can fill in for each other more easily if someone calls in sick or can't get to work.

The FAA's already shut down plans to do similar de-consolidations in Miami and Philadelphia. The lawmakers want the agency to consider alternate plans, given that they say de-consolidation will make scheduling less flexible by creating siloed workforces for the tower and TRACON, will require another layer of management, and eliminates valuable cross-training. Given those concerns, they say, there's no reason to rush de-conosolidation through.

Fascinating cover story in Newsweek this week about Thomas M. Tamm, a former Justice Department lawyer who exposed the Bush administration's effort to intercept phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States without court warrants. But it's how he did it that makes it interesting: Tamm went straight to the New York Times, which later published a story exposing the program (based not just on his revelations, it should be noted). He didn't bother with established federal whistleblowing procedures.

Tamm's defenders say he was merely trying to defend the rule of law and expose what he thought was a violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Without his actions, they say, the administration's activities may never have come to light.

Others say going to the media is the wrong approach. "You can't have runoffs deciding they're going to be the white knight and running to the press," Frances Fragos Townsend, told Newsweek. Townsend once headed the Justice unit where Tamm worked and later served as President Bush's chief counterterrorism adviser. "There are legal processes in place for [whistleblowers' complaints]. This is one where I'm a hawk. It offends me, and I find it incredibly dangerous."

I'll admit to a bias in favor of leaks to the media, for obvious reasons. But you can make up your own mind as to whether Tamm is a whistleblowing hero or merely a turncoat.

If you're getting MPA or MPP degrees, there's hope for a job in the administration, someday. It's not all lawyers and Nobel-winners!

The New York Times has a rambling piece this morning on what the Bush administration is doing to prep the Obama transition team to deal with a major international crisis that I think conceals two important points. First, the Bush administration is giving fairly intensive crisis training to top career Homeland Security officials who will be filling in for political appointees who are leaving in the next couple of weeks but are unlikely to be replaced by Inauguration Day:

In addition to the White House contingency memorandums, the Department of Homeland Security said it had given crisis training to nearly 100 career officials who may fill in while Mr. Obama’s appointees await Senate confirmation. Starting before the election, those career workers have conducted exercises alongside departing political appointees to test their responses.

The second point is, I think, the more important one. No matter what anyone thinks of Bush's policies or judgments, on his end, the transition has been handled very smoothly and professionally, and with the possible exception of Blair House, graciously:

Mr. Bush said Tuesday that a top priority in his final days in office is to help Mr. Obama get ready to govern. “We care about him,” he said in an interview with CNN. “We want him to be successful, and we want the transition to work.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama’s office said she had no comment. But other Democrats working with the transition said they appreciated the Bush team’s efforts. “This doesn’t absolve the Bush administration of some of their judgments they’ve made over the years, but this is the right thing to do,” said a Democrat close to the transition who did not want to be named to avoid alienating the team. “This is when enlightened self-interest works.”

Mr. Cressey, who has been a critic of Mr. Bush’s national security policy, said: “I give them a lot of points for doing this. There could be zero down time for the new team coming in.”

Huge amounts of credit for this, of course, should go to Clay Johnson. But I think the transition is also one of those unusual moments in the presidency when the guy leaving office and the guy walking into it are united by the fact that there have been fewer than fifty people who have done what they did, and are about to do. I have no idea what Bush's personal feelings are about Obama, but I think he does care about him. He knows what the job is like and how hard it is, and I'm sure that's impossible to put aside when he thinks about the transition, no matter how much he may oppose Obama's policies or resent his successor for how he portrayed Bush on the campaign trail.

To my earlier post on the cost of government, so I thought I'd pull it up from the comments, and respond myself:

I represent the National Taxpayers Union, the group whose figure you cited as "dubious" in your post.

Actually, the source of the estimate is the OPM itself. While researching legislation designated S 726 (in 2004), a bill to make election day a federal holiday, we spoke to Joe Radcliff of OPM
who said the cost is $30.7 million in holiday premium pay plus the cost of a day's pay. He estimated that annual payroll is approximately $103.5 billion, divided by the number of workdays (260) + $30.7 million = $428.77 million. Four years later, the payroll is larger monetarily, so the figure today is likely above $450 million.

Read what you want into whether or not $400-plus billion in lost productivity occurs because of a day off. That's more a commentary on office environments than hard numbers. Maybe that's why more than a few areas of the federal government have a public perception problem.

Pete Sepp
Vice President for Policy & Communications
National Taxpayers Union

If the numbers are from OPM, they're from OPM, and I'm not going to argue over the cost of a day's worth of federal salaries. But I do want to contest the idea that because President Bush decided to follow tradition and give federal employees a morale-boosting day off that most of them would have taken anyway, the federal government is suffering some kind of massive loss.

The government's paying that money in salary one way or another, and most folks would take that day off anyway. This isn't some additional fantastic sum out the door. Mr. Sepp's argument seems in the last paragraph seems to be that if I'm assuming there isn't a significant productivity loss, I'm conceding that federal employees don't work that hard, which isn't the case. Vacation time exists so folks can recharge, and come back to work more energetic than ever. Goodwill gestures like the executive order also build morale, which may be less quantifiable than salary/days=the money federal employees make in a single day, but morale and refreshed employees also have value to organizations and businesses. If we're going to make big, sweeping statements about lost value, let's consider the tangibles and intangibles, please, and give the President credit for considering both.

To put it charitably, I think the "Your Seat at the Table" feature, which provides documents from meetings the transition team has had with outside groups, on Change.gov is kind of strange. I think the impulse is in some ways a good one. It's good to have a sense of what kind of suggestions interest groups are making (and down the road, will provide a pretty interesting basis for a scorecard of who Obama listened to and who he ignored). But at the moment, the feature is doing a lot more to obscure than it is to illuminate. The database is in no way complete (I know folks who have provided documents that aren't on the site). It's not organized alphabetically, or by date. And I'm not sure how much it serves the purpose of transparency, because the documents give absolutely no sense how the Obama transition team reacted, or even whether someone's actually read the documents.

That said, I've been curious to see what's making it onto the section, and when I checked in today, I found a whole bunch of fed-related documents! There are no real surprises in the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association recommendations, though I do think it's interesting to note that their health-care related goals are first on their priorities list.

More striking is a report from the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda calling increases in the numbers of Latinos in the federal workforce, and slamming the Office of Personnel Management's workforce diversity programs:

Continue reading "Feds' Seat At The Table" »

So, former President Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, has taken on handling John Podesta's phone calls. She's also the person taking care of Socks, to whom I directed good wishes yesterday. Further proof, the Clintons and the folks they're connected to are FOREVER in this town.

The Interior Department's Inspector General has released a report detailing the ways the Bush administration approached science in its endangered species policy. The New York Times story is an interesting read because of the way it examines how people deal with a situation where the basic, agreed-upon way of conducting business (the scientific method), runs into the desire of someone to achieve very different outcomes and conclusions than those that would be produced by that scientific method. The story notes that in a number of cases, agency employees pushed back against what they perceived as interference, and prevailed.

I don't know that we'll necessarily see more deference to front-line employees in the Obama administration, but this situation also illustrates some of the value of hearing some more of those front-line voices. Even if the positions were reversed, if a top scientist was heading an agency and wanted to impose different standards of work and evidence on his workforce, it would be valuable to know that there is a debate and a disagreement going on. It's hard to make public policy decisions when all lawmakers and the public see is a smooth facade.

Brittany Ballenstedt reported back from the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board meeting yesterday with the sobering news that the Board may be headed for some major turnover when the Obama administration takes over. The reason? All five Board members are serving even after their terms have expired, and the Senate hasn't gotten around to reconfirming three of the members, much less the legislation passed by the House to establish automatic enrollment and a default fund.

Look, I understand that Congress is busy right now. We are in a financial crisis after all. I know that Congressmen have a ton on their plates, and that federal employees are a small piece of the pie. But, given that the nominations came out of committee with a unanimous endorsement, isn't making sure the TSP has consistent leadership in place something that would have taken the Senate all of 15 or 20 minutes to take care of? With all the outrage that members of Congress are expressing on behalf of their constituents whose retirements are now in peril, one would think they'd be glad to do something fairly easy to ensure continuity of oversight for the 4 million people who have more than $200 billion invested in the TSP. Or if Senators have grave reservations about any of those nominees, how difficult could it be for them to do a little thinking about who might be better replacements?

In perhaps the least surprising news of the year, the Government Accountability Office reports that once again, it is unable to render an opinion on the government's consoliated financial statement due to "numerous material internal control weaknesses and other limitations."

Here's how acting GAO chief Gene L. Dodaro characterized the situation:

“While significant progress has been made in improving financial management since the federal government began preparing consolidated financial statements 12 years ago, three major impediments have continued to prevent us from rendering an opinion on the accrual basis consolidated financial statements over this period of time. Those include serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense, the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.”

As Dodaro's statement indicates, it's not like this is the first time GAO has issued such a statement.

(Precursor to the following: yes, I know it costs money to provide the many important services that government performs, the pay gap remains hugely problematic, etc. Now that we know this, let's proceed...)

Two figures struck me today, one dubious, one not.

1) The Washington Times is reporting that according to one group, the Christmas holiday for Feds will cost $450 million in lost productivity and pay. Given that the group that's come up with that estimate is the National Taxpayers Union, I would be extremely curious to see the math behind that projection.

2) On less-dubious-more-scary ground, Marc Ambinder notes this:

A Treasury report out today pegs the U.S. government's operating cost at approximately $1 trillion, excluding transfer payments, which amounts to a trebling since 2007.

Most of the increase can be attributed to nearly $550b worth of "post-employment liabilities" -- pensions, health benefits -- for government employees, mostly veterans, liaibilities that, for some reason, either weren't estimated properly in 2007 or were simply ignored.

What I doubt here is not Marc's reading of the math, but the rationale that left those figures out of the calculations in the first place. For serious. Employment costs are part of operation costs. I have no idea how anyone justifies excluding those from an estimate.

Since I'm working on a big piece about good government non-profits at the moment, I've been particularly attuned to non-profit news lately, and I noted that the Partnership for Public Service announced on Friday that it's bringing on two more big guns. Vince Micone, who chaired the Combined Federal Campaign between 2002 and 2008, will be the Partnership's new Vice President for Development, and Tina Sung, who has a long resume in corporate transformation and in performance management inside government, is the new Vice President for Government Transformation.

There's no question that non-profits are going to get hit very hard by the economic downturn, even ones like the Partnership that have mostly relied on several large donors. Making two big hires in the midst of a downturn is a signal that the Partnership sees itself in relatively good shape. Announcing a new VP for development does indicate a solid acknowledgment of the economic facts, however, and that the Partnership intends to move aggressively to safeguard its financial future. Sung's appointment also suggests that the Partnership sees significant change coming to government, and like everyone else, and like they always have, wants a piece of the action.

Labor law is a pet interest of mine, so I was curious to see what Bob Gilson had to say in a FedSmith column about how the transition teams are approaching the Federal Labor Relations Authority. No real surprises in the story: it sounds like the main topics at hand were whether to revive the labor-management partnership councils from the Clinton years, and how to both speed up FLRA decisions while also promoting negotiated settlements. It was interesting to note that the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers General Counsel, Julia Clark, is on the team reviewing the FLRA. This seems to be a pattern Obama is following, of putting labor folks, or labor-sympathetic folks, on the teams reviewing personnel and labor agencies. I know pro-labor NYU Professor Cynthia Estlund is helping lead the review of the National Labor Relations Board, and there's a labor rep on the team overseeing the Office of Personnel Management (though she's from UNITE HERE, rather than a federal labor agency).

It makes me sad that former First Cat Socks is apparently not doing so well. I realizes this dates me (although whether as young or old, I'm not sure), but I definitely had a copy of Letters to Socks during the Clinton administration, and retain a vague fondness for the cat. The requirement that the First Family have a humanizing pet has always seemed a little odd to me, but at least Socks appears to be living out his final days in comfort.

Over the past couple of days, I've been thinking about things I wanted to include in a follow-up to a post I wrote earlier in the week about younger workers and internet security. And then I opened up my Google Reader and found this New York Times Op-Ed about the challenges of putting young people in personnel, and decided I really had to make a couple of points today. This may go long. I hope you'll bear with me.

1. I think some folks misinterpreted my post on IT security to conclude that I was saying that younger people are more open so technology should be altered to accommodate their lapses. What I meant to suggest is that many young people are more open about what they're willing to put online, and that openness sometimes get misinterpreted as laxness. I actually think young people are probably pretty good about keeping secure the things they want to keep secure. I doubt you'd find that young people inadvertently breach security on their online banking or credit card accounts, for example. Younger folks have grown up with passwords for everything, and with the concepts of strong passwords, too.*

If you transmit something through a connection that you think is secure, and it gets hacked, it's not your fault: it's the hacker's. People who get their credit cards stolen by cameras at gas stations are no more to blame for that than Paris Hilton is to blame for whoever hacked her Sidekick. In an increasingly far-flung but interconnected world, there is eventually going to be no alternative to transmitting sensitive information electronically. To do that, we need to build technology that justifies our trust in it AND teach smart security practices. The two concepts go hand in hand.

Continue reading "Generations Continued" »

Ya'll get the day after Christmas off. We'll have a story coming soon.

UPDATE: Here's the Executive Order.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting today that Tom Daschle, who will wear two hats as Secretary of Health and Human Services and head of President-elect Obama's health care reform efforts, will likely look to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program as a model for nation-wide reform. I wrote about this issue more than a year ago, when expanding FEHBP was the core of Hillary Clinton's health care plan.

Rob Brodsky picks this out of Darrell Issa's Wikipedia page:

"Issa made his fortune through his company, Directed Electronics Incorporated, that is most famous for its flagship product, the 'Viper' car alarm. It bears one notable siren that is a recording of Issa's voice, 'please step away from the car.'"

Maybe that can somehow become his catchphrase as the new ranking member on the Oversight and Government Affairs committee?

I wrote late last week that Sonal Shah, a member of the policy review team overseeing technology and government reform, had been under some pressure for her membership in a Hindu organization. Now my NextGov colleague Gautham Nagesh has the definitive story on Shah's involvement with the group. It's a must-read, not just because it unravels the story, but because it's a great piece of reporting on how negative stories travel, and how government officials respond.

Yesterday was a real red-letter day for two of the biggest good-government non-profits. First, Samuel Heyman, who founded the Partnership for Public Service, was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his work in the good-government movement. According to the official citation:

“As a lawyer, public servant, and philanthropist, Samuel Heyman has acted on his steadfast devotion to our Nation. By encouraging young leaders to answer the call of public service, he has helped promote a vibrant Federal workforce. The United States honors Samuel Heyman for his dedication to improving the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of the Federal Government.”

The Partnership folks I talked to at the Council for Excellence in Government's 25th Anniversary celebration later in the evening were very excited about the award, understandably. And speaking of the Council, their celebration made for quite the evening. Your loyal blogger and company spotted former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge sporting a snazzy green tie, and a whole range of representatives from the good-government community.

And just as the presidential transition is proceeding, the Council announced that another part of theirs has fallen into place. Pat McGinnis announced she was stepping down as President and CEO of the Council 6 months ago, so this celebration was also a chance for her to pass the baton, at least temporarily, to her Executive Vice President, Lynn Jennings, who will take on those duties on an interim basis. No word yet on when they'll announce a permanent replacement.

Just a quick hit on this Intel-sponsored survey: apparently, employers think millenials like me are good employees, but that we're a risk when it comes to IT security. (Believe me, the intersection between millenials and IT prompted me to title this post LOLCats style: IT SECURITY: UR DOIN IT RONG). I think this speaks to evolving norms of security and privacy. I would be that a lot of employers' perceptions are based on the fact that people my age post a lot of stuff on facebook, have, or had, personal blogs, etc. But I think that's not actually super-relevant for professional IT security. Just because people put stuff out there doesn't mean they don't care about information being secure; rather, their standards for what NEEDS to be secure are different. Just because Paris Hilton got her sidekick hacked doesn't mean she's careless with her information; it means the hardware she's using is vulnerable. In a world of telework, among other things, agencies are going to have to come up with new, goof-proof ways to keep information secure. But a more open, tech-savvy generation isn't inherently an IT security risk.

Gene Dodardo, the Acting Comptroller over at the Government Accountability, is testifying on the state of the bailout today, and his prepared testimony has some interesting things to say about the challenges of staffing up such a massive undertaking during a presidential transition, when people will leave, priorities will change, and long-term planning is very difficult. Specifically:

While Treasury has filled key positions on an interim basis, these same issues may limit its ability to ensure that key leadership positions at OFS remain filled both during and after the transition, potentially creating uncertainty about the direction of the program and impeding efforts to effectively implement and oversee TARP. Therefore, we made several recommendations aimed at facilitating a smooth transition to the new administration and ensuring effective oversight of the program.

In addition to using permanent staff, OFS plans to rely on contractors and financial agents in several key areas. Treasury used expedited solicitation procedures and structured the agreements and contracts to allow for flexibility in obtaining the required services. Most of the contracts awarded thus far have been priced on a time-and-materials basis, which provides for payments based on a set hourly rate plus the cost of any materials.

As we have noted in past work, this type of pricing arrangement requires enhanced oversight.11 Treasury has also taken steps to help promote the use of small businesses in carrying out TARP. In addition, Treasury has issued interim guidelines to address potential and actual conflicts of interest. As required by Treasury, the financial agent and contractors selected have identified a variety of potential and actual conflicts of interest and proposed a variety of solutions to mitigate identified conflicts. However, the agent and contractors have provided few written details on how they intend to implement mitigation plans or communicate related issues to OFS, and OFS has not yet developed a process for monitoring conflicts of interest. As a result, Treasury must continue to take steps to formalize its oversight of conflicts of interest and monitoring time-and-materials contracts.

There are a lot of huge challenges here. No matter how fast he moves, Neil Barofsky starts his job as bailout Inspector General at a disadvantage, having to track more than $310 billion that's already out the door, much less keeping pace with the money that continues to be spent. Staffing just isn't in place yet. Who knows what appointees Obama will ask to stay on throughout the transition, or how his new Treasury Secretary will choose to oversee the Office of Financial Stability. It's going to be interesting to see the scaffolding come off OFS during the transition, and to see how stable the institution is.

Rep. Danny Davis, who was one of the first people to throw his name into the ring for Obama's Senate seat, must be really pleased that for all the speculation about the identities of the candidates mentioned in the indictment of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich yesterday, his name has not come up.

The American Federation of Government Employees apparently isn't the only union in town that doesn't like the idea of Partnership for Public Service President Max Stier taking the helm at the Office of Personnel Management. (LARGE caveat here, folks: Stier hasn't been named to the position, and the Partnership is not commenting on the rumor that he might be confirmed to the position. So we have very little hard evidence to go on here.) The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers has climbed on the anti-Stier bandwagon too. According to the union's legislative director Matt Biggs:

“IFPTE is adamantly opposed to Max Stier taking the helm at OPM. He has taken opportunity after opportunity to support the current administration’s attacks on federal workers and he would be an unacceptable candidate for this position.”

All this sturm und drang may ultimately be for naught. The new OPM director may be someone else altogether. But no matter what happens, this all reveals some serious disagreement between one of the biggest non-profits on the good-government circuit and some federal employee unions. And it happens at a time when the Government Performance Coalition, a loose affiliation of non-profits of which the Partnership for Public Service is a member, is trying to reach out to labor.

Want to know who, beyond a new OPM Director, is going to make decisions that affect federal management? Amelia Gruber has coordinated with a bunch of us to produce a definitive chart of some of the critical appointments Obama hasn't gotten to yet. And keep checking back here for updates!

Alexis Simendinger (in this case with Shane Harris) continues her winning streak with the latest news on when Bush administration appointees will be out the door: January 20, 2009. But in this case, it's the Bush administration that's asking its own nominees to resign, rather than having President-elect Obama ask the prior president's appointees to leave. It's a repeat of past practice, as it turns out: John Podesta, when he was chief of staff for then-President Cilnton, did the same thing in 2000, which I hadn't known before.

In trying to answer that question (and to figure out who is being floated for a number of other personnel-related appointments), I got an interesting answer. Apparently, American Federation of Government Employees General Counsel Mark Roth thinks the next OPM director could be Partnership for Public Service President Max Stier, and that the organization would "vehemently oppose" his nomination. I asked him why, and got this response:

He has consistently supported Bush “deform” efforts like NSPS and Max HR and contracting out inherently governmental functions, and a leopard can not be expected to change its spots just because the political winds have changed. While he could have been a force for good government and employee involvement , he really was missing in action for the federal workforce and we can not have that type of leadership CONTINUED at OPM. On the other hand, we do see value in the PPS as a think tank working with us and Obama. There are a lot of projects that PPS could impact positively so we would like to see him stay in that position.

Strong words. It's true that the Partnership has called for a total reform of the federal pay system and a move away from the General Schedule. Partnership Vice President for Policy John Palguta has said that while opposition to using programs like NSPS to curtail labor rights can be justified, it doesn’t necessarily invalidate efforts to reform evaluation and compensation. But Stier also has spoken out against attempts to suggest that federal employees are overpaid, and the Partnership has launched a major call to reform the way agencies bring new people on board and train them.

Partnership spokeswoman Sarah Howe said the organization would take a pass on answering whether Stier was up for the top job at OPM, and on responding to AFGE's opposition. The Partnership is normally one of the most voluble organizations on the block, but Stier wouldn't talk about who he was speaking with during the general election, and he wouldn't talk about who he talks to on the transition team. If he's clamming up about his own prospects, that makes me inclined to think he's a possible nominee.

Howard Messner, a two-time president of the National Academy of Public Administration, passed away last week.

All you hard-working researchers at the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, etc., listen up! Investigative journalism non-profit Pro Publica is accepting nominations for a new award honoring sterling examples of "investigative governance." Reports from 2008 (calendar year, not fiscal) are eligible, and nominations are due by the end of January. Interestingly enough, the prizes are being sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, now lead by former GAO head David Walker.

I think these prizes are a great idea. GAO reports are a government journalist's best friend, because they always have good statistics, good anecdotes, and an all-encompassing perspective we can't pull together when reporting a daily story. But too often, good government reports don't get the attention that they deserve in the mainstream media, and government researchers are treated as sort of a separate species as the rest of government, rather than an integral part of it. Recognizing their work, and acknowledging how useful good internal government oversight is to good journalism, is a good first step towards getting government research organizations some of the credit they deserve.

Cheesy as it may be, I wanted to spotlight the fact that three feds made the top ten of Washington Post columnist Al Kamen's contest to see who could predict the popular and electoral vote totals. I'm not sure if that means ya'll are really, really good political prognosticators or just lucky, but I like to think the former.

I meant to blog about this on Friday when it was announced, but the Obama administration's adopted an interesting policy regarding its transition-related meetings with outside groups: they're going to make available documents from those meetings dating back to Nov. 4, and through Inauguration on January 20. There are some obvious exclusions, of course. Nothing about specific personnel decisions goes on line, and neither does anything with national security implications. From what I can tell by perusing the documents they've got up already, they're not exactly posting transcripts of meeting minutes either. They're basically putting up interest groups' submissions and wish lists, which is fine, but not perhaps as informative as they're making it out to be.

And they don't have a ton of documents up yet either, though from what I can tell just from my limited circle of sources, there are a lot of conversations with a lot of groups going on. Some of the links are not working consistently, too. It seems to me that this initiative is well-intentioned, but much like Change.gov as a whole, was pushed forward before a) it could fulfill its full promise and b) all the kinks were worked out. I understand that the new administration wants to appear more open and tech-savvy. But it does seem like some patience might serve them better on endeavors like this.

According to a new press release from Rep. Danny Davis, the Office of Personnel Management is telling agencies it needs to be ready to accept belated changes to Federal Employees Health Benefits Program enrollments after Open Season closes. Brittany Ballenstedt reported earlier this week on the potential Blue Cross fee changes that prompted Davis to call for an extension. The full press release appears below and continues below the jump.

Chairman Davis Applauds OPM’s Decision to Renegotiate the 2009 Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Surgical Benefit

Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL) is pleased that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) answered his call to give Federal employees more time to consider their health plan options

Washington D.C. - Responding to mounting pressure from Chairman Davis and Members of the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and District of Columbia Subcommittee, earlier today, OPM informed the Subcommittee that it is working closely with BCBS to address the issue of benefits for elective surgeries by non-participating providers. OPM is also advising agencies that they should be prepared to continue to accept “belated” requests for enrollment changes after open season.

Continue reading "Staying "Open" A Little Longer" »

I don't have much to add to it, but Marc Ambinder has a fascinating post on some of Hillary Clinton's top advisers who will follow her to the State Department. I'd be curious to hear what anyone who works at State thinks of these folks.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has followed up on his promise to investigate an executive order that stripped 1,500 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employees of their collective bargaining rights with a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking for an explanation for the move.

A couple of weeks ago, I criticized Obama's choices for the technology and government policy review team on the grounds that they were all technology experts, and knew next to nothing about government reform. Now, one of the members of that team, Google executive Sonal Shah, is under fire from conservative and liberal pundits for her involvement with the American arm of an Indian charity that has a poor reputation when it comes to how it views Christians and Muslims. Lost In Transition's Deron Lee reports that she made a Nov. 11 statement saying she is not involved in Indian politics, but the timing, after last month's terrorist attacks on Mumbai, probably mean that the policy review team won't catapult Shah to a higher position.

The Thanksgiving terrorist attacks in Mumbai are becoming part of the debate over how Gov. Janet Napolitano should manage the Department of Homeland Security when she takes over in January. In a Wednesday speech, Michael Chertoff urged Napolitano to keep the Federal Emergency Management Agency in DHS:

"Emergencies don't come neatly packaged in stovepipes," he said, addressing the argument by some groups that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be removed from the department because FEMA's mission is to respond to natural disasters and the department's main mission is to prevent terrorist attacks. Chertoff argued that when different agencies plan and train together they are better suited to respond to disasters of all varieties.

But there were clearly other forces at work in Mumbai. A big story in the New York Times yesterday lays out a whole range of preparedness issues that prevented Indian security forces from responding quickly and effectively to the terrorist attacks. The initial responders didn't have bulletproof vests, much less modern weaponry. The National Security Force only has 7,400 commandos, making it hard to mobilize enough people quickly to respond to a major attack. In a tragic echo of the faulty radios firefighters had to rely on during September 11, Mumbai beat cops don't have their own radios. And that doesn't even begin to address the low salaries, utter lack of weapons training, and corruption that local security forces have to deal with. All of these things are an argument for paying, training, and equipping law enforcement officers in Mumbai and here at home. But they're not necessarily evidence for a certain organizational chart.

Back in October, when my colleague Rob Brodsky wrote our cover story profile of Barack Obama, many of the people he interviewed noted that Obama's management agenda closely mirrored parts of Bill Clinton and Al Gore's Reinventing Government Initiatives. Now, he's back again today with a long piece over at Lost In Transition about how Obama is likely to build on past administration's management initiatives. The key takeaway is here:

After 14 government-wide reform efforts in the past century, there is no obvious big idea or ideological prescription in management reform, said Don Kettl, a political analyst and University of Pennsylvania professor who has written extensively about government reform.

"We have essentially reached the natural, logical end of the strategy of management reform," Kettl said. "We had a whole series of efforts to empower government employees and to measure the performance of programs and we've essentially run out the string ... So what we are likely to have, and what we need, is an effort to polish up and burnish the efforts of both previous administrations, but also to think about what the next steps ought to be in a much more creative way."

This sense that preserving at least some of the foundations of the government management structure is important is something I've heard from many of my sources in the non-profit world both leading up to and since the election. There's no particular indication that Obama intends to start from scratch, and many of the things he's told federal unions that he would roll back or change, including increasing oversight of contracting out federal jobs, aren't really core management principles. The biggest hurdle, I think, will be pay for performance, if Obama decides that he wants to move away from the General Schedule system. That wouldn't be popular with his constituents in federal employee unions, but it's something that the non-profit community and the Chief Human Capital Officers are pushing hard.

I just got out of a meeting with a number of members of the Government Performance Coalition, a broad group of good-government non-profits and research organizations, which is pushing a three-pronged performance agenda for the new administration. During our time with them, a number of them noted that they'd been contacted by, or had conversations with people on the teams reviewing the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget, and they were providing those people with a number of reports and proposals for focusing the management agenda.

I've written before that Obama doesn't have a full management agenda really in place, and that such issues will probably have to compete for attention at a time when the President-elect is dealing with a major bailout of the financial system, two wars, and instability among some allies. But I think it is a good sign that his policy review teams are reaching beyond the agencies to what are essentially a loose consortium of think tanks and management consultants to see what fresh ideas for running government are out there, and to learn more about the issues where groups have reached consensus. This also seems to be a victory, to a certain extent, for these non-profit groups, which as Brittany Ballenstedt and I reported in our December issue, are more unified than they've been during previous transitions.

The Senate may want to move federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and the non-foreign areas into the locality pay system, but with a bailout of Detroit automakers like to consume the rest of the legislative session, it's unlikely to happen. And OPM has released the new cost of living allowances for feds in those areas.

Courtesy my colleague Elizabeth Newell, a guide to the ethics of giving and getting this time of year:

During the holiday season, spreading good cheer can get feds into deep water! This time of year, with parties and gifts galore, it’s more important than ever to beef up on ethics guidelines. The Defense Department’s Standards of Conduct Office has a good five-page summary here , and the Interagency Ethics Council boiled it down as well.

The bottom line? Stick with small gifts, federal employees are allowed to accept gifts valued at under $20 from contractors and supervisors can accept gifts under $10 from subordinates. You’re generally in the clear with holiday cocktail parties but read through the guidance for the typically bureaucratic list of rules and exceptions!

Government Executive got a copy of the notice the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent to its employees in the wake of Monday's executive order stripping of them of their collective bargaining rights. The notice says "We are absolutely confident that fair and equitable treatment of all ATF employees will continue. " Full notice is below the jump.

Continue reading "Documents Post-Executive Order" »

Your blogger apologizes for the slow pace this morning. Her computer is virus-ridden, and she's covering an event at the Partnership for Public Service, which produced this gem from Partnership VP for Policy, John Palguta, who, it must be said, was paraphrasing Ron Sanders of the Directorate of National Intelligence:

"Federal employees are a cheap date. You show a little appreciation and a little sense of regard and I’ll follow you anywhere."

I think this says a lot more about how federal employees have been managed than federal employees themselves. But I also think it says something about how federal employees are perceived as a group rather than as collection, as a sort of reverse Picture of Dorian Gray. The picture changes--sometimes politicians cast the federal workforce as a bad thing, sometimes federal workers are seen as noble. But the simple existence of that larger picture obscures the truth: that the federal workforce is incredibly varied and complex, and that federal workers require an equally subtle and specified approach.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates may have agreed to stick around in the Obama administration, but that doesn't mean that other high-ranking Pentagon officials will remain in their jobs.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England announced Tuesday that he will not continue serving with Gates under Obama.

"It’s time for me to leave," England said. "When I came into government in early 2001, I anticipated serving for two to four years. After almost eight years, it’s now time for me to turn over the reins to a successor. Also, it’s most appropriate for the new administration to name its own deputy.”

England, of course, oversaw the Pentagon's efforts to implement the controversial National Security Personnel System for its civilian employees -- and, most recently, its decision to drop plans to convert employees represented by labor unions to the system.

I've got a roundup of reactions to Bush's collective bargaining executive order in this story. Everyone from AFL-CIO president John Sweeney to federal union officials are stewing, but Obama's transition team isn't saying whether they'll move on the order or not.

Feds in D.C., Montgomery, Prince George's, Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Alexandria and Falls Church, rejoice: you get Inauguration Day off!

If you were keeping an eye out for late-breaking executive orders or rule-making by the Bush administration, take a look at this one. It's a doozy, exempting parts of the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and the Treasury from collective bargaining rules on the grounds that their "primary function [is] intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work. It is further determined that chapter 71 of title 5, United States Code, cannot be applied to these subdivisions in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations."

More to come on this in a story I'm working on now. But make no mistake, this is big news.

The Obama administration has announced that it's taking a step forward into a new copyright regime by announcing that everything on its transition website, Change.gov, will be covered under a Creative Commons license, which basically means anyone can reproduce the content on the site or use it as the basis for a document of thei own. It's a pretty progressive, if basically cost-free, step. But the real genius of the announcement is in the quotation the team got to describe the initiative, from blogger James Grimmelmann:

"Attribution 3.0 is the Barack Obama of CC licenses: modern, dignified, generous, and tolerant.”

If they can get their hands on quote like that, they sure could be raking it in at a PR firm. But I guess change is a pretty decent side benefit for a job.