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President Obama has just sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring his intention to implement a 2.0 percent pay raise for civilian federal employees starting in January 2010, citing the economic crisis and unemployment. More to come, of course.

Updated: Of course, Congress can override this. And we're getting word that the Obama administration has promised to adhere to pay parity in subsequent years. But promises, of course, are simply that.

Perhaps the only useful part of Congress's inability to confirm a new head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is that the vacancy is prompting a series of discussions about how regulations ought to get made. Mark Kleinman has an interesting post about the arbitrary nature of some of the key elements regulators use to measure the costs and benefits of individual rules, including the argument that relative position isn't used to calculate impact, less likely large impacts can be ignored because they're speculative, and the fact that we've simply accepted figures for certain measures, like the cost of a human life. And Ezra Klein chimes in that "There's a lot of focus in American politics on doing better things. But there's rather less attention paid to doing things better. If we change the process by which we pass laws, for instance, we might eventually arrive in a world in which we can actually pass good laws, rather than compromising them down to the point of maximum incoherence."

This strikes me as particularly important at a time when Congress is so sluggish and deadlocked that the regulatory process looks positively sleek and efficient in comparison. When I talked to the Chamber of Commerce for a story I was working on about the business community's agenda for National Journal a while back, one of the Chamber's vice presidents pointed out that the regulatory process was in some ways more difficult for them than a Democratic Congress. In Congress, there are filibusters, and holds, and the need for super-majorities. In the regulatory process, there are comment periods, and cost-benefit analysis, but there are many fewer obstacles for an administration to get what it wants. Under those circumstances, it's particularly important that good principles, rules, and processes be in place.

I ribbed Chris Edwards a little last week about the data he releases every year and uses that there should be a federal employee pay freeze. So I wanted to give him credit for breaking down the data a little further, and sorting out pay by industry. But I don't actually think that breaking out pay by industry answers the question Edwards' critics raise, which is that the most worthwhile comparison is going to be in pay by occupation.

Knowing that folks who work, in all capacities, in the oil and gas extraction industry, make more than federal employees in all occupations, or that people in rail transportation at all levels make less, doesn't actually tell us very much about factors relevant to compensation. Oil rigging is a dangerous job, so people get paid a lot to do it. But being an air traffic controller is also stressful, and a lot of people's lives depend on that job being done perfectly. Should the air traffic controller's pay get frozen on principle because the economy is bad and federal employee pay looks kind of high, at a time when aviation traffic is increasing, making moving traffic more complicated and higher-risk, and potentially requiring more overtime? Does knowing that oil riggers make a lot of money tell us anything about the appropriateness of compensation for federal managers? How should the increasing federal workload in many agencies--increased demand for food stamps, increased demand for oversight investigations, etc., be factored into our understanding of rising federal salaries? If the market should govern salaries, wouldn't it make sense for federal salaries to rise as there is increasing demand for federal products and services?

These are questions you need occupation-to-occupation comparisons to answer. I would love to see someone break out that data so we can discuss it. Hopefully, as the debate over the future of federal pay broadens, someone will.

We appear to be having some trouble with comments today, folks. If you're submitting stuff and getting error messages, could you send me a screen capture of the error along with information about your browser? I'd appreciate it.

It's always nice to hear about it when ordinary civilians have good experiences with civil servants. But it's even better when the ordinary civilian is the incomparable Maira Kalma in one of her pieces for the New York Times. Her lovely piece on immigration, including her impressions from a meeting with a Department of Homeland Security official, is a must-read.

American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage doesn't like the phrase "pay-for-performance," says he's asked the Obama administration not to use it, and that they've largely complied. As a reporter, my question to, and challenge for, folks who dislike the term "pay-for-performance" is this: what would be better?

As a phrase, "pay-for-performance" is the most efficient, precise way to describe systems that link job performance and compensation. It's a lot more words to say it any other way. It's not just a slogan, even though some people see it that way. I'd be curious to see actual research about what people think "pay-for-performance" means. If they think it means linking performance and compensation, that seems entirely reasonable. If they think it means linking performance and compensation and they're reacting negatively to that concept, that's another thing entirely. If they think "pay-for-performance" is code for any one of a number of concepts they view negatively, including efforts to hold down federal employee pay across the board, that's a separate issue, too. But in the absence of comprehensive research, it's hard for me to understand how the use of the phrase "pay-for-performance" actually affects the debate over compensation policy.

If there's a better, clearer, more accurate phrase to describe systems that link pay and compensation out there, and will describe what the administration is considering doing, I'll be interested to hear it. But as yet, I think there's no real replacement yet, and perhaps that's premature. I'll be interested to see how the rhetoric and language evolve as the administration's hopes for pay reform become more concrete.

Now that Paul Farmer's nomination to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development has been scotched, Spencer Ackerman reports that there are efforts under way by a group outside of government to crowdsource a candidate. It's kind of a crazy idea: after all, it's not a vetting process, nonsense suggestions could easily creep in, etc. But it's also a way of demonstrating that there's a constituency for candidates for the job that might not otherwise have been visible. And it keeps the conversation about the position going. That's something that most political appointment slots don't have going for them: folks don't even know they exist, so no one puts pressure on anyone to fill those jobs.

Tammy Flanagan's Retirement Planning column, up today, on the importance of communicating about retirement issues correctly, is eminently sensible. I'd just add that in a time like this, when people may be feeling especially vulnerable about their retirement, it's incredibly important to be both sensitive and clear. Obfuscation doesn't help someone who might genuinely have financial problems, but neither does causing them to freak out.

And on another note, I have no idea what the best way is to get people to start thinking about retirement savings at a young age, but I'd be curious to hear your suggestions. I'm always amazed by the number of my friends who don't have retirement savings accounts, and have no plans to open them, or even thoughts about doing so. I've often thought that colleges should be required to teach graduating seniors a life-skills course that includes financial literacy. Automatic enrollment in the Thrift Savings Plan will be a step forward for a lot of young federal employees, of course. But benefits officers need to do more than just passively offer information. I just don't know how they should start.

It's almost the end of the week, and it's August, so I think blogging about Elise Castelli's post on the future of the Hope Diamond is totally fair game. And I sure hope that Harry Winston isn't charging the federal government for putting the famous, and famously cursed, diamond in a new setting. Especially because, wow are those potential setting SERIOUSLY ugly.

The TSA Blog has the details on the next phase of the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.

Than to appoint my colleague at The Atlantic, James Fallows, who published a bunch of reader emails and observations on the agency this morning, to head the Transportation Security Administration. I kid, mostly, but I do think his readers' points about the frustrations, for example, about watching TSA employees walk through checkpoints with their shoes on, or their appreciation when the agency shows a sense of humor, are well-taken. TSA is ultimately as much of a customer service organization as it is a security one, and as a result, customers are always going to have slightly uneven experiences at checkpoints. But that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to rationalize policies that look unfair or arbitrary.

David Herbert has an exceedingly depressing dispatch up at NationalJournal.com about how the security clearance process is preventing interns from even starting their jobs at the State Department. This is disastrous for several reasons. First and most obviously, internships are a great way to find motivated candidates for permanent jobs, and if interns never get to start their internships, the State Department never gets to know them, and I can't imagine those interns will ever want to apply for permanent jobs at State. Second, the clearance process is a different part of a job application that most people won't experience but they go job hunting. But the perception that going through clearance requires an extraordinary amount of effort makes it harder to convince potential interns that it's worth even getting in the game. Herbert writes:

"It requires constant checking up and babysitting," said Buniewicz, who recently graduated from Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. While the State Department doesn't keep statistics on how many of its 1,000 summer interns experience delays, the department certainly accounts for it. Laura Tischler, a State Department spokeswoman, said bureaus accept more interns than they need, expecting that some won't survive the process.

Security clearances are important, there's no question about that. But the simple process of going through one shouldn't be a deciding factor about whether someone can make it into a job or an internship. State--and the federal government as a whole--need to develop resources commensurate to the clearance process's importance so the job can get done.

Obviously, the big news yesterday was the release of the final report by the Defense Business Board panel tasked with reviewing the National Security Personnel System. While it was a significant milestone, the end of a significant effort, and provoked a significant reaction, there are a couple of things I think it's important to think in mind.

1. This is not the end of the road for NSPS. It's just a road sign along the way. Ultimately, the decision about the future of the National Security Personnel System lies in other hands. The report isn't binding, and it never was. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn and Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry will be meeting and conferring about the system's future. Congress may move amendments to the Defense Authorization Act that could end NSPS. What's important is less the report itself and more how the report interacts with decision-making processes that are already under way.

Continue reading "Some Thoughts on the NSPS Report" »

Sen. Edward Kennedy's passing late last night means many things to many people. But I think for public servants of all stripes, whether they work for government or non-profits, or whether they volunteer, it's a sad moment. Kennedy embodied in many ways both the dedication and the complications of his brother's message of public service. It's obviously difficult to be an exemplar, and that burden was clearly something Kennedy struggled with in his personal and his public life. But he kept working at public service long after it was clear that he would never attain the glamour of the presidency, and through many devastating family tragedies, when he could have made more money, been the object of less frustration and argument, and been closer to his family by working in the private sector. One of his last acts as a Senator was to come to Washington, D.C. for the signing of legislation dedicated to promoting public service among Americans of every walk of life.

It's live, and available here.

More to come, obviously.

Which means that, once again, CATO's Chris Edwards is arguing that federal employees are overpaid because the average fed makes more than the average private-sector worker in all industries and job grades. We wrote about this last year, and talked to some folks who think the comparison Edwards does isn't actually useful or targeted. This year, Reihan Salam pushes back against Edwards' argument that there should be a pay freeze for federal workers, and calls for an evaluation of compensation on a job-by-job basis, though he does suggest that Edwards might be right about the benefits of federal job security.

By Elizabeth Newell

Today OMB released the mid-session budget review, which updates the administration's economic forecast and budget projections. The update significantly increases projections for future deficits. The Office of Management and Budget now predicts the deficit for fiscal 2010 will exceed $1.5 trillion rather than the $1.3 trillion previously projected. Deficits are expected to average more than $800 billion a year through 2019.

On his blog, OMB Director Peter Orszag said additional steps will, of course, be necessary for the administration to reduce out-year deficits and he promised that the administration would "have more to say about all that" in the fiscal 2011 budget. Among those steps, he said, will be a continued effort to reduce spending and reform government contracting.

A major overhaul of federal contracting practices would clearly save the government - and taxpayers - money, but even if the administration hits their target of saving $40 billion a year through contracting reform, that's only a fraction of the $917 billion annual gap between revenue and spending the administration is now projecting.

Over at Wired Workplace, Brittany, prompted by Harvard lecturer Robert Benh's commentary, raises a provocative question: does collaborative technology and teleworking help innovation or hinder it? I have to admit, I expected more from Benh's article, which is entirely anecdotal, and makes a couple of what seem to me to be weak arguments: first, that people need to be present in the same room to concentrate enough to innovate, and second that e-learning hasn't really taken off because instructors have a hard time teaching without students' visual cues to work against.

These seem like failure-to-adapt complaints to me, rather than legitimate indictments of using connective technology for innovative purposes. Sure, people sometimes mess around when they're on conference calls. But doesn't that indicate that the conference call is boring, or poorly structured, rather than that people inherently have no attention span? In addition, there are things you can do on a web chat, for example, that you can't do in an in-person meeting. You can share files, trade links, etc., all of which are extremely value both as reference points, and in a creative process. And you can still see each other if you're using something as simple as Gmail's video chat application, eliminating the missed-signals problem. As for e-learning, the argument that it hasn't caught on I think is both factually inaccurate and besides the point. Tons of people use e-learning for a variety of courses. If you can't teach without a live audience in front of you, that may be a constraint you suffer from, but it doesn't mean it's something that everyone can't do, or shouldn't do.

This argument seems to me to miss a point that I think is critical: you should use the technology and the setting that's best suited to your purpose. If you're working mostly with older people, relying solely on chat or videoconferencing doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're working with younger people, chat makes a lot of sense. If you're working on a multimedia project, meeting in a way that lets you access and share a lot of media quickly probably makes sense. If you're working with people who are far-flung, collaborative technology may be cost-effective. The point is not that collaborative technologies are the savior or the devil. They're just another tool in the arsenal. And until someone actually proves, rather than grumbles, that they're in some way distracting or unhelpful, they should be used when they're useful and appropriate.

Reihan Salam, over at his newish blog at National Review, has a very interesting post about his waning respect for former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and the recent brouhaha over the terrorist alert threat levels. Buried at the end, he has this important passage on evaluating the value of the alert system, something that's been discussed obliquely in the storm that's raging over Ridge's allegations that the system was politically motivated. Reihan writes:

How does one responsibly "score" something like a "threat level"? This is fundamentally a matter of political guesswork. And it's also about something we call "CYA." Ridge seems to believe that the Bush administration wanted the threat level raise to enhance the president's re-election prospects. But after the Bin Laden tape, many people believed that the Al Qaeda threat was real and potent. While Ridge claims that there was "absolutely no support for that position within our department," other administration officials clearly disagree. Moreover, the decision-makers were presumably mindful of the consequences of not raising the threat level and then facing a major terrorist attack. This is the reason why the threat level concept has always been utter nonsense.

I think this illustrates the difficulty of measuring the efficacy of many programs: you have different views of the desirability of programs, you have evaluative bodies that have politically appointed leaders, etc. It's really difficult, outside of the Government Accountability Office to even find ratings systems that focus on programs' workability, given how difficult it is to separate workability from desirability.

The New York Times notices that a lot of senior administration positions remain unfilled, and mostly blames it on the vetting process:

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

The story quotes Paul Light, a frequent source around these parts to explain why acting officials don't have as much authority, which, of course, makes sense: placeholders are always going to be reluctant, and rightly so, to institute dramatic change. But the authors don't consider whether the career officials holding those positions might actually be more than capable of doing them on a permanent basis. The vetting process is broken, but so is the system that requires the president to fill that many jobs, with no clear reason why those positions should be of the President's party. Obviously, it makes sense for individual administrations to want to set the general direction of policy. But you don't have to go that deep in an org chart to set that course.

By Elizabeth Newell

According to the Kansas City Star, Republican Sen. Kit Bond has been blocking the nomination of GSA administrator nominee Martha Johnson. We had been hearing rumors that a hold had been placed on the nominee but other sources said the vote on Johnson was just backed up behind other pre-recess priorities. The Star is reporting that Bond his holding Johnson's nomination as leverage in hopes of pressuring the government to approve a proposed project for a new federal building in downtown Kansas City. Bond and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri had protested a GSA decision to perform additional financial analysis for the project, I'd be extremely interested to hear if Sen. McCaskill is weighing in with Bond on the hold. We'll be looking into this.

In a memo earlier this week, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry urged department and agency heads to conduct focus groups with employees, and consult with labor organizations, to better understand where they are failing in employee satisfaction.

The memo was following up on an earlier direction from OPM for agencies to submit an action plan to OPM before Sept. 14 to improve employee satisfaction and wellness.

Berry said agencies should review the results from the 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey, identify the top ten areas scored lowest compared with other federal agencies, and take follow-up actions to see how those areas can be improved. Berry also asks agencies to focus on any areas which have fallen since 2006.

Press releases on the small business numbers released today are trickling in.

The American Small Business League, which has vehemently criticized the SBA's data for years, claiming agencies award small business contracts to large companies and the SBA intentionally fudges the numbers, sent a lengthy statement, which is no yet posted on their website but will likely be soon.

"Despite all of President Obama's pre- and post-campaign rhetoric regarding small businesses, the fact is that the Obama Administration is allowing approximately $400 million a day in federal small business contracts to be awarded to Fortune 500 firms and some of the largest corporations in the world," ASBL President Lloyd Chapman said. "The fact that the Obama Administration is awarding small business contracts to Fortune 500 corporations cannot be denied. It is irrefutable. I challenge anyone in the country to prove me wrong. In my mind, the Obama Administration is anti-small business, and we all need to stop listening to what they say, and start looking at what they do."

The SBA's scorecard causes controversy every year. The agency readily admits the numbers aren't perfect and have made a point to publicize efforts to improve the data. The scorecard -- like many stoplight-style rating systems -- has flaws and is based on federal contracting data, which in and of itself is often incomplete and or hard to digest. Nevertheless the agency seems to be putting forth a good faith effort to evaluate the government's progress in this area and make the results of those evaluations public.

Here is a statement from Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La.:

"While these numbers show seeing areas of improvement, there is still work to be done to ensure we meet our goal every year. The Obama Administration is working to improve the number of small businesses earning government contracts by increasing public knowledge over the next 90 days on federal contracting opportunities. The Small Business Committee will continue to monitor the number of small businesses receiving federal contracts over the next fiscal year as we fight to get small businesses their fair share of the billions of dollars in government contracts available. Small businesses, including minority-owned, women-owned and veteran-owned businesses, should be given the same opportunities as larger organizations because their employees work just as hard. While I am encouraged by these numbers, I still see room for improvement and I commit to working to improve these numbers for the next fiscal year and beyond."

The New York Times highlighted this study from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute, which found that although overall employment has plunged during the recession, employment at state and local governments has risen by 110,000--an increase at least in part due to the stimulus program. As private jobs decline and government jobs increase or hold steady, the overall percentage of Americans working in government has increased, according to the report.

This doesn't include federal employment--believe it or not, the number of federal employees in the U.S. is easily dwarfed by the number of state and local employees, at least according to the report's numbers. But it's still interesting. State and local governments can be feeders to the federal government, providing an easy access point for those who are interested in public service.

By Robert Brodsky

The Defense Department has released updated guidance to its contracting and program management staff regarding the posting and reporting of Recovery Act contract actions.

Shay Assad, director of defense procurement and acquisition policy, notes in the memo that:

• The usage of "acronyms and poorly written descriptions on modifications and award documents creates confusion on the types of projects receiving stimulus funds." Assad encourages officials to use "clear and concise language to describe the planned procurements;
• The reporting of project numbers is required in order to link projects with their corresponding contracts;
• Awardees must provide a Dun and Bradstreet, Data Universal Numbering System [DUNS] number;
• The use of funds related to multiple Recovery Act treasury account symbols on the same contract is forbidden;
• Contracting officers are encouraged to "perform due diligence when verifying the business size of the firms."

Sounds like the brouhaha du jour in Fedland is news about Xe--formerly known as Blackwater--and its involvement in the secret CIA program revealed earlier this year. The New York Times has posted another scoop on this story, reporting that Xe officials help prepare remote-controlled drones to target top Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed, it seems that private contractors--(in many cases, these were contracts with individual Blackwater officials, not the company)--have been involved in important intelligence operations at almost every level.

Most Americans probably look at this as a national security issue--and it is. But it's also an issue of human capital allocation. For instance, take a look at this quote from the NY Times article:

More than a quarter of the intelligence community's current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects.

"There are skills we don't have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for," Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.

For more opinion on how the current situation came about, you can check out our sister publication's Atlantic Wire.

Last week, I looked into the new electronic ways that private corporations are sorting through job applicants.

A New York Times piece highlights a new study posted by CareerBuilder.com about a practice which is on the verge of becoming standard: screening applicants' Facebook and MySpace pages, in the search of red flags. Nearly half of all employers are now scanning social media sites for red flags: not only inappropriate photos and drug use, but also dishonesty or revealing secrets about former employers.

Of course, some government agencies were conducting extensive background checks long before there was a Facebook. But I wonder if this sort of screening has become more common-place in the government, as managers look to hire in a more Web-savvy way.

From Ed O'Keefe at the Federal Eye:

A "small explosion" shook the Department of Health and Human Services building Thursday morning after a transformer malfunction, and authorities evacuated the building as a precaution.

Luckily no one was hurt, read the blog post here

Using that time-honored rhetorical tool--baseball analogies--Daniel Indiviglio over at our corporate cousin The Atlantic has some interesting thoughts about compensation in the financial sphere. No direct relation to government--but these are the types of issues which we often find ourselves running into.

Indiviglio responded to Felix Salmon and Jeffrey Pfeffer, who both assert that from a purely cost-benefit standpoint, it's not worth it for employers to use high salaries to lure talent from their competitors. Using finance as an example, Pfeffer, quoting a Harvard Business School study, claims that nearly half of the time, productivity plunges when the hire gets to the new job.

Indiviglio is skeptical of this claim, but basically agrees that often, if you're an employer, it's better to develop your own superstar talent, rather than try to hire someone else's. With homegrown talent, you know what you're getting. But if you still want to try to poach your competitor's stars, then it's better to have a structured incentive program rather than a fixed bonus, Indiviglio argues. Otherwise, your superstar might feel entitled to the job and not work so hard. (For Yankees fans out there, he uses this principle to explain why superstars like Alex Rodriguez should be paid per hit, not on a yearly salary.)

Government human resource planning may not be perfect, but the feds have invested a lot of time and effort into nurturing long-term talent. And at the same time, a lot of time and effort has been spent trying to make the system more nimble and rewarding in the hopes of nabbing private sector talent. Indiviglio's post is a reminder that these issues can be equally baffling to private organizations like banks (and baseball teams).

DHS, HHS and Commerce today announced new CDC guidance for employees on preparing for the upcoming flu season, particularly given the concern about swine flu/H1N1.

Agency officials said it is not known whether the swine flu will make for a worse-than-usual flu season, but the CDC is encouraging preparedness nonetheless. Employers' plans should encourage employees with flu-like symptoms or illness to stay home, address the potential for operating with reduced staffing and possibly having employees who are at higher risk of serious medical complications from infection work from home.

The CDC also recommends that employers encourage seasonal flu vaccination as well as the H1N1 vaccination when that vaccine becomes available.

The federal guidance also addresses the importance of common sense actions such as regular and frequent hand washing and routine cleaning of commonly touched surfaces. Unlike every cable news network, the CDC did not suggest employers force their workers to singe the Happy Birthday song twice while washing their hands.

To follow up on Alyssa's post from yesterday, a federal judge has dealt another blow to the possibility of government furloughs, according to the Washington Post. U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. ruled on Tuesday that Prince George's County's decision to furlough 5,900 of its employees was unconstitutional, because it violated the county's collective bargaining contract.

Legal wonks and gluttons for punishment can read the judge's 43-page decision here.

So furloughs as a cost-cutting measures aren't as simple as they sound, even with local governments. The decision has no direct effect on the federal government, but it adds another question mark to Richard Daley's proposal to give federal employees 15-day furloughs.

But this issue isn't going away. Over the next ten years or so, there's going to be a lot of debate about how to cut costs in the federal government, so expect to hear more about furloughs and other ways that state and local governments have saved money--including a four-day work week. (Hat tip to TNR.)

I'm out on vacation starting today, but Elizabeth Newell and Alex Parker will be filling in for me. See you next Monday!

I was at a great panel at the Partnership for Public Service this morning on the federal human resources profession and its future, about which more to come in a story this afternoon. There was a lot of substance, but if there was one overriding theme, I would say it was severe impatience. As John Palguta, the Partnership's vice president for policy, said "We've been talking about this stuff for 40 years." Human resources leaders want change, in the form of more people with different skills, different roles within their organizations, they want those things now, and they want to do them themselves without waiting for the Office of Personnel Management, which they acknowledged can play a significant role, but which has other responsibilities, and cannot micro-manage HR departments.

"At this point, if there's a renegade group, I'm ready to raise my hand and say hey, Thelma, join Louise," said Suzy Barker, the deputy chief human capital officer at the Labor Department, calling on her peers to "make this community one that's going to be resourceful, and useful, and relevant."

Jeff Neal, the chief human capital officer at the Department of Homeland Security seconded her, though picking a different model: "Apple computer, when they were developing a Macintosh, were flying a Jolly Roger, a pirate flag over the building where they were doing that," he said. "I think the HR community sometimes needs that attitude, that we're just going to deliver solutions."

Whatever the pop culture reference, it's clear that some human resource officers are ready to roll. If they actually get going on the difficult task of putting their own houses in order, it could be an interesting period for HR observers.

Ed O'Keefe dug into the question of whether or not President Obama has the authority to furlough federal workers yesterday. But Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's demand that "I hope every federal employee from the president all the way down takes 15 days without pay to turn that money back to taxpayers' use, because they're getting laid off, they're getting cut back, there are no jobs out there," really on its face doesn't make a lot of sense. Is it really a better deal for taxpayers to get 15 days less of federal services, and to have the money for that pay and benefits be channeled into...what? Daley doesn't specify what he wants done with that money, other than the standard "back to the taxpayers." But I'm not sure that whatever stimulative effect that money had would actually be better for Americans. If someone's disability claim gets delayed for 15 days, or it becomes harder for someone to get their passport to go on a business trip, or file a patent claim, or whatever, I'm not sure it's actually better for the economy.

Marc Ambinder has an interesting post over at The Atlantic about the Defense Department's decision to dip its toe in the ocean of social media. The specifics are interesting, particularly the misunderstandings (the Secret Service didn't know that the Department of Homeland Security had created a Twitter account for them), but I think this more general observation is both true and reflective of things we've been writing about social media here for a long time:

Effective Twittering can create the illusion that a senior government official is closer to the masses. And perhaps just as importantly, good Twittering can humanize decision makers. Government agencies are experimenting with the transformational media platform at their own pace -- especially those dealing with National Security. Twitter users tend to fit the "connector" profile, popularized from science literature by Malcolm Gladwell. They develop power and influence through building their personal and professional networks, aggregating and sharing information as they go along. It's a tempting elite audience to reach.

That's no more or less true for national security agencies than for any other government agency.

This example comes from a local government, but I think it has relevance for government at all levels. The District of Columbia Police Department has started a new tipline that allows people to text anonymous crime tips to the number 50411. The slogan for the tipline is "Give 5-0 the 411," with 5-0 being slang for the police, or a warning that the police are nearby (derived, of course from Hawaii Five-O), and 411 being slang for information. I can't decide if I think it's smart or lame. On one hand, the use of 5-0 acknowledges slang used by people who want to avoid the police, kind of co-opting the term. But does the slogan look like the police department is just trying way too hard to reach a group of people who maybe don't trust the cops?

I'm fine with government agencies trying to look relevant and hip if they're doing it right. But if they're not, if they're going to use outdated cultural references, or totally miss on an allusion, I sort of think it's better for government to accept it's squareness and just try to communicate efficiently and effectively.

I'll have more coming on today's Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board meeting later this afternoon, but for now, one tidbit stands out to me. Since automatic agency contributions to employees' Thrift Savings Plan accounts went live in the June 21 payroll cycle, the number of employee participants in the TSP has grown by about 100,000, almost a full year's-worth of increased enrollments. That's fairly dramatic. When automatic agency contributions went live, in other words, new accounts got opened for about 100,000 employees. Not all of those folks have made their fund elections, or started making their own contributions, but the board anticipates that those new enrollees will, at some point soon, do that. It's something of a dry run for automatic enrollment, when those numbers could increase even more substantially.

At Netroots Nation, the progressive blogosphere conference happening up in Pittsburgh this weekend, Bill Clinton says he has them about the Defense of Marriage Act and its impact on federal employee benefits. Clinton said:

"I didn't like signing DOMA and I certainly didn't like the constraints that were put on benefits, and I've done everything I could -- and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees."

September 15 will be a big deadline for seeing what agency heads think they can do to change policies that impact gay and lesbian federal employees. Beyond that, it's up to Congress.

The dispute between the National Air Traffic Controllers and the Federal Aviation Administration over the failed 2006 contract negotiations was the first story I covered for Government Executive, so it was interesting to see the story come almost, if not entirely, full-circle yesterday with the announcement of an agreement between the two parties, which will be ratified by NATCA members and subject to final review by the agency. The story's not quite over yet, but it does seem like a dynamic I've covered for three years is finally moving on to a new phase.

The story's also interesting because part of the agreement was mediated. The panel of mediators was chaired by Jane Garvey, who headed the FAA before Marion Blakey, who imposed the infamous pay and work rules on the controllers, did. And to a certain extent, the mediators' decision (we have the full set of documents up here) is Garvey's chance to pronounce judgement on her successor. And did she ever. The decision calls Blakey's pay rules "unprecedented draconian reductions in compensation, bordering on the unconscionable," and calls the working conditions "remarkably traumatic." It's very stark.

But I imagine I'm still going to have a story to cover. The mediators noted that the relationship between the union and the agency wouldn't agree on everything automatically. They're already disagreeing on whether it was appropriate for the agency to suspend an air traffic controller who was on duty during the Hudson copter crash. I don't think this is the kind of incident that's going to bring the bad old days back, or anything. But I think it's a sign that NATCA and the FAA have a ways to go before they fully understand each other. And I'll be writing about it as they figure out what's next.

It was in more-in-exhaustion-than-in-anger that I read Foreign Policy's account of a significant report from the State Department's Inspector General on the sad state of the Bureau of African Affairs. It's awful to hear that things aren't going well, and I can imagine that African postings might be more difficult than many to fill. Elizabeth Dickinson writes:

[The report] cites inadequate staffing, declining morale, lack of qualified job candidates, and a failure to mentor young officers as key shortcomings. "There is no bureau that is more difficult to staff overseas than AF," the report reads. OIG attributes the difficulty to perceptions about the poor quality of living abroad and insufficient hardship or danger pay. Hence, positions in Africa often remain vacant or are filled with candidates without the necessary experience. Meanwhile, demands on embassy staff have only ballooned: "Embassy platforms are collapsing under the weight of new programs and staffing without corresponding resources to provide the services required," the report says. There is, for example, just one financial economist and one international economic position mandated within the bureau's economic team, rending State "an unequal partner in discussions" with other U.S. branches and multilateral institutions.

But the idea that this problem only extends to the Africa Bureau, or that this is a relatively new problem is a somewhat dangerous assumption.

Continue reading "Same Old Song" »

I was talking to Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service yesterday, about the creation of a hiring preference for some military spouses. One question I had for him was how this preference, which the administration decided to move forward with, was different from abolishing time-in-grade, which the administration backed away from citing the need for a more comprehensive reform process. Max said the following:

There is a very targeted need that [the hiring process] is addressing, which is the enormous stress placed on military families, and there is a public policy imperative to do something in the here and now. It's not dislocating. The problem with getting rid of the time-in-grade rule now [is that] t would require a wholesale review of existing personnel and training of managers, and all kinds of dislocation....[The hiring preference] doesn't have that broader dislocating effect....At the end of the day we do need a rationalization and a simplification of our system, but in the meanwhile, this is quite understandable.

I'm interested in this using-the-master's-tools-to-tear-down-the-master's-house approach. If the hiring system is a mess, create so many loopholes in it that it looks like Swiss cheese, thus making it easier to hire folks in the short term, and making the long-term case for reform, because hey, the system needed all these exemptions to be made to work! Time-in-grade becomes a philosophical issue, I think, rather than a procedural one. There's a consensus that the hiring process needs to be reformed. There isn't a consensus that promotion should be easier and based on a more subjective process. So it makes sense to move forward with changes to hiring rules, but not to promotion ones, if this is how you're approaching personnel reform, period.

The New York Times has the first of a two-part series out on the psychologists who helped design the Bush administration's interrogation program, and as I wrote on Monday about Xe/Blackwater, it's really not clear that the two men who designed the program were actually qualified for the jobs they were given:

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.

Once again, totally irrespective of whether you think the interrogation tactics used by the C.I.A. on prisoners were torture, or justified, it seems astonishingly unwise to have chosen people with those scant qualifications to design an interrogation program at all.

By Robert Brodsky

From the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board:

At 12:01 A.M. on August 17, 2009, www.federalreporting.gov will go live and recipients of Recovery funds will be able to register as the first step in the reporting process mandated by the Recovery Act. Simple registration should take approximately five minutes if recipients already have a DUNS number and CCR number . For more information on the pre-requisites for registering, visit FAQs .

Registration will continue through September 30, 2009, with reporting officially beginning on October 1, 2009 through October 10, 2009. For a preview of the guidance and forms associated with reporting, see recipient reporting information .

Federally Employed Women announced today that they've signed an agreement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to work together on issues surrounding the recruitment, retention, and career opportunities for women within the agency. This isn't the first such memo that FEW has signed with an agency: they put a similar agreement in place last fall with the Agriculture Department's Food Safety Inspection Service. I'd be interested in seeing how FEW's efforts, and EEOC's participation in this memorandum, interact with the broader morale problems at EEOC. I haven't seen any data suggesting that women at EEOC feel particularly demoralized or overworked or stymied in advancement, or anything like that, but that may simply be because no one's been asking questions in that direction. Given that EEOC is hoping to staff up over the next couple of years, this seems like a good opportunity for FEW to advance some of its goals during a hiring surge.

Alex's article yesterday has me wondering whether the Roosevelt Scholars Act will pass either house of Congress this session, much less become law. The bill seems practical and focused, and unlikely to spiral out of cost control: there will be a limited number, but probably still substantial, of people who both are willing to take on the public service required to get the money, and who are studying in the designated fields. Obviously we'd need a cost score to see what the actual price would be, but the bill ought to establish a reasonably targeted pipeline into some federal occupations.

But I also wonder how the bill is going to interact with other legislation affecting federal employees. After a burst of activity: bills introduced, bills dissected in committee hearings, bills passing out of committee and even bills passing the House, things slowed down as we approached recess. The two big bills, at least as I see them, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act and the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, haven't been touched by the Senate yet, leaving me wondering how they rank on a long list of priorities for the relevant lawmakers (who, admittedly, have been spending a bunch of the time they might have spent passing federal employee-relevant bills confirmed federal employee-relevant nominees.).

And as debates over health care and climate change heat up both in the House, which has done substantial work on both, and the Senate, which is much further behind, I fear that federal management bills will be some of the first to slip off the legislative cliff. I could be wrong. Things could get passed because lawmakers want to accomplish things, or because the White House pushes for something that looks like an easy win. But it would be a shame if, after a promising start to the legislative session, this one ends up resembling so many that have gone before it.

Apparently, Craig Fugate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency head, is hanging up his old Twitter handle. While I suppose it makes sense for him to harness the larger following and coordinated messaging of FEMA's official Twitter feed, and to work within FEMA's extant and already impressive social media efforts, I kind of regret the loss of a social media effort that an agency head started himself. It's a good model to have agency leaders actively and personally engaged in this sort of thing, so it's too bad Fugate is stepping away from it.

By Alex Parker

There's been some huffing and puffing lately about government agencies--and the military--restricting access to some social networking sites. But one local government has a more permissive approach. According to The Washington Examiner, Montgomery County (Md.) employees will now have access to Facebook, the incredibly popular social networking site. But in order to try to keep unnecessary use of the Web site down, the county government will keep track of each employees Facebook use--and will create a list of the top 25 (ab)users of the privilege.

How to regulate Facebook--and Twitter, and ESPN.com, and the countless other Web sites loved by procrastinators--can be a tricky question for a manager. In my first reporting job, access to sites like Facebook and MySpace was blocked, but the block was eventually lifted. I never asked why, but I assumed it was because someone realized those sites could be invaluable tools for a reporter -- a great way to track down a subject or get breaking news.

And, as government agencies increasingly use social networking to promote their missions, banning them from use may become impracticable.

How are social networking sites handled in your office?

I admit to spending a fair amount of time thinking black thoughts about the difficulty of creating a pay system that will work for 1.9 million-odd people, the difficulty of communicating about federal pay to the general public, and the difficulty of figuring out, in an empirical and fact-based way, what kind of pay motivates people and how much it motivates them. So I admit that it makes me kind of happy to see that, once again, sturm und drang is gathering around Wall Street compensation, particularly for the firms whose pay plans are subject to Kenneth Feinberg's approval. The things the firms are saying sound awfully familiar:

For a short time, banks had stopped offering guarantees, after the financial crisis turned their profits into losses and as Washington began to scrutinize their use of public money. But now, with banks apparently rebounding after two consecutive profitable quarters, some have resumed the practice, arguing that such bonuses are needed to attract and retain top performers.

Some of the biggest bonus commitments are being made to bond sales staff workers and traders in currencies and derivatives, and to computer programmers and others who support those operations. Trading has been the main source of the banks' recent profits.

The first firm or agency that can prove that its compensation system is actually "needed to attract and retain top performers" should probably get to go ahead with said system. Otherwise, that phrase and its variants are in danger of becoming meaningless.

Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent has an important piece out this morning on the fact that the private security firm Xe, nee Blackwater, is going to bid to renew its contract providing protection for State Department diplomats. The government's response to this intention seems, at best, slightly incoherent at this point. Spencer writes:

A spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which manages the WPPS contract, said he could not answer TWI's questions about the department's relationship with private security companies in Afghanistan by press time, although he said he hoped to provide responses later this week. Representatives of U.S. Central Command, which controls U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, referred questions about the military's coordination with private security companies in Afghanistan to the State Department. Spokespeople for the U.S. military command in Afghanistan did not reply to requests for comment about its relationship with private security companies.

On Friday, CNN obtained a letter penned by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urging the secretary "not to enter into further contracts with Xe and to immediately review any existing contracts." As a senator and candidate for president, Clinton pledged to ban private security firms from contracting with the government, but reversed herself at her confirmation hearing to become secretary of state in January.

I'm not sure I'm really in a place to determine whether or not the State Department should or shouldn't be using private security firms, especially given that the military doesn't consider diplomatic security as part of its purview, so I'm not entirely sure what the alternatives would be. But it seems undeniable that the incidents that Xe/Blackwater has been involved in, including the Nisour Square shootings, and the lack of accountability for Blackwater employees involved in other killings, should be factored in as part of an evaluation of Xe's performance. For an assignment like diplomatic security, keeping diplomats safe and alive is important. But avoiding huge disruptions to the environments in which those diplomats work has to be part of the job as well. If Xe can't avoid those disruptions, it's not clear that the company can actually do the entire job State is hiring for.

Brittany Ballenstedt scored an interesting interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark on the subjects of federal IT, social media, and technological generation gaps in the federal workforce. He's simultaneously an optimist and a realist, which I think is an intriguing combination--he tends to portray people my age as civic minded (which I think is frequently true) but he's fairly clear-eyed about what he sees as the limitations of government. Go check it out.

The Senate is heading out of town, a week after the House, and while may of the majority's priorities, like health care reform and a climate bill remain unresolved, Senators knocked off a whole bunch of appointments by unanimous consent. Among them, Julia Clark and Ernie DuBester, who will become general counsel and chair of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. I'd imagine their nominations moved so quickly because of bipartisan concern about the state of the agency, which has shrunk dramatically over the last 8 years while acquiring a backlog that, if not more impressive than those at Social Security or EEOC, is considerable given the size of the agency and the limits of its mandate. August may be a dead time in DC. But it's probably as good a time as any to assess the agency's needs, and prepare a list of things that Congress might be able to help with to be ready come September.

I wrote about this in my column this week, but it's something that that I've been thinking about more and more, both because it stuns me, and because I think it's a significant obstacle to building any sort of public support for major government management reform. To me, something like knowing that Medicare is a government-run program seems very basic. I'm not saying people are wrong for not knowing it, but whether your health care is run by the public or private sector seems like a first-order-of-business fact, even before you get to questions like premiums and the extent of coverage. If there is, in fact, a substantial number of Medicare recipients who don't know that the federal government runs their health care, and I think that's something that still remains to be proven, that situation would raise serious questions. Does the government not make it clear that Medicare is a public program? Does the government have an interest in allowing people to believe that Medicare is a private program? That would seem somewhat self-defeating, since people seem to like Medicare, but maybe there's a concern that people would opt out if they thought they were participating in a government program? (That seems unlikely to me too.) In any case, this meme seems like a case study in figuring out what the government does or doesn't communicate, and whether it communicates effectively about its operations. And those questions seem critical to answer if the Obama administration wants to build public trust in government agencies, and a case for their support and reform.

(Update: Sorry for the typos on program titles, guys. Fixed.)

By Robert Brodsky

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has declined to comment directly about the Government Accountability Office's upcoming report on the Defense Contract Audit Agency. But, in a statement Thursday to Government Executive, it's clear the chairman is not pleased with the watchdog's latest findings.

"Since our last hearing on problems with the DCAA, the agency has made some improvements, but serious problems remain," Lieberman said. "Across DCAA, many audits have fallen short of professional standards and the agency needs to impress upon its employees that their ultimate responsibility is to the U.S. taxpayers. Our Committee will have to consider what additional changes are appropriate to ensure the integrity and independence of DCAA audits, including legislative changes if necessary."

Sonia Sotomayor has just been confirmed to the Supreme Court, 68-31. I kind of like that Al Franken presided over the Roll Call vote.

I have to say, I felt a weird convergence between pop culture and government management today as I sat in this morning's hearing on the dismal financial state of the Postal Service. I don't know if any of you are indie rock fans, but in 2003, Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello recorded this amazingly melancholy album under the name The Postal Service, and the loneliness of their song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" seems about right for the depressing tone of the hearing:

Matt writes that "I'm not really sure what the long-term future of public sector mail delivery really is in a universe where snail mail is less-and-less a core element of our communications apparatus," and that specter certainly loomed over the hearing today. There's no question that use of the mails is down substantially, although the Postal Service certainly isn't helped by the $5 billion-plus it has to pay towards the future cost of retiree health care it has to pay every year until 2017. It looks like that obligation will be alleviated somewhat by Congress this year, just so the Postal Service can stay afloat, but there are a lot of questions about route reorganization, downsizing, office closings, elimination of Saturday delivery,flat rates, and other things the Postal Service can do to make itself leaner and more relevant.

But I'm pretty sure we're always going to want--and need--a Postal Service. As long as there are birthdays, rural areas without great broadband access, poor people without computers, prisoners, legal documents to be exchanged, people we want to surprise, a cross-country market in used comic books and KitchenAid blenders, etc., we will need to send things through the mails. The Postal Service is established in the Constitution, and since then, no one's come up with a way to beam gifts, business supplies, or certified documents from one place to another, no one has solved inequity problems that make the mails vital for certain communities, and no one has found a way to replace the pleasure of getting an unexpected or long-awaited letter, addressed by hand, and with the stamp on just a little bit crooked. For business, equity, and aesthetic reasons, the Post Office, in some form, will have to survive.

Ashley Judd is getting her MPA at Harvard's Kennedy School. Does this make her the first celebrity public administration expert?

Laura Rozen reports that Paul Farmer is out as a candidate to run USAID. That seems unfortunate, especially if it was mostly a problem with the vetting process. There are legitimate questions to be asked about whether Farmer would have made the best agency manager in the world, but there's no question he would have offered a very different model of leadership, and I still think that could have been a good thing for USAID and for the government as a whole.

Joe has a good comment on my post about gendered management yesterday:

If there were a comprehensive, rigorous study that examined performance outcomes of teams led by people of different genders and "proved" that, across industries and workplaces, managers of one gender or the other produced substantially different performance results, would that justify differences in hiring, recruitment or management assignments? What if the result were that men were significantly better managers? The facinating question for me is what would be the EEO implications.

It's a good point, because it demonstrates that performance is really only part of a package that most of us tend to want in the workplace. Obviously, we want things to function well, but we also want a workplace that's somewhat reflective of us, too. And it's uncomfortable to consider that those things might not be compatible (I'm not saying they definitely are not, there certainly isn't enough evidence on that score to make a determination).

The Nation reports:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

A debate that began in the New York Times last week over whether women make better managers has spilled over into a full-on blogospheric kerfuffle, with some folks arguing that the assertion that women are better communicators is discredited pop science, and others arguing that because it's hard for women to get into management positions, the ones who get there have to be better at the job than their male counterparts.

From what I can tell, a lot of the research that both sides are relying on in this debate examines how workers feel about their bosses. Do people of both genders prefer working for a male or a female boss? Do they feel like they get different kinds of feedback depending on the gender of their manager? Do they feel like women are more likely to stick with troubled projects and take time to right the ship? Do men come across as more quick to judge? All of these questions are very interesting, and they certainly are part of the equation that makes someone a good manager.

But I'd be very curious to see a comprehensive, rigorous study that examines performance outcomes of teams led by people of different genders. If someone could prove that, across industries and workplaces, managers of one gender or the other produced substantially different performance results, I'd be fascinated to see it.

One of the things I've thought about over the past couple of years is how to create the correct measurements to capture the actual, relevant data agencies need to measure their performance. And it amazes me how frequently metrics that seem obvious can obscure a problem. For example, if agencies are hiring acquisition officers away from other agencies, those transfers shouldn't count as new federal employees. Sure, they're new to the agency, but they're not actually a measure of how may acquisition officers an agency is finding from outside the government. Or, if Inspectors General actually want to measure their output, perhaps it should be required that they track how many of their recommendations agencies actually implement to the end stage or address fully?

Laura Rozen, over at Foreign Policy, reports in on the long wait for Paul Farmer, head of the Third World health organization Partners In Health, to be tapped to head the U.S. Agency for International Development. Anyone who has read Tracy Kidder's excellent, highly readable 2003 biography of Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, can see how Farmer might be, um, complicated to vet, since he lives a fairly nomadic existence, has been scathing about U.S. policy towards the third world, etc.

But I think it's interesting to consider for a moment what kind of manager Farmer might be like if he survives a vetting and confirmation process and ends up at USAID. Certainly, he would be like few other government appointees anywhere, ever. First off, there's the work ethic question. Kidder describes Farmer as a guy who sleeps four or five hours a night, can sleep anywhere, and travels hundreds of thousands of miles a year, and skips across continents every month. In other words, he's someone who wouldn't have to ramp up his work ethic to take a government job; he probably could slow down, and might even be forced to, because he'd be required to be in Washington a certain amount of the time simply to administer the agency and attend meetings.

Second, Farmer is THE model of an inspirational leader. He takes an incredibly difficult task--working incredibly long hours, for incredibly poor people, sometimes in incredibly poor working conditions, for not very much money--and manages to make people excited about and devoted to the work. In a way, Farmer might have an easier sell at USAID, where the salaries are probably larger than they are at Partners In Health, and the resources available are larger. But I also think that Farmer would be able to recruit people who are inspired by him to make significant and substantial sacrifices. And I think it would be an interesting test case for that kind of leadership model in a federal agency. Most department and agency heads are rib-rock competent people, but they're not necessarily fire-starters. Kathleen Sebelius seems like a very nice, very smart person, but she isn't necessarily the kind of person who inspires other people to throw over their life plans, question their priorities, and go work in impoverished Peruvian communities to combat highly infectious multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis. Farmer is. Maybe his enthusiasm and the bureaucracy of USAID would clash horribly. Maybe government needs those competent but less firey people who can work the system. But Farmer's presence at USAID could be a useful model to examine to see how far a leader can shake up a bureaucracy, and how far he can inspire people to make things different.

The Telework Exchange has declared August 3 Telework Day. In practice, I think such declarations can be a little goofy. There are simply too many days dedicated to too many things for any single one of them to stand out in public awareness. But this one has a little something extra: Virgina Gov. Tim Kaine signed up, and so some state employees are participating, and the state, the Telework Exchange, and Telework!VA will release an after-action report on the experience. That strikes me as more useful. It's an observance that generates both data, and provides an experience for managers and employees who might not have had it otherwise. It goes beyond an attempt to draw public attention to create a case for action in the future.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association's election for president of the union ended, or perhaps resulted in is a better phrase, in a somewhat surprising result: a split decision between Paul Rinaldi, the current executive vice president, and Ruth Marlin, a former executive vice president. There will be a run-off between the two of them to see who will succeed Pat Forrey, who was defeated in his bid for a second term. When Forrey was elected, it was a clear shift in style from his predecessor, who had taken a combative approach in the union's dealings with the Federal Aviation Administration, which ultimately imposed pay and working conditions on the controllers after declaring contract negotiations deadlocked. I'd be curious to hear more from our controller readers about what you think contributed to the tie in the election, and how you think a switch in leadership might shift NATCA's course.

The election did result in one decisive result: Patricia Gilbert, who chairs NATCA's Legislative Committee, will be the union's new executive vice president.