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Marc, my colleague up at the Atlantic, who is one of the best, clearest, and most unbiased reporters in the business, notices that a bunch of career Justice Department officials have been given important leadership positions. And he writes:

The distinction between political appointees and career staff is one that the general public often misses. The political appointees come and go, and the career staff -- the dreaded bureaucrats -- keep the department running and serve as institutional memories and consciences. At the highest level of government, the Bush national security team didn't trust the DoJ career staff. The Obama Justice Department's decision to retain at least three long-time Justice Department national security officials -- and to name them as part of their leadership team -- suggests that, when it comes to national security law -- still a largely uncharted legal territory -- the Obama administration values the experience of people who have been there -- even if they were there when many controversial things were happening -- even though the retention of these employees will subject them to the allegation that the Bush folks are still in charge.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

By Elizabeth Newell

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved the nomination of Danny Werfel to be Controller of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Financial Management. Committee chair Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. said that, as deputy controller and acting controller, Werfel "has demonstrated his commitment to improving the financial management of the federal agencies and is a well-qualified choice to lead OMB's efforts in this area." He said Werfel should be confirmed by the full Senate, and quickly.

That's something the State Department's Hometown Diplomat program does in a smart way. One foreign service officer describes his experiences going back to his old high school here. This strikes me as something, if there is a reasonable, rational way to get it into the curriculum, a lot of departments should be doing. Having public servants visit high schools both puts a face on government, and puts someone with subject-matter expertise in the classroom. Having someone from the Agriculture Department talk about the Dust Bowl, or from the National Nuclear Security Administration talk about physics, for example, would all be totally intelligent, interesting, and rational ways for high schools and government agencies to benefit from each other.

According to the Washington Post, the Smithsonian Institution will be offering buyouts to all of its employees, including the 4,000 who are federal workers. The buyouts will be for as much as $25,000.

The Office of Personnel Management says that most of the increases are driven by simple increases in the cost of claims, but they're embarking on a big review to see what they can do to bring down the increases in future years. More details to come.

By Robert Brodsky

Seems like the administration is ready to make some noise in appointing an administrator of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget.

As first reported this morning by Chris Dorobek of Federal News Radio, Obama appears ready to appoint Daniel Gordon, the deputy general counsel for the Government Accountability Office, as OFPP administrator. Four other extremely well-connected sources in the procurement industry have confirmed the Gordon rumor and each expect the pick to happen.

Gordon is certainly not your typical OFPP pick, which in recent years has tended to focus on academics or contracting attorneys, generally with private sector experience. Gordon doesn't fit the mold, having spent the past 17 years with the GAO. But, he undeniably knows procurement, serving first as a senior attorney in the GAO's procurement law division working on bid protest cases; he later went on to head the division from 2000 through July 2006.

While an OFPP pick with an oversight background might sound scary to contractors, private industry sources who have dealt with him in the past say he's well respected, substantive and fair.

One caveat, though. We have heard multiple OFPP nominee rumors in recent months, running the gauntlet from top procurement officials in the state of Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, to think tank leaders and your assortment of contracting attorneys [we heard that many were eliminated from consideration because of potential conflicts of interest.]

But, Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients did tell my colleague Elizabeth Newell last week that an OFPP pick was coming soon. No word back yet today from OMB.

If Gordon is the choice, he will have his work cut out for him, implementing the administration's contracting policy memos. I wrote about the challenges awaiting the next OFPP administrator in the August edition of Government Executive Magazine . Obviously, we will stay on this story and keep you updated as word trickles out.

Apparently there was some confusion about whether the Office of Personnel Management is staying in the business of projecting federal employee retirement rates. One story said they were getting out, the agency says they're staying in. But who is doing the forecast isn't really the point. How it's being done is. The Office of Management and Budget has explained recently that forecasting retirements has become more difficult, and that more people close to retirement age are staying in the labor force. The complications come both from long-term trends towards working later in life, from the decimation of retirement accounts in the economic crisis, and from unemployment trends.

The thing is, I'd imagine there is a way to model these trends. It's not as if data doesn't exist on retirement rates in prior recessions. It's not as if we haven't had a recession (even if not one of this magnitude) since the Great Depression. I'd be curious to hear more about the models and variables that groups like Pew, the Partnership for Public Service and OPM are using, and where their models are running into trouble. One of the things Peter Orszag did at the Congressional Budget Office before leaving to run the Office of Management and Budget was to soup up the office's modeling and prediction capabilities; maybe they've got some ideas about how to predict federal workforce fluctuations?

Steve Ressler, the Homeland Security Department employee behind GovLoop, a federal social networking site, announced today that he's selling the site to email alert provider GovDelivery and leaving DHS to manage the site full-time. I'm happy for Steve, of course, but it strikes me as too bad that he has to leave government to do this. Initiatives like Intellipedia may still be in the relatively early stages, but the federal government has a clear capacity for and interest in social networking technology. It seems to me like it would have been great if DHS could have been a home for GovLoop but opened it up to state and local governments, functioning as a kind of grand-scale online fusion center. And that's only one way the system could have played out. Maybe government just isn't there yet, but it's an intriguing alternate vision.

Do they ever. After Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce Subcommittee, complained that he'd been targeted by Transportation Security Administration workers because he voted against giving them the right to organize, the American Federation of Government Employees, one of two unions that represents TSA workers, fired back in a sharply worded press release. First, they say Chaffetz chose to use an optional line that used a more advanced screening machine that Chaffetz has objected to in the past, instead of choosing to get in line for a normal scanner. Second, they say the screener was working with a supervisor, ensuring that proper procedures were followed. And third, the union argues, "The TSO who administered the pat down had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, and did not recognize the freshman congressman," making him an unlikely target for retaliation.

Kudos to sharp-eyed commenter W, who noticed that there's an opening listed on USAJobs for the Director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. So if you want to live out your NCIS fantasies, definitely get in line. Just make sure you avoid getting killed because you failed to kill your half of a pair of Russian lovers, or wasting your time getting overly obsessed with a French arms dealer, okay? For the ladies out there, sadly access to Mark Harmon isn't listed as one of the included benefits of the gig. And the job is being BRACed to Quantico in 2011, so be prepared for a commute.

Members of Congress get heat for unpopular votes all of the time, but Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, thinks one group is trying them where it hurts--their travel arrangements.

According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, Chaffetz--who sits on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform--thinks he may have been singled out for additional screening by Transportation Security Administration officers due to his vote against H.R. 1881, which would have allowed those employees to unionize. The TSA is investigating an "incident" between Chaffetz and a TSO at Salt Lake City International Airport on Monday. For more info, check out the story.

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Yosi Sergant, a public relations specialist, has resigned from the National Endowment for the Arts after organizing a conference call that seemed to inappropriately recruit artists to create works specifically in support of Obama administration policies. This seems unfortunate for several reasons. First, the whole narrative perpetuates the exhausting and unproductive Glenn-Beck-Versus-the-Obama-administration dynamic that ignited over Van Jones and at this point seems destined never to burn itself out. Second, and more importantly, the debate continues the politicization of the NEA. That politicization has worked in many directions, whether it's complaints that the NEA is supporting inappropriate or obscene work, etc.

But I think it's equally counter to the NEA's mission to try to commission explicitly political work. Some artists make political art. Some don't. The NEA should be giving out grants based on need and merit, and nothing else. I think it's dangerous to tie financial incentives to art's politics and political message, not simply for the government, but for the artistic integrity of the artists seeking the grants. Whether Sergant's actions violated the Hatch Act is one thing. But it also seems like he took a step in the direction of bad artistic policy.

But Bones is still the best show about federal employees on television. I was a little worried about the show after the last season, which was uneven at best. But it's back! And last night had a security clearance joke, a reference to the CIA wall of honor, and arguments about information-sharing in the intelligence community! I still wish they'd get out of the intelligence-military-law enforcement triangle, but I'll take what I can get, especially when it involves unresolved romantic tension, snarkiness, and the best take on adult nerds in the business.

Specifically, Reginald Jones, a former commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and labor lawyer, has just been tapped to lead the Office of Opportunity and Inclusiveness at the Government Accountability Office. Given that GAO's pay-for-performance system ran into major trouble on the grounds that it discriminated against minority workers, prompting the agency to bring in an outside auditor to study the problem and to take a range of other actions to remedy it, this is an appointment to watch.

"I am very pleased we were able to recruit someone of the caliber of Reg Jones to manage this important office," Acting Comptroller General (speaking of which, when are they going to make Dodaro's appointment permanent or replace him?) Gene Dodaro said in a statement announcing the move. "He will report directly to me and also provide counsel on key initiatives as well as our diversity and human capital programs. Our goal is to ensure that every GAO employee has an opportunity to reach his or her full potential in support of the agency's mission."

By Elizabeth Newell

Chief Performance Officer and OMB Deputy Director for Management Jeff Zients told us today that a nominee to head OMB's Office of Federal Fiscal Policy is coming within the next few weeks. Zients said they are making "lots of progress" finding the right person for the job. Robert Brodsky wrote a piece for the magazine in August on the importance of the position. We'll let you know when we hear more.

I'm at the Telework Exchange Town Hall Meeting in downtown Washington, DC today, where Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra are both speaking about the importance of telework today. Each of them has had what I think are key takeaway points in their remarks this morning. From Berry:

When you think about it, the president is really the teleworker in chief. He's connected wherever he goes. Yesterday's a good example: New York City in the morning, Pittsburgh in the afternoon, and Washington at night. While the president has a little bit of a unique position, and everyone can't have all of his communications gear, the technology is catching up to that.

And from Chopra:

What I do not wish to accept is that the conversation ends at "we have security concerns, let's not proceed further on discussions of telework." Let's go about our business to find solution to those problems. We are hungry to bring the private sector's best practices into our operations, to as much as possible remove the barriers. There are a wide range of technologies both existing and emerging that would help to move the ball forward in many of these circumstances.

In other words, lack of technology shouldn't be a barrier. If agencies need to upgrade, they need to upgrade. But that's a fact of life (and in fact, something federal agencies have an opportunity to do through regularly-scheduled computer upgrades), not an insurmountable hurdle.

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry gave me this statement about the death of Census worker and teacher, Bill Sparkman, found hanged in Kentucky:

"I am shocked and saddened by the death of Census worker Bill Sparkman. On behalf of the federal family, we give his loved ones our deepest condolences. While the full police report is not yet in, the initial reports are very disturbing and we will be following developments closely."

And the Associated Press is reporting that "fed" was written as an epithet on the victim's body. I'll have more thoughts on this as the story develops, but for now, my condolences to Bill Sparkman's family.

By Elizabeth Newell

A prominent industry group is concerned that a provision in legislation aimed at ACORN might have broader implications for contractors. TechAmerica released a statement today opposing a provision which would effectively debar any federal contractor indicted for filing fraudulent information with the government, without waiting for the final verdict on the charge.

"It is already a crime to file fraudulently with the government, and we wholeheartedly condemn such actions," said TechAmerica President Phil Bond, questioning whether legislators intended for contractors to be among the organizations effected by the provision. "Talk about unintended consequences, this language could put a company out of business without regard to actual guilt. All contractors are asking for is simple due process - the opportunity to defend themselves in court against an allegation that could well be false."

Bond said TechAmerica has no position on the broader ACORN legislation, which the House voted last week to add to student loan legislation under consideration by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The specific language the association opposes prohibits any federal agency from awarding a contract to any organization indicted for filing fraudulent information. Under current law, a contractor could already be debarred if convicted of that crime.

Like many things in Washington, the debate about whether legislators should--or can--read every word of every piece of legislation they ever vote on is conducted mainly in abstraction. So I appreciate that the Washington Post in an editorial today actually quantified the problem:

The average college graduate reads about 300 words per minute. Assume that there are about 150 words per page of legislative text, a number we derived from counting the words on a few randomly chosen pages from the Waxman-Markey energy bill. To read all 1,427 pages of Waxman-Markey, it would take at least 12 hours -- tough on a tight legislative timeline. And that assumes that lawmakers can read complex bills at the same pace they do a John Grisham novel (we tried -- it's not even close).

Still doesn't sound too daunting? Consider that in the 110th Congress, the House of Representatives dealt with 7,441 bills and joint resolutions. Not all were as long as Waxman-Markey is -- the average length of laws that the 110th Congress passed was 16.7 pages. Assuming that passed bills were roughly the same size as those that didn't pass, House members would have had to read about 125,000 pages in the last session to get through every bill proposed. And that doesn't even count the 1,978 House concurrent resolutions and House simple resolutions, nor any of the amendments or the different versions of individual bills lawmakers must consider.

Now, I read extremely quickly: 900-page novels are a six-days-in-my-spare-time project, if I'm concentrating hard. But that reading load sounds daunting to me. This seems like another argument in favor of plain-language bills that are extensively and interactively footnoted. If we could save lawmakers from having to wade through references to subparagraphs of old bills and the U.S. Code, they might be able to read, and understand more. I'm not saying we should demand that everyone read everything: that's what staffs and advisers are for. But making the task of wading through legislation easier for everyone is just good sense.

Al Kamen says the Obama administration's pace of appointments has slowed considerably, putting the president behind his predecessor both in folks tapped for top jobs and people confirmed. There's no question that both the young administration and the Senate are busy these days, and I can understand how dealing with an appointment might seem like less of a priority than major legislation. But appointments are the priorities that make other priorities possible, they are a necessary, underlying condition. And the administration and Senate will let that issue coast at the peril of their policy priorities.

I thought the New York Times profile of Defense Secretary Robert Gates this morning was useful (And not only because I always enjoy seeing shout-out to procurement reform in mainstream news outlets.) both in explaining in how Gates has shaped policy on a wide range of defense-related issues, and in showing how having to serve two very different administrations has shaped his positions. I don't know that there's a case to be made for having certain cabinet positions be term appointments that cross administrations. I do understand the need and the desire for presidents to be able to shift policy that that level, and shifting those positions from appointments to terms would be complicated and restricting. But I think Gates' experience speaks to the value of people who are able to make good policy in multiple administrations. There aren't a lot of people who have the credibility to be chosen by one administration and be retained by another from another party, but it does seem like it would be good to be able to draw on that sort of accumulated wisdom and experience.

Just a reminder to everyone that the Combined Federal Campaign has kicked off. I know that a frequent question I got, and heard other people getting, during the food drive sponsored by the Office of Personnel Management this summer was whether folks could give money rather than lugging in food donations. The answer was no, because the CFC is the only real vehicle for financial donation through the agencies. But OPM has more details about CFC giving up here.

The Transportation Security Administration gets maligned frequently for some of its sillier requirements, like requiring people to take off their shoes to shamble through security lines. But the agency also does some smart things, like this multi-airport pilot that lets folks bring up bar codes on their smart phones and scan them through at security checkpoints and boarding gates, rather than requiring them to print out paper tickets at home or at the airport. TSA is always going to be caught between competing security mandates and customer service imperatives, an extremely complicated set of opposing values to navigate. And it's even more complicated because TSA is one of the agencies that has a lot of contact with the public, and has that contact at a point when people are impatient, nervous about missing flights, etc. Under those circumstances, it's surprising to me that the agency manages as well as it does, and that more often than not, the TSA officers I deal with are helpful, respectful, and patient with me even when I'm not always feeling patient with them. Are there folks who are rude, deliberately slow, etc? Sure. But it's a huge organization with a very complicated mandate, and all in all, it's trying to move that mandate forward. I give them a lot of credit for that.

Greg Sargent over at WhoRunsGov watches (okay, reads through) the Sunday shows so I don't have to, and comes away with the following observation about President Obama: "It's hard to avoid the conclusion that he's still not quite engaging the eternal American debate about government, and could be making a stronger, more affirmative case that government has often been a force for good in people's lives.That, after all, is what Obama believes. It's what this whole debate is really about. It's a case that Obama has the rhetorical chops to make. Why not stake out a stronger position?"

It's a good question. I think one answer is that in part, the job of making that case has been farmed out to intermediaries like John Berry, who are making more specific cases for respect for certain parts of government. But it does seem like an odd--and potentially problematic--political strategy for a president whose agenda relies on the idea that people will trust the government, whether to run a public option, or to help produce green energy.

If you've noticed that comments are getting posted a little more slowly than usual, my apologies. We've been hit by a flood of spam, and it's taking me much longer to wade through it to post the stuff that's real. Hopefully this will subside soon. In the mean time, please keep posting.

Rebecca Neal notes that Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are developing a pilot for Fox about Internal Revenue Service employees that casts them as underdogs, and has hired a writer who has done work for The Office to write it. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this.

First, it's fantastic that two very successful Hollywood figures are seriously pursuing a show about federal employees that isn't about law enforcement officers or the military. Not that those categories of federal workers don't deserve attention, but in a world where we're about to have an NCIS spin-off, I think we can agree that the market is maybe a little over-saturated. Bones is one of the only shows that portrays federal scientists, and so any diversity in the portrayals is a net positive. I'm not necessarily sure about the choice of the IRS as the agency, if only because it's an agency that a lot of people already know exists, so it doesn't broaden public understanding of the kind of things government does. But given misconceptions about tax collection and the use of taxes, it could be useful for debunking falsehoods and humanizing the agency.

Second, I'm a tad worried about the choice of writers. The impulse to treat federal employees as deserving underdogs is a good one. But I'm concerned that the writers behind The Office and the producers behind Arrested Development won't be able to resist making them look deluded, even if their intentions are good. That has always been my concern with Parks & Recreation: that even if the folks involved are goodhearted, they look like like fools precisely because they care passionately about the process of governing.

We won't be able to tell until we get to see that pilot. But even if the project is a failure, I think the fact it's being taken seriously and attempted is a good thing.

So, Matt Yglesias doesn't think very much of the way David Ignatius is approaching the question of how CIA operatives who break the law should be punished. It's a politically interesting, and important, debate to be having. But it's also extremely far-removed from the operational questions at hand: who orders CIA operatives to take illegal actions? Who sanctions compliance with those orders? What happens to people who refuse? What mechanisms exist to punish people who break laws against orders? All of those little checks and balances within individual agencies, and within individual intelligence officers, are critically important. I understand why people have the meta-level debates, truly I do. Questions of national character are not to be taken lightly. But if we're concerned about how these things happen, we have to know how they happen. There have been dramatic stories about struggles within the Justice Department to evaluate and get people to sign off on certain interrogation policies, but they're really only about that first question in the chain of events.

At last! After a run-off, the union announced yesterday that Paul Rinaldi, the current vice president, will be the air traffic controllers' next leader. He'll have the interesting task of implementing the union's next contract with the Federal Aviation Administration, and repairing a deeply fractured relationship between the agency and the controllers.

You know, if you were going to spend $6.5 billion building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and performing all sorts of upgrades to the technology Border Patrol agents use to patrol the area, you might want to have some sort of measurement of whether or not that money is buying results, right? According to a new Government Accountability Office report, not so much:

The deployment of 661 miles of tactical infrastructure projects along the southwest border is nearing completion, but delays persist, due mainly to property acquisition issues. In addition, per mile costs, which had climbed substantially, are now less likely to change because contracts for the 661 miles of fence have been awarded. CBP plans to complete 10 more miles of fencing using fiscal year 2009 funds, and fiscal year 2010 and 2011 funds are to be used primarily for supporting infrastructure. A life cycle cost study has been completed which estimates deployment, operations, and future maintenance for the tactical infrastructure will total $6.5 billion. Despite the investment in tactical infrastructure, its impact on securing the border has not been measured because DHS has not assessed the impact of the tactical infrastructure on gains or losses in the level of effective control.

Now, I know the project isn't finished, there are a lot of factors at work, etc. But you've got some of the fence built. Might be worth having some numbers on hand to explain whether or not it's working, especially if your costs are rising. Just a thought.

There's been a lot of discussion in mainstream news outlets about the outrage Republicans and conservative commentators have been whipping up about President Obama's czars. The Democratic National Committee actually released a web ad demonstrating that President Bush appointed plenty of czars himself:

And the Washington Post noted this morning that Russ Feingold, an unquestionably liberal Senator, has written to the White House to ask President Obama to justify his use of the appointments. I actually think this is an entirely reasonable position. The czars may not be evidence of some nefarious power-grab by President Obama. But it doesn't mean that the appointments are a good idea from a managerial perspective. Just because they've become a habit, doesn't mean they're a good, or effective one.

By Robert Brodsky

It looks like business is about to pick up on the oversight front at the Defense Contract Audit Agency. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the beleaguered agency on September 23 asking the relatively simple question: who is responsible for reform at DCAA?

Few details are yet known about the hearing but expect the release of a follow-up report on DCAA auditory concerns by the Government Accountability Office and possibly a report by the Defense Department Inspector General on reports of retaliation against whistleblowers and harassment of agency auditors.

Government Executive reported exclusively last month that the GAO had found widespread deficiencies in audits conducted by the DCAA. Investigators examined 37 audit reports issued between 2004 and 2006 and found problems with every single audit.

Expect DCAA critics to cite the report as further proof that the agency is in disarray and that management needs to be replaced. And, expect DCAA leadership to cite the timeline for the GAO investigation--which date back almost six years--and how the agency has made most of its major reforms in the past year.

The recent findings are reminiscent of a July 2008 GAO report , which sparked the first contentious hearing last September of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee . Don't be surprised to see fireworks again.

Al Kamen has a smart look at the problems that have prevented the Obama administration from finding someone to head the U.S. Agency for International Development. While vetting challenges have been blamed for the failure to get Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer into the position, Kamen says that the problems go beyond one process and one individual:

But there's an increasing feeling in the foreign aid community that the leadership required to rescue a long-sinking ship is not going to be easy to find. As one observer noted: "Anyone smart enough to do the job is smart enough not to take it," especially when it's unclear whether USAID will be part of the State Department, as Clinton prefers, or whether it will be an independent, Cabinet-level agency, as many aid experts advocate.

If there's one area of private-sector corporate compensation that really makes sense to me, it's the large rewards for people who genuinely turn around failing companies. I'd be curious as to how management reform in the federal government can best be incentivized. I've long thought this was a significant problem for political leadership at agencies, but I can't think of a good solution anyone's proposed for rewarding political leaders differently. Most of the discussion about pay and other incentives focuses on rank-and-file federal employees and stops around the level of the Senior Executive Service, but that conversation may need to extend upwards.

Brittany has a post up at Wired Workplace that I read with interest this morning, on the role the internet, and more specifically our internet personas, play in job searches and recruiting. I'm not entirely surprised that the web tends to be used as a weeding-out mechanism rather than as a place where companies find fresh talent, though I'd imagine that varies by industry. If you're a writer, the web may be a good place to showcase your talent if you're having a hard time getting published in mainstream outlets, whereas it might be less useful for, say, a human resources official to really demonstrate what they do online because of the complexity of the process and because of confidentiality issues.

I do wonder, of course, about the extent to which embarrassing yourself online is a phenomenon that marks a generation gap, and whether it's actually going to be a feature of our society, or rather a passing phase. I know that as I've grown up, even before I entered the working world, I felt a vested interest in cleaning up my online persona, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a common reaction. I don't think younger people are clueless about the impact that things like drunk or naked pictures can have on their reputations (starlets with sex tapes aside, I don't think a lot of ordinary folks are parlaying humiliation into careers). Rather, when you've grown up on the internet, it can seem like home, like a much smaller, controllable place than it actually is. Realizing the truth might take a while, but I think it's a lesson most people inevitably learn. And I think adults who aren't actually digital natives get themselves in plenty of trouble online too, whether oversharing about their children on baby blogs, or, in the case of one former critic from The New Republic, posting comments in support of his own work under a pseudonym and getting caught at it.

Essentially, our lives on the internet are relatively young, no matter how old we are. Collectively, we haven't figured out what they should look like, and what the expectations are for how they'll be judged. I think it'll be interesting to watch the internet's role in hiring evolve, but I think it's going to be a long time until that code of conduct reaches maturity.

Despite previous indications that he was considering a run, it looks like Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., won't be running for Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat. So I guess we won't be losing him as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, at least for the time being.

Elizabeth Newell, reporting from yesterday's Commission on Wartime Contracting hearing on the scandals in State Department security contracts at the Kabul Embassy, writes:

Since awarding the contract to ArmorGroup on March 12, 2007, State has issued seven deficiency notices addressing 25 deficiencies, one cure notice and one show-cause notice. Each notice demanded separate correction action plans to resolve contractual issues and several involved serious allegations, including that the contractor had deceived the government in its contract proposal.

That's pretty remarkable. And it raises the question of what someone has to do to lose a State Department contract. I know that's a rhetorical device, but when it comes to judging performance, it's an important one. Giving someone a failing grade is meaningless if you're going to practice social promotion anyway. Deficiency notices have to carry meaningful consequences.

I'm intrigued by President Obama's decision to nominate Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Given that she helped draft the Americans with Disabilities Act, I'd imagine she'd bring the same level of knowledge and commitment to the issue that Christine Griffin did during her time at the EEOC. And her work on gay rights issues will provide her with an additional perspective, particularly at a time when the Obama administration is expanding benefits for gay and lesbian federal employees. For all the hullabaloo Senators made over Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark during her confirmation hearings this summer, the Justice had a point: people who have different life experiences do see and interpret things differently. The EEOC is a particularly good place to have those multiple perspectives so the Commissioners can challenge each other on their assumptions and explain to each other their interpretations of situations.

Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a presentation the team that runs their AgLearn online learning program was giving for a visiting Chinese delegation. It was my second dip into the world of Chinese public administration. Admittedly, neither of those dips have been incredibly deep: when you're in China as a journalist, as I was last year, you don't exactly advertise the fact, and I was visiting an academic public administration program at Tsinghua, rather than a Chinese equivalent of the Office of Personnel Management or the Office of Management and Budget. But in both cases, I was struck by the desire to look to the United States as a model. When I was visiting Tsinghua, the students had a lot of questions about how the federal government does performance management, framed as if the U.S. was the model, rather than a flawed system. And this presentation at USDA was clearly organized by the World Bank because AgLearn is considered the best, or at least most comprehensive, e-learning system in the federal government.

I spend a lot of time interviewing people who think the American federal government is poorly managed, or could be managed better. But most of those people are operating within the framework of that government, or operate with the federal government as their framing device for setting standards. So it's always interesting to me to step outside of that framework and try to understand how the federal sector in the United States looks to people working in different systems. Given the extent to which questions about what other countries are doing shape other public policy questions ranging from health care reform, to the use of international judicial precedents in Supreme Court decision, to urban planning, it's always been a surprise to me how little comparative conversations enter into discussions about public administration. McKinsey, the consulting firm, has done some work (registration required) along these lines, but it hasn't really percolated up to any hearings or conversations with high-level administration officials I've had over the past couple of years.

There are areas in which comparative discussions might not be particularly useful. Civil service corps operate in very different ways in different countries, incentives operate differently in countries with controlled economies, like China's, than they do in the United States. But if the Obama administration is going to ask very broad questions about the right way to measure the performance of federal employees and the right way to pay them, it may make sense to throw open the range of possible reference points and to go beyond comparisons to the private sector in the United States.

It's always strange to me when someone thinks that a subpoena or a request from a federal agency just doesn't apply to them or isn't something they have to comply with. But apparently, the head of a health care company called ShoreKare thought he could do precisely that with a couple of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoenas, and got hauled into court by Federal Marshals because of it. And he's going to have to reimburse the EEOC for the cost of using said marshals. I'm sure there are any number of reasons he thought this was okay; the subpoenas were administrative, so maybe he thought they didn't have legal weight? Maybe someone in his office received the subpoenas and thought the EEOC didn't have jurisdiction, or something? Either way, it takes a staggering lack of knowledge or fairly deep-seated contempt not to comply with such requests and to end up in this situation. It's too bad the lesson that the EEOC is a authority whose requests you have to comply with had to be delivered in this particular manner.

Rob Brodsky pointed out to me this morning that the Washington Post has shuttered its Government, Inc. blog. Now, from a competitive standpoint, it's probably good for us that the blog is going away. But I'm always sad to see an outlet disappear, especially when it's looking at waste, fraud and abuse issues. There can never be enough scrutiny of procurement and the use of taxpayer dollars: the volume of material and transactions is simply too large for any single reporter or publication to analyze alone.

Over at Wired Workplace, Brittany's been writing about the fact that older workers are staying in the workforce longer. I've always thought that the long-term impact of the recession would work in two directions. First, people who were close to retirement and whose retirement savings were catastrophically impacted would work longer, or would struggle if they were retired already. Second, people who were entering the workforce, or early in their careers, will face a narrowing of opportunities. This might have some good impacts, eliminating lucrative finance jobs that became a default option at some elite colleges, teaching some of us whippersnappers a little patience. But for folks who can't find that first job, I imagine it's extremely difficult.

Barbara Cummings' post on DipNote about her experience mentoring students through the State Department's Diplomat in Residence program, suggests an instructive model for how other agencies might profitably reach out to college students they'd like to recruit. The Diplomat in Resident program is a win-win: the college gets an on-campus resource, and the department gets access to a target pool of candidates and the chance to place some people in an academic environment. This seems like a program that other schools could model very easily. USDA could set folks up at places like Cornell's Ag school and Texas A&M, Justice could have a U.S. Attorney rotation at law schools, etc. Sure, it would require some small sacrifices in manpower to send talented people out on these rotations. But in a world where career centers are shrinking, and recruiting at elite colleges (at least pre-crash) has been taken over by finance and consulting firms, it seems a small price to pay to send a couple of dedicated people out into the field.

It is both indecent and unintelligent that the Coast Guard decided to stage an exercise on the Potomac near the site of September 11 memorials at the Pentagon. Unless there is an extremely compelling reason why the exercise needed to be performed today, someone is going to have some very embarrassing explaining to do. As Sen. George Voinovich said in a statement:

"I am extremely concerned about the report of a Coast Guard training exercise being conducted on the Potomac River as September 11 memorial ceremonies were in progress nearby at the Pentagon. The anxiety caused by this situation on such a solemn day is extremely disturbing. I look forward to hearing from Secretary Napolitano about the decision-making process leading up to today's events. It sounds very much like the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing."

Updated: I may have overreacted a little. Jen writes in comments:

While it may not have been the best decision to hold a training event today at that location, calling it indecent is ridiculous and insulting to the USCG. The USCG had alerted all area officials and just because the media didn't stop for half a second and check their facts doesn't make this event disrespectful. This is the alarmist media looking for something negative to report. Shouldn't they spend their time today reflecting on our country and respecting those who defend it?

A couple of thoughts: "not the best" is an understatement. Unless there is a substantive rationale for doing this exercise on September 11, this seems unnecessary. Alerting area officials isn't the same thing as alerting area residents and businesses, where the people who might get upset and confused work, including the folks who defend our country at the Pentagon. I still think there's some explaining to do, but "indecent" is probably an overstatement.

I was reading through the Washington Post's interview with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and this paragraph caught my eye:

We have a ways to go in terms of information-sharing, partnerships with state and local law enforcement. I think we have some things that we can do better in terms of explaining to the American people why some things are the way they are . . . particularly in the travel environment.

I'm curious as to what that indicates about Napolitano's assessment of the fusion centers.

I have to admit I'd never thought much about the planned headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security until yesterday, when I visited the Patent and Trademark Office's campus in Alexandria. I work, as most people do, in a fairly ordinary office building (albeit one with historic provenance!) and so I've never really supposed that there were substantial alternatives. But the PTO campus is great!

The Madison building is light and airy. There's an attractive park running through the middle of the campus, with plantings, pillars that I'm told light up at night, and a fountain with what looks like a fullerne in the middle of it. The cafeteria, gym, and childcare center were all bright, attractive, and colorful. The whole place, in other words, looks like someplace you'd want to work, irrespective of whether you're a patent attorney or an intelligence analyst. It was a nice reminder of the importance of space. DHS is never going to get all of its employees in one place, but it should make its headquarters a place they want to come to, and do the best it can to have its offices around the country be attractive and comfortable. It doesn't necessarily cost more money to have red fabric than blue or gray on cafeteria booths, but I bet the impact of little changes like that on morale can be considerable.

So, I watched President Obama's speech last night, and while I'll leave the political prognostication to others, there was one substantial omission in the speech that I want to look at a little bit. Obama explained in detail what his proposal for health care reform would do, and provided a scenario for how he would pay for it. But he didn't talk about how it would be done. Are we going to have a new agency? Are existing federal employees going to be expected to do some of the tasks that would be required under the current plan? These aren't minor questions. They impinge on Obama's ability to do what he wants to do, and the cost at which he wants to do it. From the text of the speech, these are the tasks that seem like they'll have to be performed:

1. Make sure that insurance companies are complying with the new rules that bind them, including covering preexisting conditions.
2. Manage the health care exchanges that will offer insurance to those who don't currently have it.
3. Issuing tax credits to low-income purchasers of insurance.
4. Somehow "immediately offer[ing] low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill." (This is the part of the plan that I think most needs to be explained administratively. Is there a deal with a company in the works? A program set up by HHS that could start functioning immediately?)
5. Enforcing the mandate to purchase insurance.

Those are all substantial tasks that will touch far more than the 40 or however-many million Americans are currently uninsured, and it's going to take a huge amount of work to make it happen. I'm genuinely unsure as to whether it would make sense to consolidate all of these functions in an independent agency, or one that would be overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. At minimum, this is going to require a huge number of man-hours, and I can't see those work-hours coming out of existing federal employees' time. These tasks are too specialized and too large to just be slotted in somewhere. I think the question of not just what would happen, and not just what it would cost, but how it would happen is an important one, both politically and operationally.

(First, sorry about the slow blogging today. I've been out and about doing interviews.)

Apparently, the Forest Service saw fit (though changed its mind) to put out a Labor Day warning suggesting that Tecate drinking was an indicator that said drinkers might be drug traffickers camping out in national parks. Profiling is a questionable practice in any case, but this is really, really stupid profiling. Tecate is my cheap beer of choice, and I certainly am not smuggling herb over the border. It's hip enough to have found its way into Hellboy II: The Golden Army. It is not a useful indicator of drug trafficking activity.

First off, calling folks czars is foolish. It's an outmoded name, without outmoded connotations, and using that term obscures the actual functions of the people who hold these extra-agency positions. It also creates the impression of extreme power where very little might exist; it's a distorting name.

Second, there are situations in which it seems appropriate to bring in someone who can work full-time on a problem that is limited in duration. Reorganizing the auto industry? It makes sense to bring in someone with special skills to oversee a special team of employees probably detailed from other agencies to do the job, and leave, so the task doesn't become permanently embedded in the bureaucracy.

But it's not really an appropriate way to bring in advisers who might not survive the confirmation process, or who don't have a particular task. I've never really understood the rational for having an Urban Policy czar, for example. If Presidents are appointing czars because they worry about the capacities for departments or agencies to get things done, that's a rationale for examining and addressing existing management problems, not ignoring them and throwing together ad hoc organizations instead.

Marc Ambinder has a smart, clear post on what the ouster of Van Jones, President Obama's green jobs adviser, who resigned over the weekend after making intemperate remarks about Republicans and the revelation that he signed a 9/11 Truther petition. Obviously, there are a lot of political lessons to be drawn from Jones' downfall, and many people are drawing them, in many directions. But what's most interesting to me is the lesson about what people know about government. As Marc points out:

Jones was a mid-level adviser on green energy issues. He was not a critical player; he had no budget authority, nor access to classified information, nor direct access to the president's ear. He wasn't a "czar," although it seems as if the White House was OK with the label as long as admiring environmentalists were applying it....The administration hasn't withdrawn the nomination of Cass Sunstein for an important and powerful OMB post, nor did they ask Rosa Brooks to leave the administration when she was subject to loud criticism, nor have they stopped fighting for Dawn Johnsen's nomination to be the key legal adviser in the Justice Department. Or Harold Koh, who is now the State Department's chief legal adviser. Or John Holdren, the chief science adviser, who thirty years ago wrote dispassionately about abortion as a method of population control. Actually, when it comes to defending administration officials in key positions who make daily contributions to policy, the Obama White House defends its own pretty well.

In other words, the political lessons that get drawn about Jones' resignation will be distorted because of an outsize sense of the role that he played in the administration. But because folks don't actually know how important--or frankly, unimportant--Jones was to the administration, they'll treat his ouster as a triumph or a tragedy, rather than as the relatively minor personnel decision that it seems to have been.

Commenter Will Hettchen writes the following:

You have a note that if contractors don't follow "cultural standards" that their contracts should not be renewed. That seems a little vague for contract language or selection criteria. While I don't condone the reported behavior, I am not sure we have all the facts on what happened. I want to hold contractors to the terms of their contract - no more and no less. If we start throwing vague standards of cultural sensitivity, then we make the contractor selection process more arbitrary, not less. If I was in charge of monitoring that contract, the issue I would focus on is the report of 14 hour shifts. If those were a frequent occurrance the contractor should have been asked to correct that per the terms of their contract. Off-duty drinking parties may be offensive, but I'm not sure how you write contracts demanding that the contractor only hire confirmed saints.

I agree with most of the sentiments here, with a few exceptions.

1) There are cultural norms, and then there are cultural norms. I don't necessarily think that contractors should have to assimilate perfectly, everywhere. But when they're guarding diplomats, who are attempting, as a very basic part of their mission, not to offend the sensitivities of the people they work with, I think that having some basic rules governing the most important cultural norms that need to be observed is a reasonable part of a contract, especially in places where violating them could egregiously damage the diplomatic mission.

2) Contractors don't have to be saints. But they should have to abide by basic rules about hazing and harassment.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia and an outspoken advocate for federal labor unions, is apparently ready to throw his hat into the ring to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. According to the Boston Globe, the legislator from South Boston has taken out the paperwork to run in the January special election.

Lynch -- whose mother worked for the Postal Service and who was president of the Massachusetts Ironworkers Union before going to law school -- has strong ties to federal worker groups, and has been involved in many of the recent fights in Congress over federal workforce issues, such as domestic partnership benefits and whether Transportation Security Employees can wear face masks to protect against the swine flu.

For more about Lynch, you can read Alyssa's profile of rising lawmakers who are focused on the federal workforce.

First Tom Ridge said the color-coded terror alert system had been politicized. Then he said it hadn't. Now Michael Chertoff is saying they definitely hadn't. I know it's important to figure out if the program was misused, but at this point I'm more interested in finding out if they had any demonstrable effect on anyone's behavior at all. If it turns out they're just useless, we can get rid of them and have the political arguments later.

By Robert Brodsky

The Project on Government Oversight has learned that one of the whistleblowers who helped expose the guard scandal at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has been forced to resign. The whistleblower's company, RA International, is a Dubai-based food service provider at Camp Sullivan, the base where guards from the private security contractor, ArmorGroup, North America, lived and where much of the alleged debauchery occurred.

According to POGO, RA International "came to believe that [the employee] had reached out to D.C. for assistance" in regards to the behavior of some of the guards. The worker had been responsible for taking the statement of an Afghan national who alleged that he was accosted by an ArmorGroup supervisor in a dining hall several weeks ago.

RA International reportedly told the employee that he could resign or be fired - meaning that a notation would be put in his file citing his dismissal, potentially hurting his future employment opportunities, POGO said. The whistleblower reportedly agreed to resign.

POGO said that it has documents backing the employee's claim that he was forced to resign. The company, however, told the watchdog group that the resignation was voluntary.

A United States phone number for RA International does not appear to be in service and efforts by Government Executive to reach the firm were not successful.

Documents obtained by POGO show that RA International lists ArmorGroup as a client. It is not clear, however, if RA International is a subcontractor to ArmorGroup.

POGO is calling on the State Department to "take immediate action to protect both the physical and employment security of whistleblowers who have stepped forward with allegations of serious misconduct involving ArmorGroup, North America."

Human resources officers, ready your resume. Jeff Neal, the Chief Human Capital Officer at the Department of Homeland Security just announced that his office will shortly be posting 50 vacancy listings for folks to work in HR in DHS headquarters in Washington. Want to play a role in turning the massive department around? This is a perfect opportunity. And Neal said DHS's component agencies are on the lookout for sharp HR people as well.

By Robert Brodsky

The Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has banned alcohol from Camp Sullivan, the nearby living quarters for private security guards from Armor Group North America. Allegations and lewd photos surfaced this week of Armor Group personnel, who are assigned to guard the embassy, engaged in frat-house style behavior, including hazing, forced nudity and more than a few other descriptions not fit for a family publication.

The guards will also apparently have company on the base. An embassy spokeswoman confirmed that after a meeting between Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and embassy staff today, it was decided that State Department Diplomatic Security staff would be assigned to the camp.

The State Department Inspector General is investigating the allegations against Armor Group and the company could potentially lose its contract and face suspension or debarment. Looks like it's going to be a bad hangover for Armor Group.

Following up from my post from yesterday on the fact that the debate over government's "goodness" in the political sphere has become entirely detached from agencies' actual functionality, Partnership for Public Service president Max Stier said this morning at the National Press Club that the debate over government's size is similarly unhinged from reality. He said:

It's not growing like crazy, and it's not a real problem. This is little-known information, but we're looking at a government headcount that, even after these hires will be no larger than it was in 1967. We're looking at a government that hasn't grown, and in fact has declined for a long time. The percentage of the workforce that's in the federal workforce has declined.

I always wonder about folks who grumble about big government. I can understand people wondering if government ought to be doing everything that it does. But if it's a simple reality that government is involved in a lot of spheres, doesn't it make sense to give government the resources to do those things well?

The awesome Naval recreation of "I'm On A Boat" has been yanked from YouTube. Spencer Ackerman speculates as to why. I'm mostly just bummed. I hate when my irrational optimism that something that's both hip and good for government might be allowed to survive gets quashed.

Over at The Plum Line, Greg Sargent argues that the Obama administration has gotten itself in trouble by being pushed off the ground where it's strongest--making the case that government is a powerful force for good--and instead has become mired in the weak argument that government won't do bad things to citizens. What's entertaining about this is that there hasn't been any sort of assessment or look at how things are actually running under the Obama administration; there's no replacement for PART in place, no red-yellow-and-green stoplight system, we're still a ways away from some major management checkpoints. In other words, the question of whether government is "good" or "bad" has finally reached the point where it operates on two vastly different levels, a political one and an operational one. And the political one appears not to remotely need the operational one as a reference point.

The Project On Government Oversight's report, which Robert Brodksy delved into yesterday, on severe--and juvenile--misconduct by the contractors who provide security to diplomats in Afghanistan is pretty shocking in its puerility. As I've written before, and as I'll continue to say, the ability to not be culturally disruptive and to maintain basic standards of discipline should be essential qualifications for contractors. If they can't meet them, they shouldn't get contracts in the first place, much less see those contracts re-upped. It seems to me that there could be a whole bunch of money to be made by security contractors who could run their people professionally and maturely. Renewing the contracts of those who don't ends up being anti-competitive, reducing the potential rewards for people who can do the job right.

In a brief item this morning about the number of Latino appointees in the Obama administration, Ed O'Keefe raises what I think is an interesting issue: when you're creating a monitoring system to track Presidential appointments, who do you include? The Post doesn't include U.S. attorneys or ambassadors, he notes, and I also couldn't find any listings for some of the appointed chiefs positions in the Head Count database either. I can understand why the Post focuses mostly on the confirmation process. But given that U.S. attorneys, ambassadors, etc., are vetted, even if the vetting for someone who has to get through confirmation is different, it still seems to me that they take up a reasonable amount of the White House's time and ought to be included as a result.

Alright, I'm officially declaring it pop culture day on FedBlog, given the amount of attention that's coming to the White House's announcement that the administration is teaming up with Sesame Street to fight a resurgence of H1N1. I'm always interested in the cultural figures the federal government regards as honest brokers, and it's a little bit funny to have high-ranking government officials refer to Sesame Street characters as if they're real people, like when the White House releases a statement quoting Education Secretary Arne Duncan as saying "Having Elmo and our friends at Sesame Street help get that message out there will be a tremendous help." While it might be necessary to preserve the fiction that the show's characters are real in, say, a television appearance, I'm not sure why it makes sense in a news release that no kids are likely to read.

As I wrote more than a month ago, the season of reviews is underway across government. And the folks overseeing the Homeland Security Department's review did something smart, flagging on Twitter questions and suggestions that they need more people to rate and discuss. I've always thought that it was only a first step for agencies to use social media to reach out: the real power of social media lies in its power to selectively solicit information and services.

WARNING: THE VIDEO THAT APPEARS BELOW CONTAINS A LOT OF (HUMOROUS) OBSCENE LANGUAGE. DON'T CLICK ON IT UNLESS YOUR BOSS HAS A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR, YOU HAVE HEADPHONES, OR YOU'VE GOT AN OFFICE WITH A DOOR THAT CLOSES.

All right, warning out of the way. A group of young Naval officers recently produced a fairly uproarious parody of "I'm On A Boat," a sort of humor-rap video by the group The Lonely Island (original video here), which includes Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg. The video is a shot-by-shot recreation of the original, and it makes pretty witty use of Navy imagery:

To me, the video's the best, funniest recruiting ad for the Navy possible. The guys in the video are pretty amazing lip synchers, they're funny and loose, and the song turns into a defacto endorsement of Naval service. That said, it's solidly in the viral universe, it's decidedly NOT the sober advertisements a lot of the service branches uses to recruit. And over at the blog of the U.S. Naval Institute, there's a vigorous debate going on as to whether the video is appropriate.

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