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I was reading through OPM Director John Berry's speech at the Human Capital Management Forum yesterday, and while most of it's his fairly standard stump speech, two things stood out to me. First, Berry said:

Next, before the year is out, I hope to introduce recruitment and hiring reforms that will make us more aggressive in our outreach to the best potential candidates and more competitive with the private sector in our hiring methods and timelines. These reforms will make it easier for applicants to apply for our jobs and easier for hiring managers to hire the best and the brightest.

I'm not sure whether this will come in a stand-alone bill or whether it'll be part of a budget outline for next year released by the White House. But this was something Berry has promised to do. And so far, he's done a better job than many administration officials of meeting his deadlines, or at least getting within the ballpark of them.

Continue reading "Two Interesting Things From OPM Director Berry's Speech Yesterday" »

I'm glad to hear the Postal Service's Letters to Santa program will continue, albeit with closer oversight, even after a registered sex offender slipped into the volunteer pool. The lesson of situations like this shouldn't be that something bad happened. Rather, it should be that controls are good enough that the person got caught. And it's nice that a program that provides not just a basic and necessary service, but that serves a bit of an emotional need, will get to continue. I don't know that the Letters to Santa program should be the Postal Service's core mission, but it's a nice thing to do. And precisely because the agency is struggling, this is a decent way to build goodwill for what may be difficult political fights over issues like going to five-day deliver ahead.

Remember about the conflict between that foreign aid bill I mentioned and the State Department's first major quadrennial review I wrote about earlier in the week? The arguments over it are continuing, with Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew asking for the review to be given room to breathe, and Sen. Jim Webb coming out against the legislation. The Cable reports:

"I believe that the problems in foreign assistance effectiveness are largely those of poor leadership and supervision, to be solved by the streamlining of executive branch responsibilities rather than the creation of yet another layer of infrastructure," Webb wrote.

Webb was talking about the bill's proposal to create a Council on Research and Evaluation of Foreign Assistance, or CORE, that would have oversight powers over all government foreign-assistance programs, a key component according to committee staffers.

When I wrote my first post about this commenter Danielle Ellingston wisely chimed in that some of the changes in the bill might be quite important and minimally interfering:

Continue reading "Foreign Aid Bill v. State's Quadrennial Review, Cont." »

By Robert Brodsky

As expected, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee moved the nomination of Daniel Gordon to serve as the administrator of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget Thursday afternoon. Gordon's nomination was approved by voice vote.

Gordon, the former deputy general counsel of the Government Accountability Office, is expected to easily win approval of the full Senate when he comes up for a vote.

Both Erroll Southers' nomination to lead the Transportation Security Administration and Chai Feldblum's nomination to be a member of the Equal Employment advanced today, as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved Southers' nomination and Feldblum had her first confirmation hearing. It's good news to see both of these nominations proceeding. TSA has substantial workforce issues, and looming over them, the question of whether workers there will be granted collective bargaining rights, something Southers will have to decide. And EEOC is desperately short of members right now. In all the flurry over health care reform, it's easy to forget that for some agencies, not much has changed since the administration. At least these two are closer to having leaders, now.

Not that it's surprising, but lawmakers are sharply divided on the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act at a markup being held in the House Oversight and Government Reform. After ranking Republican Darrell Issa cited unemployment figures among African-American men to make the case that the bill wasn't necessary to attract workers into the federal government, DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton snapped back "I'd be pleased to work with him if he is interested in [minority employment], which I'm sure he is." After Rep. Jason Chaffetz declared that "I recognize the sensitivity of this subject, but I also want to stand tall for traditional marriage. I don't' think we should be bashful and shy away from the fact that there are some of us who believe in the precepts, and believe in this issue of traditional marriage," a variety of Democratic lawmakers have come back with parables of love and tolerance. It's an interesting intrusion of the culture wars into federal management. But with a majority on the committee, it's hard to believe the measure won't pass later this afternoon.

A proposal to create the Roosevelt Scholars Program -- sort of a civilian ROTC program to encourage college students to pursue careers in government through scholarships and stipends -- has been introduced in the Senate by George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Congress has twice stalled on the legislation, which would give up to $60,000 per year in scholarship money for those who pledge to pursue "mission critical" occupations within the government after graduation. In 2008, Rep. David Price, D-N.C., introduced it as a stand-alone bill, and in March of this year Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., offered it as an amendment to a larger bill. Neither efforts received a vote.

Price and Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., again introduced the bill, H.R. 3510 this July, and it is currently before three House committees.

In one key area, the Voinovich/Gillibrand version will go further than the legislation in the House. Although the language of the bill hasn't yet been revealed, according to Voinovich's comments when he introduced the measure, it would cover both undergraduate and graduate students. Price's version in the House would only help fund graduate studies.

The Partnership for Public Service has long been an advocate of the legislation. Earlier this year, the Partnership released a study claiming that the government's efforts to protect cyberspace were hindered by a lack of available experts. The goal of this program would not only be to make sure that the government gets more of the talented and well-educated professionals and technicians out there--it would also help grow more of those people at the ground level.

"The only way our nation can fill these jobs with top talent is to raise our game in recruiting and investing in our federal workforce," the organization said in a released statement.

You can read more on this topic here and here.

It's not a theoretical question any more, as the Senate is moving forward on foreign aid bill that will strengthen the U.S. Agency for International Development, even as the State Department is doing a significant review of how it is organized and operates that will have implications for USAID. The White House had asked Sen. John Kerry to hold off on the legislation, but, concerned over losing the support of Sen. Richard Lugar if there was a delay, Kerry moved forward anyway. I think there are a number of questions to be asked here. Was Lugar key to passing the bill, or does Kerry simply like working with him? If the former, moving forward may have made sense. Second, does the bill actively damage the work of the State review team by changing the ground from under them? If the ways it strengthens USAID aren't significant and structural, it doesn't seem like a disaster to move forward. And third, can State get an interim report on the review to the committee in a timely fashion so they can begin to review and implement the results before next summer?

I understand that it's hard to sync up the timing of agency actions with Congressional calendars, and that Senatorial relationships and prerogatives can't always be built and pursued in ways administrations would like. But the more synced up all those factors can be, the better chance the policies and changes that will be made will be stronger. That way, State and Congress don't run the risk of acting at cross purposes.

I have to say, the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is using a matchmaking program as an incentive to keep agency employees happy, strikes me as a little strange. Not that there's anything wrong with people finding happiness, in fact, it's great. But I'd be curious to hear more about how the program is prepared to deal with things like sexual harassment claims, or the impact of breakups on the workplace, since from what Chief Human Capital Officer Jim McDermott says, it sounds like the pairings that have resulted are between agency employees, rather than between agency employees and folks who work outside NRC. And even if it's said in jest, isn't there something a little odd about a CHCO saying this about his employees?

"Now, engineers study a lot in college. They neglect very important extracurricular activities. My girls went to school with engineers, [and] they said, 'Dad, they don't know how to dance, they don't know how to dress, they don't even know how to talk.' "

Isn't that a bit stereotypical? And doesn't it ignore the fact that there are, you know, female engineers?

I'm always both interested in and annoyed by Gallup's annual survey that seeks to measure how Americans view different parts of the federal government. It makes sense to me that the military is held in high esteem, if only because Americans are generally fond of their homeland, and even if they aren't fond of how the military is used, no one can really deny the sacrifice that members of the military make that most of us wouldn't. But I also think the fact that most Americans have no direct experience with the military or intelligence agencies (which also scored high this year) actually makes it easier for Americans to think highly of them.

Think of it this way. While Americans may have complex feelings about issues like the treatment of detainees, it's not an issue they're directly affected by. The Central Intelligence Agency isn't coming after you because they think you owe more taxes than you do. They aren't taking longer than you'd like to remediate a former industrial site you think might make a dandy playground for neighborhood kids. You never have to stand in line to mail a package to your aunt at a CIA field office. It's much harder to have a personal good experience of an institution you never interact with, but it's impossible to have a bad customer service experience with an agency that's totally inaccessible to you.

I think it's entirely logical that federal employee unions should be included in the Office of Personnel Management's work on expanding federal-sector telework opportunities. Whether at the Patent and Trademark Office, where telework was the one initiative that started in the labor-management partnership era under President Clinton that continued through the Bush administration, or at the National Science Foundation, where for a while, the labor relations director and the telework coordinator were the same person, unions have played productive roles in formulating strong federal telework programs. And given the collective bargaining issues at stake, it makes sense to have them at the table from the beginning.

By Robert Brodsky

The Obama administration is hitting back against charges that Recovery Act jobs figures are unreliable and overstated.

In a post this morning on the White House blog, Ed DeSeve, a special advisor to the president for the stimulus, argues that while some relatively minor errors have been discovered, they do not change the "fundamental conclusions" that between 600,000 and 700,000 direct jobs were saved or created in its first seven months.

"It would be great if every report filed was correct the first time, on time, and contained no errors," DeSeve wrote. "But that's not realistic when 130,000 reports are being filed in a 10 day period. It would be great if the reviewers at the federal agencies could have found all the mistakes in the 20 days they had to do the job, gotten the reports back to the recipients to be fixed, and reposted - but again, that isn't realistic."

DeSeve also made a little news, verifying for the first time that 10 percent of stimulus recipients have yet to file any reports.

Earlier this week, ABC News discovered recipient reports which state that jobs were created in congressional districts that do not exist. Other media accounts have found anecdotal overcounting of jobs.

Government Executive reported last week that job totals may have been systematically undercounted as well.

Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has seized on a document which shows that the Recovery Board and the Office of Management and Budget purged 12 questionable recipients reports which claimed that a total of 60,000 jobs had been saved or created because they appeared unbelievable.

Issa sent a letter to Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney on Monday calling for an asterisk or footnote on Recovery.gov alerting visitors that the data is unreliable. "I am concerned that the RATB web site may be spreading inaccurate and misleading information to the American people," the letter said.

The dispute will come to a head Thursday as the Oversight Committee conducts a hearing on the stimulus implementation.

Another reason simple self-reporting may not always be the answer: sometimes employers lie. Obviously, this is a problem that's more pronounced with issues like occupational health and safety, where employers have an incentive to avoid fines, and in some cases, expensive upgrades to their workplace. Clearly, verification should be a principle for self-reported data. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration should be checking up on employer-provided data in the private sector. And GAO should continue doing its good work auditing agencies on their human capital goals and issues.

By Elizabeth Newell

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member Rep Darrell Issa, Calif., is calling for the Office of Management and Budget to be present at an upcoming hearing on the stimulus. The Thursday hearing, called "How Recovery Act Recipients Account for their Use of Stimulus Dollars," will feature witnesses from the Government Accountability Office, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and the Education and Transportation Departments. But Issa says new information shows OMB is playing a more significant role than previously thought, particularly when it comes to filtering job creation numbers.

The minority committee office is citing a document obtained by USA Today which lists 12 stimulus fund recipients whose reports contained "unrealistic job data". The document states that "at the request of OMB, and with [RAT] Board concurrence" the reports were omitted from the most recent posting of data to Recovery.gov.

Issa and his staff say this instance is just one of many indicating serious issues with stimulus job reporting, but that it also shows OMB's significant role in vetting these jobs numbers.

"Now we learn that OMB is playing an active role in trying to filter information. Given this hands-on role that the administration is playing, it would be appropriate to have OMB represented at Thursday's hearing," Issa said.

It makes sense that the Government Accountability Office would do a strong internal audit, given that checking in on other people's goals is what they do best. And given that they're a small agency, it's easier for them to aggregate and explain some of their goals, particularly in areas like human capital. When your goal is to hire 345 people in 2009, it's not extremely hard to figure out that you hired 340. It's not hard to figure out that you have a 94 percent retention rate (if you don't include retirements) with a similarly small staff, either.

The whole exercise makes me wonder about the wisdom of reporting requirements. It seems to me that there needs to be a balance between the value of compliance and the resources required to do comprehensive reporting on human capital goals, or any other subject. The goal of reporting requirements ought to be not simply measurement of trends but compliance with requirements: you ought to be reporting to prove, for example, you're making progress in the number of veterans you're hiring, or the fact that you're improving your retention rates. If reporting requirements consume enormous amounts of agency resources but don't actually act as an incentive for agencies, they may not be worth it.

There is a value, of course, in keeping track of agencies things continue to do poorly at. But those statistics are only useful if there's work going on behind those numbers to figure out why agencies aren't improving. Numbers are just numbers. If there are good processes attached to them, that's when they become meaningful.

Yesterday at an event at the Labor Department, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said he wasn't going to set a quota on how many veterans federal agencies should hire, but that his goal would be to increase their numbers year on year. The 2008 figures are out, and they show that veterans have a solid foothold in the federal workforce, even if they aren't a huge presence. Veterans are 8.3 percent of the civilian workforce. Disabled veterans though, appear to face some of the same challenges their disabled civilian peers face in finding federal employment. Disabled vets are only 0.8 percent of the civilian workforce, and 30 percent or more disabled veterans are a mere 0.3 percent of civilian workers. I'd imagine that the actual measurements for how well the initiative succeeds will have be based on the 2009 numbers.

But these figures suggest that the Veterans Employment Council will do well to address issues about how agencies perceive disabled workers, whether they're veterans or not. If people see an applicant's disability rather than their skills, much less their veteran status, they could miss opportunities to hire fantastic workers.

71,600 federal employees enrolled in the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program will be receiving letters from Long Term Care Partners, their insurance provider, that contain errors in their benefits calculations. The company, at the request of the Office of Personnel Management, will be sending out letters informing those 71,600 enrollees that they've made mistakes, and in December, will send them personalized letters with the correct information in the Benefit Amount" section. In the interim, enrollees can call Long Term Care Partners at 1-800-582-3337, and OPM is extending the deadline for making enrollment switches to March 15, 2010, for those employees.

It's the second time OPM has had to extend the enrollment deadline for participants in FLTCIP this year. They already pushed back the deadline for plan participants until February 15, 2010, after some enrollees found themselves facing rate hikes they say they'd been promised wouldn't happen. And it's clear that OPM leaders aren't happy.

"Getting accurate, easy to understand information to our enrollees in a timely manner is my top priority," OPM Director John Berry said in a statement released by the agency on Thursday night. "All companies participating in this program must take steps to ensure that similar errors are avoided in the future."

The full OPM press release appears after the jump.

Continue reading "Errors In Long Term Care Letters" »

At an event at the Labor Department to discuss the Obama administration's new initiatives on veterans' hiring, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry fielded a question about what those efforts mean for the larger goal of hiring reform. Berry was vague, but he did say that revamping student engagement programs was something the group working on hiring was making a priority. And he said "that process is coming along very smartly. It again is a multi-agency effort. We're in discussions with OMB and Chief Human Capital Officers Council, and we'll be beginning discussions with labor organizations in the near future. It is going to make everyone's lives easier in terms of approaching and applying for federal work."

By Robert Brodsky

One of the chief architects of the metrics behind President Bush's competitive sourcing agenda has apparently had a change of heart.

During the presidential campaign in 2000, Stephan Goldsmith served as chief domestic policy advisor to then-Governor Bush. Goldsmith examined the number of federal officials that would likely be retiring during the next years eight years and suggested that Bush pledge to replace only half of them. The remainder of the positions--which the administration later suggested amounted to 425,000 jobs--would be eliminated through efficiencies and outsourcing.

It didn't turn out that way. Unions vigorously fought back against the job competitions, agencies were never completely on board and over time Congress chipped away at the initiative until it was a shell of its former self. In the end, the administration competed just over 50,000 positions.

Now, in some enlightening comments to John Kamensky on his blog at the IBM Center for Business of Government, Goldsmith explains his evolving thought process toward competitive sourcing -- and offers a warning to those who want to pursue a massive insourcing agenda.

"We had gotten it backwards," he said. "Any goals in reducing the federal workforce should have come only after an examination of the specific activities of the federal government and an analysis of the commercial availability (and suitability) of competitive services. Instead, goals were set in a vacuum, much like the debates about angels dancing on the heads of pins. . . . The pendulum has swung, and now OMB is pushing in the opposite direction. I made a mistake in 2000 when I proposed a percentage reduction in employees to President Bush, and I likewise believe that any arbitrary decision to pursue insourcing is equally ill-advised."

Steve Ressler, GovLoop's founder, emailed me today with news of his social networking site's new "AwesomeGov" Fund. The fund, fed by 5 percent of GovLoop's 2010 revenues, and a dollar donation for everyone who joins GovLoop between now and December 15, is meant to both raise awareness about the good work government does and to support existing good government organizations. It's certainly a worthy goal, and if the fund focuses in particular on new media outreach and advertising efforts, could be an important supplement to current efforts. The Office of Personnel Management has done some good video work, but the issue with these public relations efforts, I think, is always in getting them to the audience that needs to see them--in other words, not existing federal employees, but folks out there who don't know very much about government and could stand to have their perspectives changed. If GovLoop can figure out how to do that, they'll make a significant contribution.

A guest post by William Schofield

We commemorated a rainy Veterans Day this year as we traditionally have done. President Obama placed flowers at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. Dignitaries paid tribute to our veterans in ceremonies across the country as bands played and flags waved. More privately, old memories were rekindled when people looked at photographs, many now faded, or visited grave sites, or touched a name carved into a black granite wall. Others e-mailed those currently serving.

This year was especially poignant. The murder at Fort Hood of a dozen soldiers and one civilian by one of their own added a new and disturbing element of sorrow. Two wars grind on. The one in Iraq is perhaps approaching its end, at least as far as the need for large numbers of American soldiers goes. It seems that we will increase our involvement in Afghanistan to reverse a situation apparently sliding away from us.

Eight years of fighting have strained our forces. This reality and efforts of the services to remedy it are staples of daily newscasts. In spite of a recent expansion of the Army and Marines, members face repetitive tours in combat zones. The services have accepted enlistees who previously would not have qualified, relied greatly on the National Guard and Reserves, and, along with civilian agencies, made unprecedented, and sometimes inappropriate, use of civilian contractors. While our strained economic situation has undoubtedly helped immediate recruiting efforts, the current situation is neither sustainable nor equitable.

Continue reading "Who Bears the Burden?" »

In Flanders Field

By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I spent part of last night with two Vietnam veterans talking about war and national service. I honor their service, and the service and sacrifice of those who served before and after them, and serve today. I'm awed and humbled by the strength and steadfastness of the families who support their loved ones as they go off to defend the rest of us.

Among the many strange things the federal government has to do is find an auctioneer to take things seized by the U.S. Marshals from Bernie Madoff of their hands, in the hope of netting something back for defrauded investors. Gawker has an oddly compelling gallery of some of the lots, which range from furs to used boogie boards. Even the lives of fabulously wealthy criminals contain mundane details.

Well, it's disappointing to learn that Errol Southers, President Obama's choice to head the Transportation Security Administration, was reprimanded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1980's after asking a police officer to run a background check on his wife's ex-boyfriend. But I can't say I'm shocked. After all the hoopla about how fabulous the Obama administration's vetting and nomination process was supposed to be, I think it's undeniable that it's turned into something of a train wreck. Tax errors and employer reprimands are the front line of things that show up in a background check of someone. If you miss them, something is wrong. And it's unstrategic to have this stuff leak out the way it has. It means you're setting up your own minefield, and forcing your own people to walk through it with you. I have no idea how things got to this state, but it's pretty pronounced.

David Brooks has what seems to me to be an extraordinarily ill-advised column in this morning's New York Times, in which he argues that the debate over why Major Nidal Hasan has turned too quickly from Islamic extremism to psychoanalysis. I say ill-advised not because I don't think religious extremism can lead to terrorism, but because to entirely dismiss the mental health aspects of this case seems foolish, both from an individual and from an institutional standpoint.

Religious extremism is undeniably a source of violence in our society. But it's much more potent when it takes root in someone who is mentally unstable, and not receiving proper care. As Matt Yglesias writes this morning "I think a pretty good case can be made that this kind of situation actually is the main face of the terrorist threat. Not a big well-thought-out plot centrally directed from a'"safe haven' in South Asia and undertaken by brilliant covert operatives, but the desperate violent act of a clearly disturbed individual." Matt goes on to point out that such spree killings by deranged individuals are obviously dangerous and devastating, but they aren't a massive threat to national security.

But while the threat may not be on a massive scale, it is one that, if we put sufficient resources into it, we can probably combat fairly successfully within American institutions. Major Hasan had actually recommended in a presentation that Muslim soldiers be allowed to leave service as conscientious objectors "to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events." I'm not sure that's the right solution. But having enough therapists to meet military demand, and making sure that those therapists have access to mental health treatment themselves could help identify folks who aren't doing well, and folks who maybe shouldn't be in military service at all. It's part of the military's job not only to function effectively overseas but to keep its own personnel, and people like the two Veterans Affairs employees Hasan killed, safe at home, too. The idea that we can somehow defeat, divert, or neutralize an international ideological movement is a stretch. But the idea that we can fight mental illness among the people who are fighting to keep us safe is not.

Over at GovGab, Whitney Quesenbery provides, unintentionally I think, a great place to start with plain language: the first stuff to be converted into legible English (and whatever other languages deemed necessary to reach the populace, should be directive and informative stuff. It's a sign of true cluelessness that educational outreach materials aren't written in easy-to-understand terms. But at least it provides us with a project for government to tackle before getting to the tough questions about how to transform everything else the government publishes.

The president will be signing an executive order tonight which will aim to help military veterans find civilian work in the federal government.

The order will create program offices in most federal agencies, which will help veterans find opportunities in their agency, help them move through the application process, and also help them acclimate to civilian life after they are hired, according to the White House. The offices will also train hiring managers, to ensure they understand the various options available to increase the number of military veterans at their agency.

The executive order will also create a Council on Veterans Employment, to be chaired by the Secretaries of Labor and Veterans Affairs, and will also require the Office of Personnel Management to create a strategic plan on how to boost the hiring of veterans -- through issues such as marketing campaigns and leadership commitment.

We will post more information on this order soon.

The Partnership for Public Service announced last night that Samuel Heyman, the philanthropist who founded the non-profit good government group, had died unexpectedly over the weekend. Obviously, Heyman's death is a huge loss for the organization. But his life also includes a template for getting people interested in public service that's worth considering on a number of levels.

I have to admit that until I read the New York Times' obituary (which, unfortunately, substantially mischaracterizes the Partnership) for Heyman, I didn't know that his reputation in the business world was primarily as a canny corporate raider. That kind of background isn't necessarily one that automatically equates to an interest in good government. But Heyman's career didn't start in the business world. His first job out of law school was in the Justice Department under Robert Kennedy, and he rose to be chief assistant U.S. Attorney for Connecticut. He left government to take over his family's real estate development business, and never came back to public service. But that doesn't mean that he lost interest. The founding of the Partnership was a substantial contribution to the good governance movement, both because the Partnership does a great deal of good work and research, but also because it stands as a well-funded competitor organization that can both work with federal agencies and encourage them to consider questions they might not otherwise be forced to take up. Its research can both supplement and spur on agencies like the Merit Systems Protection Board that do similar analytical work.

In other words, Heyman's life is a perfect example of something the partnership preaches: that the federal government doesn't need to get employees for life to get something worthwhile out of them. If a federal employee goes into government, does some good, and leaves with the impression that well-run bureaucracies are a significant public good, that's a huge win. Government can be improved from within, and from without. Heyman recognized this. His contributions didn't stop when he left the Justice Department. Others' don't have to either.

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

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

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

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

By Robert Brodsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Robert Brodsky

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

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

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

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

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

....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Robert Brodsky

Federal agencies are failing to justify their use of risky cost-reimbursement contracts rather than using fixed-price contracts, according to a new report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office.

The watchdog reviewed 92 contracts and orders and found that roughly 30 percent did not include any supporting documentation explaining why a cost-reimbursement contract was selected. Agencies also failed to conduct a price analysis to determine if they can transition to a contract type with firmer pricing or to provide evidence that the contractor's accounting systems had been deemed adequate to determine costs applicable to the contract.

"Inadequate accounting systems, or accounting systems that had not been deemed adequate for many years, may result in the government making improper payments to contractors," the report said.

From fiscal 2003 through 2008 federal obligations under cost-reimbursement contracts increased from $16 billion to $136 billion. Those figures, however, actually represent a decrease in the total percentage of federal contract spending over that 6-year period, from 34 percent to 26 percent.

But, while cost-plus contracting appears to be on the decline, a significant increase has been reported for obligations using the "combination" contract type--a category that GAO found includes many contracts with cost-reimbursement obligations that are not recorded as such. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy recently decided to eliminate the use of "combination" as a Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation contract type, effective for all new contract awards starting in fiscal 2010.

Over at The American Prospect, Adam Serwer digests the Federal Bureau of Investigation Inspector General's report on the agency's position on torture, and pulls out the unsurprising fact that different officials within the agency had different positions on what it was and wasn't permissible to do to detainees. "The general narrative surrounding the use of torture is that the FBI conflicted with the CIA and the military over the use of harsh techniques to interrogate detainees," Adam writes. But as I've written a couple of times before, there was always going to be a difference of position on interrogation techniques. Institutions like the FBI never act--and never think--unilaterally. It's impossible to recruit for unity of thought, and no institution should want to do that, even if it was practical. The question for the FBI and for the intelligence agencies is to learn how voices are heard, how opinions are privileged, and how decisions are made--and then how agencies are reconciled after agonizing decisions.