The Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund, in collaboration with the National Treasury Employees Union, is endowing a named scholarship in honor of Vernon Hunter, the Internal Revenue Service employee killed when a man flew a plane into the Austin office building where Hunter worked. The $5,000 scholarship will be awarded annually to a federal employee or the dependent of a federal employee who excels in academics and community service. Hunter's murder is tragic. But it's wonderful that his memory is inspiring a lasting gift to support education.

Some folks hated the Census Super Bowl ad, which I thought was really quite charming. But folks who disliked it may find more to love about the plan to print Census-awareness messages on fortune cookie fortunes. I think this is brilliant. It's innovative, and it will surprise people so it'll stick with them. And perhaps most importantly (it always comes down to this, doesn't it, it's really cheap. At $3,000 for 2 million fortunes, that's .15 cents per, far, far less than postage on a postcard or letter.

A couple of debates have dominated much of the first meeting of the reconstituted government-wide council on federal labor-management relations. Among the hot issues:

-Whether labor relations officials should be required to be involved in agency-level engagement teams. Some unions are saying their trust in labor relations officials was severely degraded during the Bush administration, but management representatives are saying it's critical that folks with relevant subject-matter expertise be allowed to be involved.

-Are grievances a legitimate measurement of whether the labor-management engagement process works? Union leaders say the forums won't be dealing with the treatment of individual employees, but some management representatives say they're a key indicator of climate.

If you haven't already -- (and you live in the D.C. area) -- you might want to check out Sen. Ted Kaufman's (D-Del.) "Great Federal Employees" exhibit at the rotunda of the Senate Russell Office Building. The displays profile 40 federal employees who Kaufman has recognized in weekly speeches since May. The exhibit's last day is Friday.

If you're not able to make it, you can read about the 40 employees -- a wide cross-section of the civil service, from smaller agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Institute for Standards and Technology up to the White House -- you can read their stories on Kaufman's Web site. Kaufman's list includes some federal workers whose service takes them to dangerous areas overseas -- including a USAID worker who was killed in Sudan.

By Elizabeth Newell

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board today is posting the names and awards of stimulus recipients who failed to file reports for the months of October through December of last year. These recipients received 1,036 awards representing $583 million in Recovery Act funds, the watchdog panel is reporting.

Recipients who did not file reports either of the last two quarters of last year -- and these "two-time losers" together received 389 awards - will also be publicly shamed on the "Errors, Omissions, Non-Reported Awards" page of Recovery.gov.

"The two-time losers--those who failed to file reports in the last quarter of 2009 and the earlier reporting period--should really be embarrassed,'' said Earl E. Devaney, the Chairman of the Recovery board. "They took millions of dollars and then thumbed their noses at taxpayers.''

Devaney noted that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 imposes no penalty on recipients that fail to report - other than a tongue-lashing, of course. He has previously testified before Congress in support of establishing penalties in the law. Additionally, he encouraged federal agencies to use their administrative powers to punish the "losers" where possible.

"Federal agencies now need to take whatever administrative action they can against those who flout the law so cavalierly, including recovering money that the recipients have not yet spent.''

A veteran of nearly 40 years in law enforcement, Devaney said that he was particularly disappointed that some of the 389 two-time losers included police departments that received COPS grants from the Depart­ment of Justice but failed to submit reports to the Recovery Board. "It is very disturbing to me,'' he said, "that a police department would decide that it does not have to comply with a law.''

The one "bright spot" of this announcement, Devaney said, is that most of the recipients who previously failed to submit reports did so in the last quarter.

The Federal Managers Association has long been concerned about some aspects of the transition of hundreds of thousands of employees out of the National Security Personnel System and back into the General Schedule system. Today, they outlined some of those older concerns--and some new ones, in a position paper on the subject. Among the things they're worried about:

-Does putting high-performing employees on pay retention amount to docking their pay, contrary to Congress's intentions in the rollback legislation? Employees whose salaries under NSPS rose higher than step 10 in the General Schedule grade to which they're reassigned may get lower raises than their peers, something FMA president Darryl Perkinson has said "is "not a very good motivator for people who want to stay in civil service."

-How will managers and supervisors be compensated and rewarded for handling the transition back? Congress may have made the transition law, and the NSPS Transition Office under John James, Jr. may be designing the broad policies governing the change, but it's managers and supervisors who will have to implement those changes.

-In which order will the transition take place? FMA argues that employees who were moved into the system last should be moved out of it first, as their pay will be least affected and they'll be least acculturated to NSPS. The employees who have been in the system longest will require more transition, training, and evaluation, and Defense should take the time to make their transition as smooth as possible, FMA says.

-What's going to happen to employes who came into NSPS from other personnel demonstration projects? To my mind, this is one of the biggest questions, and when I spoke to Defense officials earlier in the week, they said the question of what will happen to those workers is one they're still considering.

The Merit Systems Protection Board rolled out a revamped website today. And while the renovations aren't as extensive as the overhaul done on the Office of Personnel Management website a while back, the agency responsible for ensuring that the rules that govern federal employment are consistently applied is doing a couple of things right. First, they've make it possible to post their press releases to Facebook and Twitter with a click, which these days is just common-sense information distribution. The agency's strategic plan and performance report for the last fiscal year are now high up on the front page. And there's a rotating slideshow with information on MSPB's functions in the center of the front page. The general principal of comprehensibility that seems to govern these agency redesigns is a good one. Even if it takes a while for agencies to nail the aesthetics of their new websites, it's a secondary concern next to easy access to the relevant information.

Most conversations about the federal budget concern programs: whether their funding will be increased or decreased, whether they'll cut or hire staff, whether they'll disappear all together. But a memo from the Congressional Budget Office on whether it might make sense to switch from the Consumer Price Index to the chained Consumer Price Index as a means of calculating rates of increase for some benefits programs is a useful reminder that there are many underlying assumptions that influence the budget too, beyond the boundaries of any specific program:

According to many analysts, however, the CPI overstates increases in the cost of living because it does not fully account for the fact that consumers generally adjust their spending patterns as some prices change relative to other prices. One option for lawmakers, as discussed in a brief released today, would be to link federal benefit programs and tax provisions to another measure of inflation--the chained CPI--that is designed to account fully for changes in spending patterns. (CBO previously discussed the possibility of using the chained CPI in its August 2009 Budget Options volume.) The chained CPI grows more slowly than the traditional CPI does: by an average of 0.3 percentage points per year over the past decade. As a result, using that measure to index benefit programs and tax provisions would reduce federal spending (especially on Social Security and federal pensions) and increase revenues.

No matter what side of the aisle you're on, if lawmakers want to get serious about controlling the federal budget, they've got to look at much more than cuts.

By Robert Brodsky

The Historically Underutilized Business Zone - or HUBZone - program could be set for some major changes. On Wednesday, four members of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship introduced a bill that would improve the management and oversight of the program, which provides assistance to small businesses in economically distressed areas.

The HUBZone Improvement Act of 2010, which is sponsored by Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La.; Ranking Member Olympia Snowe, R-Maine; Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo. and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., would implement recommendations about the program which have been suggested by the Government Accountability Office.

The bill would require the Small Business Administration to:

· maintain a correct, accurate and updated map to identify HUBZone areas;

· implement policies that ensure only eligible firms participate in the program;

· employ appropriate technology to control costs and maximize efficiency;

· notify the House and Senate Small Business Committees of any backlogs in applications or recertifications with plans and timetables for eliminating the back log;

· implement plans to access the effectiveness of the HUBZone program;

· ensure small businesses meet the 35 percent HUBZone residency requirement at the time of bid as well as contract award.

By Elizabeth Newell

Senior Recovery Act official Ed DeSeve said Wednesday that, in the fourth quarter of 2009, over 98 percent of stimulus recipients that were required to file reports on how they spent the Recovery Act money did so. DeSeve said this was a 76 percent reduction in non-filers from the previous quarter and credited federal agencies for their efforts to reduce cases of non-filing.

A list of the recipients who have not filed their fourth quarter report has been delivered to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, no word on when it will be posted to Recovery.gov, but RAT Board spokesman Ed Pound says they're working on it.

"While we are pleased with the increased compliance, we are continuing to work with federal agencies to reach 100 percent participation and have asked both federal agencies and the Recovery Board to develop penalties for those who don't comply," DeSeve said.

Hotline Editor Amy Walter has a great column in National Journal, parsing the poll numbers and finding that Americans don't want less government generally, they want more effective government:

But before you go investing in torches and pitchforks, it's important to differentiate between frustration with the way government is working (or, more accurately, not working) and a desire for government to get out of the way. Just because voters aren't happy with government doesn't mean that they don't want government to play a role in their lives. Instead, views of Washington are just as polarized as Washington itself....

In other words, two-thirds of voters would like to see government play an active role in the economy. However, half of those voters aren't convinced that government is equipped to do so competently. This means that voters aren't dismissing the importance of government in their lives. What they are saying is that they want government to do a better job.

This is why I'm frustrated when folks, be they politicians or commentators, dismiss effective government management as a major political issue. Management may not be the name that Americans give to their governmental discontents, but it's frequently at the heart of the things that upset them.

The Pew Research Center has released a major study into the attitudes and situations of the so-called Millenials, the generation of which I'm a part, so today the internet and Twitter are a-buzz with discussions of generational differences, especially as they relate to the workplace. Pew's got a cute little quiz up that will tell you how Millenial you are (I scored only a 59 out of 100, putting me squarely in between the extremes of my own generation and Generation X).

But I think the most useful things are the discussions of employment rates and workplace styles. Just 41 percent of Millenials have full-time employment. That's quite low, even considering some of the 59 percent are still in college, and gets at some of the points I was making earlier in the week about how the recession is going to force young workers to adapt and compete very hard if they want to find and keep what few jobs are out there. And our employment rates have actually fallen 9 percent since 2006, while the number of baby boomers and Gen-Xers who have jobs is up slightly. Just 15 percent say that having a high-paying career is one of the most important things in their lives, while 52 percent say being a good parent is what matters.

Older workers may claim that Millenials are flaky. But they'd do well to remember that young workers today are seeing vast swaths of opportunity close off to them. It might be a good time for compassion, rather than unproductive competition or condemnation. If older workers are willing to teach younger ones how to get by and build good job skills, I'd wager a lot of us are going to be unusually ready to listen.

By Robert Brodsky

South Park's Eric Cartman has done some pretty heinous things in his short life. He once convinced poor Butters that he was the last person left on Earth, all so he could go to a popular restaurant. And then there was the time that he arranged for a teenager's parents to be killed and then fed them to the boy in chili.

But, now he may have gone too far. From the Washington Impendent :

"Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a "South Park" cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military."

Later in the story:

"On one of those occasions, in September 2008, Chief Warrant Officer Greg Sailer, who worked at 22 Bunkers and is a friend of a Blackwater officer working in Afghanistan, signed over more than 200 AK-47s to an individual identified as "Eric Cartman" or possibly "Carjman" from Blackwater's Counter Narcotics Training Unit."

The weapons controversy is sure to come up at today's Senate Armed Services hearing on Blackwater. Lets just hope we don't find out that they had anything to do with killing Kenny.

Security guards shot two men, killing one and wounding the other, after they tried to drive a stolen car through the gates to an Air Force base as they tried to evade police officers who were in pursuit. So far, the reports don't make this sound like an act of terrorism, simply the tragic result of a crime and a subsequent act of stupidity. And it seems like the security officers responded promptly. Still, after last week's plane crash in Texas, it's a disturbing attempted breach of security. I'm not sure what the men in the car must have been thinking. An Air Force base is not likely to provide much of a haven for people in flight from law enforcement. But perhaps they weren't thinking at all.

I mused during the worst of the storm earlier this month that perhaps it makes sense for the federal government to step up on transportation issues in the DC area if it wants public transit to keep running well during significant disruptions like blizzards. It turns out, safety issues on WMATA might prompt such federal intervention:

In a bipartisan letter to Peter Benjamin, chairman of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the senators noted that 17 deaths have occurred on the Metrorail system since 2005, "far outpacing the number of fatalities on any mass transit system in the country." The D.C. area accidents helped prompt the Obama administration to propose new legislation carving out a federal role in rail transit safety oversight. The letter -- signed by Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) and ranking Republican Richard Shelby (AL) as well as Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and David Vitter (R-LA), who lead the committee's transit panel -- says that "the federal government should consider all possible options to ensure the safety of the Metrorail system, including direct federal intervention" if WMATA cannot demonstrate its readiness to do the job.

It's an odd situation, to have many federal agencies so dependent on a system that's funded federally and administered locally. I'm not sure what the right balance of power is, but anything that makes Metro trains, buses, and light rail safer, more efficient ad more resilient is a good thing.

The American Federation of Government Employees announced Monday that it has filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority to become the sole representative of 40,000 Transportation Security Officers -- setting off yet another fight with a rival union, the National Treasury Employees Union.

Under current law, no union is allowed to represent TSOs for collective bargaining, although both unions have represented TSA employees for other purposes, such as arbitration. But even though a bill enabling collective bargaining rights for TSA employees is still before the Senate -- and even though there is no nominee to head the TSA since Erroll Southers withdrew his name -- AFGE said it thought now was the right time for an election to establish a single representative.

"By settling the question of representation first, AFGE will be ready to begin negotiations as soon as the bargaining rights are established," AFGE President John Gage said in a released statement.

In a statement released after AFGE's action, the NTEU -- which also represents TSA employees -- questioned the timing of the action.

"Should the FLRA determine that this petition is valid, NTEU is ready to compete for and win a union election in TSA," NTEU President Colleen Kelley said in a released statement. "However, we question the timing of pursuing exclusive status without the existence of collective bargaining rights. More specifically, we question how having an exclusive representative, without collective bargaining, will bring about real, meaningful improvements to TSOs' work lives."

A similar petition from the AFGE was rejected in 2003, when the FLRA ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the TSA.

By Robert Brodsky

Major changes afoot today at the General Services Administration. The Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings has moved from the Public Buildings Service to GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy. The move builds on an executive order issued by President Obama in October 2009 calling on agencies to lead by example in greening and modernizing the nation's infrastructure.

Established in 2007, the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings sets policies and standards for building construction, operations, and maintenance across the government. Kevin Kampschroer, who has served as acting head of the office since its inception, will now serve as its permanent director.

"GSA continues to answer President Obama's call to create a more sustainable government by becoming a leader in innovative, greener solutions and technologies for federal agencies," said GSA Administrator Martha Johnson. "As part of Governmentwide Policy, the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings will broaden its reach to provide federal agencies with the necessary measurement tools and policies they need to meet their own sustainability mandates under the executive order."

In addition, GSA's Public Buildings Service has established a new position of chief greening officer. Scott Conner, director of the Denver Federal Center for GSA's Rocky Mountain region, will act in the position temporarily until a permanent chief greening officer is named.

"PBS's new chief greening officer will accelerate our momentum to drive sustainability by aggressively seeking out and incorporating proven greener, more efficient building technologies and practices throughout our entire inventory of 1,500 owned and 8,000 leased buildings," said Robert Peck, GSA's commissioner of Public Buildings. "The chief greening officer will deliver our goal of becoming a 'green proving ground' for the American building industry by measuring the cost-, resource- and greenhouse gas-reduction effectiveness of myriad innovative green design, construction, and management approaches."

Brittany Ballenstedt, with whom I've co-written stories about generational differences, points out that younger workers may have adapted to the new economy, and changed some of the expectations older workers assume they hold:

But are younger workers still perceived to hold these expectations in the workplace, especially given the down economy that has left many of them desperate for a job? I'm sure a digital divide still exists and will continue to exist among generations in the workplace, especially as new technological advances create mini gaps within the generations. Are younger workers still perceived to have high expectations of work at your federal agency? What issues continue to divide the generations?

I've always thought that many stereotypes of younger workers have some inherent contradictions: for example, young folks are supposed to be malleable, adaptable, and seeking change, and yet not observant enough to adapt to new expectations or proper workplace protocol if that's the challenge set in front of us? And with the worst economy in decades confronting both young workers who have seen their chances of advancement quashed, and recent grads who are struggling to find work at all, it's not as if folks have just blithely missed or ignored that the game has changed. Young people see this happening, and most of them aren't going to play around with the chances they've got.

The Sunlight Foundation has been tracking how fast the federal government's releasing data sets to the public. They say it's a record pace now, and outlines some of the problems I've raised here before:

As of today, about halfway through the first quarter, government is already on pace to beat its Q3 2009 record of 308 datasets. Since June of last year, Government has been releasing data at a pace of 4 datasets per day....A new problem is starting to arise-- classifying and organizing this information. Much of this data, for instance, may very well be unuseful to most people. And the rate of esoteric data that agencies push out will make it more difficult to find the proverbial diamonds in the rough.

Fortunately, they're testing out a tool to make sorting through all those sets easier. If you give it a try, let me know how it works. I've long thought open-source development is going to be the key to making data dumps useful. Tools like this that make it easier for curious folks to get that work started are extremely important.

The Internal Revenue Service employee killed when a disgruntled engineer flew a plane into an agency building in Austin, Texas last week. Vernon Hunter, a Vietnam veteran, and a father of six children, worked for the IRS for 27 years, rising to a managerial position, and his wife, Valerie, works for the agency as well. There will be a lot of time to debate whether this was an act of terrorism or a simple crime, whether Joe Stack was simply a deranged individual or a representative of a larger anti-government movement. But for now it seems appropriate to simply send condolences to Hunter's family. Office of Personnel Management Director has highlighted the number of civilian federal employees who have died in the line of duty in recent speeches. It's sad to add Hunter to their number.

On Thursday, President Obama signed an executive order creating the "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform" -- what most people in D.C. are calling the debt commission. Advocates of the commission hope that it will help create a bipartisan solution to a politically charged and difficult issue--much like the Base Closure and Realignment Commission helped the government close military bases following the end of the Cold War.

The commission will have 18 members, and will be charged with creating recommendations for Congress to balance the budget, excluding interest on the debt, by 2015. Any recommendations must be approved by at least 14 of the 18 members. Six members, including at least two non-Democrats, will be appointed by the president, and the rest will be appointed by Congress, with an even split between appointments by the majority and the minority. In theory, Congress will take up the recommendations at the end of the year -- although it's not clear whether or not all of Congress will play along.

Obama has already named the co-chairs of the commission, former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson, and Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff.

At this point, there's no indication that the commission will recommend anything that would affect federal employees. But some federal workforce advocates, wary of past debt-cutting initiatives, said they will keep a watchful eye.

"A bipartisan commission might be the only politically feasible way to make some of the tough choices that will have to be made," said William Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. "We are very concerned about the impact this commission could have on the federal workforce. Federal employee compensation makes up only a very small portion of the federal budget each year, yet it tends to be the first place many people look to make cuts."

Daniel Adcock, legislative director of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, praised Simpson and Bowles as "respected and even-handed Washington professionals." But he also noted that, in the past -- especially during the late 1980's and early 1990's -- federal retiree benefits faced cuts while entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security were untouched.

"It's easier to take the heat from 2.4 million federal annuitants, rather than 40 million Social Security beneficiaries," Adcock said. "As a captive audience, we're concerned that history will repeat itself."

The commission's recommendations are due in December, during the lame duck session in the current Congress.

National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley says the attack on an Internal Revenue Service office in Austin yesterday demonstrates the need for a new, moderated discourse around government, and for greater security measures for federal employees:

This incident brings to light an ongoing concern that the atmosphere in our nation debases and denigrates the work of federal employees and contributes to such actions. Too often, frustration with policies or politics takes the form of attacks on public servants, which is never justified and can contribute to misguided rage against federal workers.

Sadly, certain groups of federal employees, such as IRS employees and federal law enforcement officers, are more likely to become targets of irate citizens. It can be dangerous for federal workers to try to carry out their missions; still, they do because they know the public depends on them for vital services. It is for that reason that I call on our country's leaders and all Americans to stand with IRS employees and all federal employees today and every day in support of their contributions to our nation.

I know that people around the country are horrified by this criminal act and that the vast majority of Americans appreciate the hard work and commitment of the civil servants who so diligently do the work of our country.

NTEU will work with the administration and members of Congress to ensure that extra security measures are taken to protect federal workers across government, but we also need a more responsible level of discourse in our country about the work of government. Anger or resentment over government policies, whether it be tax policy or airline security measures, should never lead to attacks on innocent workers. Through their skill, expertise and commitment to duty, federal workers enhance the quality of life in our country. They deserve our respect and support.

By Elizabeth Newell

According to Federal News Radio, GSA's deputy chief acquisition officer David Drabkin will leave government on March 8 to take a job in the private sector.

In addition to sporting the Best Mustache in Government, Drabkin is an extremely well-known and respected procurement official.He has served GSA for almost a decade and held positions on the Acquisition Advisory Panel and in the Defense Department.

Yesterday, the Obama administration's Chief Performance Officer Jeff Zients announced that the Office of Management and Budget would be launching a "performance dashboard" this summer. These so-called "dashboards" are becoming one of the hallmarks of the administration's transparency efforts. The performance dashboard is part of President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal, as is a dashboard that will track federal workforce statistics. And the Federal IT dashboard launched last June. I have no problems with these dashboards in principal, but I do have a couple of thoughts on how they should be structured and networked. First, all of the dashboards should be available from a central website that explains clearly what kind of data is in each one so federal employees and the public will know where to go for the information they want. Second, I think the dashboards could use something like the apps stores that Apple and Android are running for their phone products, places where developers can build and offer tools to sort through data that folks can pick through and use to filter out the information that they want, and then rate the apps they think are the best. Such an open source approach would save the government money, and provide an incentive for outside sources to look through the data. The dashboard and opengov announcements already have a lot of mainstream reporters I know looking more seriously at these data dumps: it'd be a good thing to entice the rest of the public to follow suit.

As I'm sure a lot of folks have heard by now, a small plane crashed into an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, TX. The National Treasury Employees Union represents workers at the building, and Colleen Kelley has sent along this statement:

This morning at about 9:30 am local time a small plane crashed into an IRS building in Austin. I have been in touch with the IRS and Chapter 52 officials. Many NTEU members and bargaining unit employees work in this building. There are approximately 150 IRS employees in the building. These employees include revenue agents, revenue officers, estate and gift tax attorney, tax compliance officers, employees from LMSB and SB/SE. The IRS is reporting that all employees have been accounted for and NTEU is trying to verify that information. News reports are reporting one person unaccounted for. There are reports of IRS employees with burns and smoke inhalation and NTEU is trying to verify that information as well. Also unknown is the cause of the crash. I am closely monitoring this situation and NTEU is reaching out to affected IRS Austin employees.

My thoughts are with the folks in Austin. I hope everyone turns up safe, and heals, both physically and emotionally, from the experience.

Brittany Ballenstedt has a post up at Wired Workplace about some private-sector groups that are urging the federal government to hire veterans for information technology jobs, arguing that there's a match between skill sets. All of which got me thinking. In USAJobs listings, there's usually a text paragraph listing specific skill sets either required or desired for the position. I think it would be an enormous enhancement to create tags for all of those skills, and instead of having a plain-text listing, have a list of hyperlinks instead. Clicking on those links would bring up all the jobs that require the same skills, and the site could have pull-down menus that would let applicants filter the jobs by agency, location, etc. It's simple, but it's the kind of thing that would make navigating USAJobs intelligently a lot easier.

By Robert Brodsky

The defense industry's lead ethics organization has a new leader - and she may be quite familiar to those in the procurement industry.

Angela Styles, a former administrator of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget during the Bush administration, was named Thursday as the new coordinator and executive director of the Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct, also known as DII. Styles replaces Richard Bednar, a former Army JAG brigadier general, who ran the non-profit association for the past decade.

"For nearly 25 years, DII has been helping our nation's leading defense and security firms set up and run sophisticated ethics and compliance programs that safeguard taxpayer dollars and exceed the demanding requirements of federal contract law and regulations," said Styles, who will retain her role as a partner in the Washington law firm of Crowell & Moring. "I am honored to join this vital organization and hope to build on its impressive track record."

Changes to contractor ethics rules should keep Styles busy in the months ahead. Contractors are complying with regulations outlining mandatory disclosure of potential criminal violations and changes to personal and organizational conflicts of interest rules and revolving-door policies.

Styles has commissioned a review of the most significant ethics and compliance issues affecting defense and security firms and plans to develop new training programs.

"We all have a duty to federal taxpayers to act honestly and with integrity," Styles said. "Our companies deliver goods and services to U.S. troops serving in harm's way, so we need to get this right."

I've always thought there were some real problems with the predominance of polls showing that, for example, two-thirds of Americans are annoyed at the federal government. For one things, satisfied/dissatisfied numbers don't actually give anyone a sense of what the public would like the government to do differently. And as John Sides points out at the Monkey Cage, those numbers don't last: trends in feelings about government are show a cyclical rise and fall that, if it's linked to anything it's the economy, rather than a broad and consistent rise or slide. And I'm not sure what that tells government observers, other than that the American public in a loose way holds the government responsible for the economy's performance. That data is a good hedge against drawing misguided conclusions. But it doesn't really demonstrate a way forward in terms of actual governance, and actual management of agencies and programs.

In between the Office of Personnel Management asking agencies to be patient with employees who are having trouble getting to work, and reports that the Transportation Security Administration marked employees who couldn't get to work because of snow Away Without Leave, I wonder if it would make sense to set up some sort of swift, temporary appeals process for weather-related personnel complaints. Perhaps it would be too unwieldy, or there are merit systems issues at stake. But I'd bet TSA isn't the only place where there have been employee complaints, and it makes sense not to let issues stemming from an extraordinarily unusual event swell normal backlogs.

Not that the deal between labor and the Democrats would have kept federal employees from being hit by the excise tax in a health care reform bill, but it looks like that compromise might be falling apart anyway:

But labor leaders have backed away from the proposal in the wake of the special Senate election in Massachusetts.

"I do not believe there will be an excise tax enacted," said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. "It appears that the administration and Congress will be taking a much more modest approach to health care reform. The cost and value of such reform would not justify using an excise tax."

A wide range of House Democrats continue to criticize the tax as bad policy, even with the changes negotiated by labor leaders and the White House.

Moreover, House Democrats said, the tax is bad politics because it would set the middle class against the poor -- people struggling to keep health insurance against people struggling to get it.

Matt Yglesias says he'd be fine with a political system that gave the party in power in the legislature and the executive branch the ability to govern much more aggressively, even if it means accepting the rollback of programs he likes when administrations switch. He writes:

If we switch to a set of rules where a party that wins an election gets to govern, then I'm fine with those rules applying in an even-handed way.

I actually think such a system would be beneficial in both directions. If it were easier to enact and expand programs, but also easier to cut and eliminate programs then I think that on net we would end up with more and bigger good programs and fewer and smaller bad programs. In the UK where there are very few veto points, you don't really see policy see-sawing back and forth. Many Labour initiatives (NHS, etc.) stand the test of time, but when the Tories manage to sell the public of axing something it tends not to come back. To my way of thinking, that's a beneficial dynamic.

One of the points James Q. Wilson makes in Bureaucracy is that in the UK, executive agencies are much more directly responsive to whoever the current prime minister is, because the prime minister and the dominant party in parliament by design work in concert. So it's not simply easier for the legislature and the executive to make a joint decision about what they want from agencies and programs, but it's easier for agencies to manage what the legislature and the executive want from them: they're not pulled back and forth between competing expectations that carry equal opportunities of sanction and reward.

By Robert Brodsky

The Army announced Friday that it had affirmed a massive $3 billion contract, first made last summer, to Oshkosh Corp. for its Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.

The military originally awarded the contract to Oshkosh in August but three competitors--BAE Systems, Tactical Vehicles LP and Navistar, LLC--filed protests with the Government Accountability Office.

In December, the GAO sustained portions of the protest and recommended that the Army re-evaluate one aspect of the bidders' proposals, conduct a new evaluation of Navistar's past performance and make a new source selection decision. From Dec. 21, 2009 through Jan. 22, 2010, the Army re-evaluated the proposals. A peer review team within the Office of the Secretary of Defense affirmed the Army's re-evaluation process.

The review, however, did little to change the results. Last week, the Army announced that Oshkosh had been awarded a competitive, five-year requirements contract for production of up to 12,415 trucks, 10,926 trailers and related support and engineering services.

As Washington continues to dig itself out of Snowmageddon, D.C.-area federal government offices will be open on Tuesday, but with a two-hour delay for employees. Unscheduled leave will continue to be available for those unable to make it to work.

According to the White House, President Obama signed on Friday a Congressional resolution establishing "statutory Pay-As-You-Go" rules, which will prohibit both chambers of Congress from passing taxation or mandatory spending legislation which adds to the deficit. (Previously, the House had such a rule but the Senate did not.) I had some thoughts about this, but put off writing them until Michael Kinsley summed them up pretty well on The Atlantic Wire last week.

"As a matter of logic, there is no reason a 'pay-go' rule should work," Kinsley wrote. "These and other budget gimmicks are like trying to lose weight by locking the refrigerator and putting the key on a very high shelf where only you can find it. But you know what? Sometimes, that works."

That's right. Pay-go advocates like to point to the fact that deficits ballooned after pay-go was repealed in 2002 -- but don't those deficits have more to do with the priorities of that Congress than the absence of a pay-go rule? It's like saying that gym membership, rather than exercise, causes weight loss.

So what's wrong with adding a procedural hurdle to bills that would increase the deficit?

Maybe nothing. But for the type of legislation that we typically cover -- things like fixing quirks in the federal retirement system -- pay-go rules can become an obstacle. The cost of those programs is normally a drop in the bucket compared to the national debt. But under pay-go, it's still a drop and it has to be paired with something that will take a drop out of the bucket if it's going to pass. Given how many other hurdles exist in the complex legislative processes of both chambers of Congress, this can sometimes be pretty difficult. It was a factor in why the FERS sick leave fix and Hawaii/Alaska locality pay legislation was so hard to pass last year.

And it can also lead to ridiculous legislative tricks, such as when the bill establishing Roth accounts for the TSP became a "windfall" for the government, leading legislators to tack on all of their favorite projects to it. (You can read more about Roth accounts here.) Of course, Roth accounts don't actually increase government revenues at all -- all they do is take a current tax exemption and move it several decades into the future. But because the Congressional Budget Office normally only estimates the 10-year cost of legislation, it became free money as far as Congress was concerned.

There's also the befuddling and arbitrary distinction between "direct spending" and "indirect spending."

I'm not trying to say that pay-go is a bad idea -- I'm just saying this is one aspect of it which rarely gets notice.

Ron Howard has cast David Krumholtz as the lead in his new Internal Revenue Service workplace comedy, and I think it's a great call. He was one of the most underrated and best parts of 10 Things I Hate About You, which may be the defining teen movie of my generation. He's been very loose and funny in a whole bunch of small roles in the the Frat Pack comedies, including the Harold & Kumar franchise, Superbad, I Love You Man, and Walk Hard, and he's also very good in Joss Whedon's Serenity. And of course he's been wonderful as one of the anchors on Numb3rs.

So he's got a good, funny pedigree. But I think Krumholtz is a good choice for this role for another reason. As I've written before, shows about government employees tend to set them up as deluded bumblers or superheroic law enforcement officers. Krumholtz tends to be neither: he comes across as smart and competent, even if he's kind of goofy. I like the idea of a federal employee on television who comes across as accessible, relateable and intelligent is a good idea, especially at a time when two-thirds of Americans are describing themselves as "dissatisfied" or "angry" with the federal government.

Of course, when we talk about teleworkers, it's important to remember that some folks are doing it full-time. Ginger, a member of the GovGab blog team, reminded us of what that's like:

I know this because I am a full-time teleworker that lives in the San Antonio area and I am still carrying out my duties for my DC office. All of my work duties are carried out across the internet, so when the DC area is affected by something and I am not, I continue my own work. I also can take over most of the duties from the members on my team. For instance, my office runs www.pueblo.gsa.gov, a web site that allows citizens to order government publications. Every business day, someone from my team runs processes and gets orders out to our distribution facility in Pueblo, Colorado. This week, I have been sharing those duties with my DC team members.

Also this week, while the government was officially closed in DC, I finished database updates and prepared reports that will be used to make decisions during a meeting next week. My coworkers are able to access those reports via the internet so they can be prepared for the meeting next week. As a member of the blog team, I am expected to meet my deadlines and have my blog posts up during holidays and during those times when mother nature decides to drop record-breaking amounts of snow.

I don't know that the office will ever die. I like my coworkers, and really enjoy getting to interact with them. No method of electronic communications has yet replaced batting around ideas in person. But I do think decentralization means resilience, and the federal government's had a striking demonstration of that fact this week.

Brittany Ballenstedt has what I think is a typically smart take on Rep. Gerry Connolly's, D-Va., call to make sure teleworkers aren't penalized for working through government closures. She writes:

Still, isn't the benefit of being able to telework throughout the year, including the savings generated from commuting costs, enough incentive for teleworking employees to continue working through the blizzard, even despite their co-workers having a day off? The same case could be made that incentives are needed for federal employees who must report to work in areas not affected by the snow. After all, isn't that the overall goal of telework -- to hold up government operations in the face of an emergency, while also boosting employee satisfaction, decreasing traffic congestion and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions?

I think telework is at an interesting tipping point in government. Few enough people do it that on a regular basis, it seems like a benefit, rather than simply another way of doing business, a standard operating procedure. When government shuts down, however, those teleworkers have to keep working. That's a benefit to the government, of course, but it no longer feels like a benefit to the teleworkers who are keeping government operations going while their coworkers are not working. What needs to happen is to get telework to a saturation point where it's no longer a question of benefits, or penalties, or incentives, but just another way to work.

After nearly a week of closed offices, the Office of Personnel Management announced that the D.C.-area government will be open for business on Friday--with a two hour delay and with unscheduled leave available for those unable to make it.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who also sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce subcommittee, is asking for it. I think she's right to do so. The federal government's operations are directly impinged by the storm, and DC's ability to manage it, whether that means getting streets plowed out, or Metro tracks uncovered. If the federal government wants DC to be able to continue to manage even the most debilitating snowstorm, there should probably be some serious investment in the city's ability to do that, since the federal government is a major beneficiary of the city's efforts. And what DC really needs is not temporary relief, necessarily, but infrastructure investments in a subway and light rail system that can be easily reactivated in a major storm, and a snowplow and salt fleet that's in consistent good working condition.

I think most of us can probably agree that it was not well-thought out for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to declare that "probably Larry King has interrogated people longer and better than that," in reference to a Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogation of Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, the attempted Christmas Day bomber. Not only is it insulting to the FBI, it also just reveals a complete ignorance of what FBI agents do, and frankly, of what Larry King does. (Have you watched the show in a while? King is a pretty weak interviewer.)

And I think that illustrates a problem with Congressional criticism and oversight of federal agenices. One of the real pleasures of working on my beat is that the issues are low-profile enough to most Americans that the Senators and Representatives who gravitate towards them tend to be genuinely interested and fairly well-informed. No matter what anyone think of George Voinovich or Daniel Akaka's politics in general, no one can deny that they know their federal employee issues cold. But individual agencies fall under the jurisdiction of many committees, not all of which are equally interested in or knowledgeable about the actual operations of those agencies. As Wilson describes in Bureaucracy, it's hard enough for agencies to be answerable to multiple masters, much less to please all of them, especially if there are conflicting demands from committees with different levels of information and experience.

Of course, detailed knowledge of FBI interrogation protocols, even if you've got it, doesn't sound as good as a one-liner about Larry King. And that's another problem oversight and Congressional criticism of agencies: it's not simply happening in committee rooms anymore, but in forums like television and the internet, where those critiques spread faster, particularly if they're controversial. In a way, I think that transparency is a good thing. More access to and eyes on what agencies do, and what Congress thinks they should do, is generally a good thing. But political and management needs don't always go hand in hand. When they conflict, and a politician like McConnell makes a statement that's divorced from agency realities but that he clearly thought would be politically useful, both agencies and the politicians who critique them can end up burned.

Y'all were right to jump all over me and point out that using janitors as an example of blue-collar jobs in government was a bad choice of an example. But there are still about 200,000 people in the Federal Wage System, the federal government's pay system for blue-collar workers. Contracting may have shrunk the ranks of federal blue-collar employees. But they're far from gone.

The snow blanketing Washington, DC broke records in volume, and this breaks another one: the federal government is closed for weather for the forth consecutive day tomorrow. Same conditions apply. Stay safe, warm, and well-fed, everyone.

Kennedy School professor Linda Bilmes and Partnership for Public Service president Max Stier have an op-ed in the Boston Globe, hitting back at newly-elected Republican Sen. Scott Brown for saying that federal workers make twice what their private-sector counterparts make and calling for a hiring freeze. This set of statistics stood out at me:

Private sector employees include large numbers of minimum wage jobs that do not exist in government. About 20 percent of federal workers have a master's degree, professional degree or doctorate compared to only 13 percent in the private sector. Overall, some 51 percent of federal employees have at least a college degree compared to 35 percent in the private sector....Direct comparisons show professionals in government routinely make far less than their private-sector counterparts, especially at the higher levels within departments and agencies.

I actually would have expected the masters' and bachelors' numbers to be higher. I think it's easy to forget how many blue collar workers the federal government employs. Agencies need janitors, and they need scientists. And we all need a clearer sense of how they're paid relative to their private-sector counterparts.

National Journal's James Kitfield (a frequent GovExec contributor) scored an interview with Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen about the recovery efforts in Haiti, which he was kind enough to share with us. The comparisons and contrasts with Katrina recovery are fascinating. Some key points here, but really do check the whole thing out:

NJ: Do you see similarities to the challenges presented by the Haitian disaster response?

Allen: I see similarities as well as significant differences. Haiti was orders of magnitude bigger, with over 100,000 casualties versus roughly 3,000 during Katrina. On the other hand, the displaced population from each disaster was roughly 1.5 million. Another similarity is the problem that, once those people were displaced, they really didn't have anything to go back to. In Haiti, of course, there was much less of an ability to absorb that population elsewhere.

NJ: Do you see similarities in the command-and-control challenges?

Allen: Yes. From the very start, everything the U.S. government did had to be in support of the leaders of a sovereign Haiti. The U.S. official directly responsible for supporting the government of Haiti is Ambassador Ken Merten, as the chief of the U.S. mission there. Since ambassadors aren't necessarily experts in disaster response, resources flowed in under the auspices of USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development]. USAID has the statutory authorities for coordinating help to foreign countries, and it immediately dispatched a senior leader to coordinate civilian U.S. support on the ground in Port-au-Prince.

Because of the scope of the disaster, the response also required a lot of capabilities that only reside in the U.S. military, to include command-and-control systems, communications, logistics, security and transport. So a Joint Task Force Haiti was established, led by the deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, and including components of all the armed forces, maritime, land and air. So you very quickly had a command structure take shape, led on the ground by Ambassador Merten as U.S. chief of mission, who was supported on the civilian side by USAID and on the military side by Joint Task Force Haiti, both of which are also on the ground in Port-au-Prince.

As the snow continues. Same conditions apply as the previous office closures.

By Robert Brodsky

After 10 months of waiting to be confirmed as GSA administrator, Martha Johnson wasn't about to let a little snowstorm to stop her from taking the oath of office.

On Sunday evening, Johnson was sworn into office--by telephone--at her home in Annapolis, Md. The oath was performed by Acting Administrator Steve Leeds and Johnson's husband, Steve, reportedly served as a witness.

Johnson was confirmed as the agency's first permanent and Senate-confirmed administrator on Thursday after enduring a long hold by Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

The federal government in the DC area will be closed on Tuesday, February 9. Teleworking employees are expected to work from their assigned remote locations, and emergency employees to make it into the office.

As anyone who watched the New Orleans Saints' drubbing of the Indianapolis Colts last night knows, the U.S. Census ran a commercial during the Superbowl to highlight attention to its upcoming 2010 survey. The $2.5 million spot -- part of the agency's $340 million promotion campaign -- aims to increase participation and reach historically under-counted populations, although it attracted ire from conservative critics such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who claimed it was a waste of taxpayer money.

The spot was directed by Christopher Guest, the off-beat actor and director behind so-called "mockumetary" hits "This is Spinal Tap" and "Best in Show." Competing with advertising heavyweights such as Budweiser, Google, and Coca-Cola, how did the Census fair?

Based on instant reactions, not too well.

"Um, the $2.5 million for this are taxpayer dollars, right? Not cool," wrote MSNBC contributor Rick Chandler, who included it on his list of worst ads of the night. So did Entertainment Weekly.

The spot scored low in USA Today's "Ad Meter" rankings, compiled through focus groups, although it didn't inspire as much loathing as those Danica Patrick GoDaddy.com ads. And Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management also gave the ad an "F" in its ratings, claiming the ad "fell flat."

The spot has its defenders, but they're few and far between. For instance, Digital Sports Daily wrote, "It makes fun of corporate speak, of Hollywood, and in a way itself."

But remember, their target audience isn't entertainment writers, it's regular citizens. And as any marketing expert will tell you, commercials don't have to be works of art to work.

This isn't the first time an agency has dipped its toe into the world of big-time sports advertising. Last year, to gear up for the switch-over to digit television, the Federal Communications Commission sponsored a NASCAR team--which crashed in its first race.

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry (who apparently has an aching back from digging out his corner house) says he'll make the call about the federal government's operating status in the DC area after a 6pm conference call with state, local, county and regional governments this evening. Stay tuned for updates.

First, I wanted to thank everyone who sent me reading suggestions, or said they'd be reading along with me. I'm glad to know you all are out there. Just as a heads-up, though, my reading list is determined by a syllabus, so I don't have a lot of discretion to incorporate suggestions, since the list is extremely heavy (much more than I'm writing about here) and tied to assignments and class discussions. Otherwise I'd change directions in a heartbeat! I'll keep track of them, though, and perhaps extend the project further into the year if folks are interested.

But now to dive into this week's reading, James Q. Wilson's Bureaucracy. Of everything I'm reading for this project, Bureaucracy is the thing I'm most embarrassed I didn't read on my own at some point, and that I regret not getting to. It's an extremely clear, cogent, lucid account of how government works that both tracks with most of my own experience as a reporter, and that I think would have been extremely useful to me when I was just beginning to get to know government agencies.

Continue reading "Bureaucracy Reading II: James Q. Wilson's Bureaucracy" »

The Washington Post is polling on that question right now. I'm voting yes, if only because I'm starting to go stir crazy in my apartment, and Atlantic Media's offices are closed on snow days. But I can see the case for safety Ed is making over at the Post. Especially if it starts snowing again tomorrow afternoon. The major thoroughfares I live near in DC aren't remotely plowed yet, buses aren't running. And it could only get worse. If the federal government was a fully teleworking organization, this wouldn't be a problem.

After this weekend's storm, federal agencies in the Washington, DC area will remain closed on Monday as the region digs itself out. To all our readers in the area, stay safe and warm, and good luck getting your cars out of the snow!

Without 60 votes to break the deadlock, apparently placed over some earmarks Shelby wants for his home state of Alabama, no nominations can move forward. The debate over this will focus on politics and on the deficit, and the optics of Shelby throwing a fit over earmarks at a time when the Republicans are hammering the administration on spending. But I really wish that some politician, somewhere, would talk about the impact of agencies not having leaders because of this kind of move. Holds aren't cost-free, but because most politicians and most Americans don't see the costs to agencies, they feel free to ignore them.

Yesterday, the Office of Personnel Management launched its new OpenOPM website, where it will release things like Freedom of Information Act Reports and publicly track progress towards transparency goals. So far, most of the information that's up on the site is procedural, listing when the agency picked officials who will be responsible for releasing spending information, or positing dates for incorporating public feedback on the design of the site. But they've got the name and number of the person who will be responsible for answering questions about transparency issues at OPM. I haven't tried calling yet to see if it's a direct dial, but if any of y'all do, report back. And I'm looking forward to playing around with FedScope to see what I find in the employment data there. As I've said before, transparency is as much a matter of legibility as of access to data. But getting the data out there, and naming the people responsible for access to it, is a start.

The Office of Personnel Management has just announced that federal agencies in the Washington, DC area, which is due to be hit hard by a major snowstorm, will open on time tomorrow (though under an unscheduled leave policy) and will close four hours early to make sure folks can get home safe.

The Office of Personnel Management has already moved to declare that agencies in the Washington, DC area will be open under an unscheduled leave policy tomorrow, as heavy snow moves into the region. In addition, OPM Director John Berry sent a memo to Chief Human Capital Officers outlining a range of other options for managing the federal workforce during the storm, including:

* Permit employees at your agencies under a telework agreement to telework tomorrow. This severe weather forecast presents a key opportunity for agencies to test their telework plans in the context of emergency preparedness.

* Allow employees on alternative work schedules (AWS) to schedule their AWS day off or use credit hours (if available) tomorrow.

* Advise your employees now that OPM will be announcing the Government will operate on an unscheduled leave policy tomorrow. For planning purposes, employees should advise their supervisors as soon as possible if they plan to take annual leave, compensatory time off, credit hours, or leave without pay tomorrow.

By Elizabeth Newell

Congrats to our former colleague Gautham Nagesh for digging this up. According to Gautham, now with the Daily Caller, the administration is considering a proposal which would give preference to companies which adopt practices "designed by organized labor."

The proposal, which Gautham writes is being called the "High Road Contracting Policy" and is being developed with input from the Center for American Progress and the Service Employees International Union, would give preference to contractors that provide hourly workers with a "living wage", health insurance, an employer-funded retirement plan and paid sick days. Labor policies would be considered alongside standard proposal evaluation measures such as price and past performance in determining which contractor is given the award.

Gautham reports that the Labor Department would be responsible for collecting information on the labor practices of federal contractors and assigning a score to their practices. Professional Services Council Vice President Alan Chvotkin told Gautham the policy would give the Labor Department and unprecedented role in federal contracting.

Republican lawmakers also expressed concern about the proposal; Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, sent a letter to OMB Director Peter Orszag requesting a briefing on the proposal. The letter, cosigned by a number of other Republican senators, expresses concern that the change "could have serious, negative consequences."

When a federal employee, like the Transportation Security Officer who was arrested for molestation, commits a crime, it's tough on the federal government for two reasons. Obviously, federal workers are parts of the community affected by crimes like this one, but their reputations, and the reputations of their agencies, tend to suffer as well. "Federal employee" or "TSA officer," or whatever the perpetrator's professional title is, tends to get attached to the news coverage of their crime, even their offense is entirely unrelated to their job duties. And while commenters on TSA's Evolution of Security blog are, unfortunately, savaging the bloggers for stepping up and saying that the actions of this former fed have nothing to do with their ethics and their professionalism, I think it's an important step for agency employees to take.

As part of my reading project (about which more posts to come, loyal readers), I just finished a soon-to-be published book about reputational politics and the Food and Drug administration. While I knew intuitively that reputations, be they good or ill, tend to linger around agencies for a long time, the book was a good example of how federal employees themselves can participate in the construction of their agencies' reputations, whether by becoming poster children, or by upholding a set of ethics or principals or professional standards. There's a big difference between the public saying "criminals shouldn't work for the government" and government employees saying "we are disgusted by the criminal thing one of our former fellows did, and we reject this kind of behavior." The latter gives federal employees some agency in defining their reputation, even if, in the short term, they get attacked for trying to assert those standards.

By Robert Brodsky

President Obama is turning up the heat on Senate Republicans to finally allow a vote on his nominee to run the General Services Administration, Martha Johnson. A former GSA chief of staff, Johnson has been blocked for the past several months by a hold from Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri.--or as Obama described it at a meeting of Senate Democrats on Wednesday: "hostage" taking.

A transcript of Obama's remarks:

"So this is an example of where I'm going to reach out to Mitch McConnell; I know Harry has as well. And I'm just going to say, look, if the government is going to work for the American people, I can't have the administrator for GSA, which runs every federal facility, all federal buildings all across the country -- here we are, we're trying to save billions of dollars, cut waste -- Claire McCaskill has been all on top of how can we audit our spending -- and we could save billions of dollars in ending old leases that don't work or renegotiating them or consolidating buildings and efficiencies. But I don't have a GSA administrator, even though I nominated somebody who was well qualified several months ago, and nobody can tell me that there's anything particularly wrong with her. They're blocking her because of some unrelated matter. I don't know, you guys may know better than I do. And that is -- that has to end. It has to end. And the American people want it to end."

Let's have a fight about real stuff. Don't hold this woman hostage. If you have an objection about my health care policies, then let's debate the health care policies. But don't suddenly end up having a GSA administrator who is stuck in limbo somewhere because you don't like something else that we're doing, because that doesn't serve the American people. Then they don't know what the argument is about. Then it's just sort of a plague on both your houses because it looks like you guys are just fighting all the time. And we've got to put an end to that.

Incidentally, a cloture vote on Johnson's nomination is scheduled on Thursday, followed by a full Senate vote on her nomination.

It shouldn't be a big deal that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is withholding $614 million in performance fees from Lockheed Martin over the delays on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or that he fired the project managers, or that he's taking responsibility for the cost overruns and extended schedule. But frankly, it is. Frequently, in government, I think responsibility and performance management tend to work on a system of extremes: either everything's fine, or a project is completely canceled. Gates' response represents an interim step. Of course, he had tools available to him, including performance clauses, and hiring and firing authority. But the fact that he used them, and is making that use public and clear, is an important step away from those extremes. If the Obama administration wants to build more accountability into government programs, it has to build in both incentives and authorities, and the willingness to make use of them.

This graph from the New York Times demonstrating federal financial priorities is a little bit hard to read because some of the trend lines are just so thin, but it makes its point anyway:

Treasury may be the exception to this (though given that the IRS is a service-based, transactional organization no matter how little we like those services), but really, federal spending is concentrated highly in bureaucracies no one is likely to want to give up. This is why cutting federal spending is so hard. You can make the skinniest trend lines even more invisible, and have next to no impact on the overall financial picture. (H/T: Ezra Klein)

The release of the president's budget proposal always occasions a torrent of news stories, even though it's of course remarkably unclear whether those proposals will ever be enacted. But to my mind, the big news for federal employees in general yesterday came from the budget and the Office of Personnel Management. In the budget, President Obama proposed eliminating locality pay surveys and replacing them with an economic modeling process. And the report of the President's Pay Agent, released without fanfare yesterday, recommended that the government not implement locality pay for 2011because of the larger economic situation in the country.

Combined, do these two developments signal some kind of death knell for locality pay as an institution? Probably not. Getting rid of locality pay surveys could actually make it easier to create more locality areas because the Bureau of Labor Statistics wouldn't have to design and implement a new survey every time a new area came into being. And not having locality pay for one year doesn't mean it's gone forever. But I do think that these two developments, combined with language in the budget about how public- and private-sector raises have generally tracked each other closely (though the budget acknowledged that those statistics don't acknowledge educational and professional differences) suggest that the administration isn't entirely happy with the process for assigning federal pay and the conversation around it.

I don't think that's a surprise to anyone who's been following federal personnel news for the last year. But as the first concrete steps towards changing the federal pay system, the administration's locality pay proposals bear watching.

We're all tied up reporting on President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal today, so posting will be light. But we'll keep updating this roundup of key budget stories as we post them:

-President's budget recommends pay parity

-Obama proposes eliminating locality pay surveys

-Obama's $3.8 trillion budget slashes 120 programs

-Budget calls for more data on employee satisfaction and health.

I don't think this should come as a surprise to anyone, but after a weekend snow, OPM thought it was best to post an operating status anyway. Drive safe, etc., everybody.

I've been working at Government Executive since 2007, and while I've learned a lot about how organizations work simply by reporting, I decided that it was time that I learned a little bit more about the academic work underpinning a lot of assumptions on my beat. As a result, for the next four or so months, I'll be reading my way through some of the key articles and books about how organizations, from government bureaucracies to academic departments to non-profits work, and blogging once a week about how what I learned from them applies to what I see in my reporting. First up, Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell's "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Field."

Continue reading "A New Semi-Regular Series Of Posts: The Classics of Organization Theory" »