I'm looking forward to checking this regularly: Officials Say the Darndest Things, from the nonprofit investigative journalistic outfit ProPublica.

As Peter Orszag exits the top slot at the Office of Management and Budget today, the agency has named an interim successor: Jeffrey Zients, who currently serves as deputy director for management and the first federal chief performance officer.

Zients was featured in an in-depth cover story in the January issue of Government Executive. He'll occupy the top position at OMB pending the confirmation of Jacob Lew, who President Obama nominated to succeed Orszag earlier this month.

Politico reported that Rob Nabors, who had previously served as Orszag's deputy until moving over to become senior adviser to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, will head back to OMB as as acting deputy director. Jeff Liebman, who had been the acting deputy, is returning to a teaching post at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Local governments are feeling the financial pinch, and unlike the feds they generally can't just borrow the money to stay afloat. According to survey results from the National League of Cities, United States Conference of Mayors and National Association of Counties, almost 500,000 local government jobs already have been cut as a result of the recession. That means, they say, cuts in public safety, public works, public health, and social services.

Atttention federal social media mavens: Smokey Bear is less than 100 "likes" away from the 20,000 mark on his Facebook page. Wouldn't it be fitting if federal users put government's most recognizable mascot over the top?

And c'mon: While you're at it, go ahead and like GovExec, too. We're, umm, just a bit short of the Smokey standard.

(Hat tip: GSA New Media)

This is the kind of pull you have when you're an ex-president, I guess. The FAA has announced that flights along the Hudson River near Rhinebeck, N.Y., will be suspended from Saturday afternoon to early Sunday morning.

That just happens to be the time and place where Chelsea Clinton is getting married.

The FAA told the Associated Press it consults with other federal agencies on requests to restrict airspace, but wouldn't say whether the Secret Service had requested this particular ban.

The officially listed reason for the FAA's move? "VIP (Very Important Person) Movement."

Treasury Department officials have an idea about where they can get at least some of the employees to staff the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection: by transferring them from other federal agencies.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has drafted a memo to employees at seven financial regulatory agencies informing them they could be asked to move to the new bureau, which was created by financial regulatory overhaul legislation recently signed by President Obama.

"Certain employees at your agency that work on consumer protection may be asked to transfer," the draft reads. "The process will involve extensive consultation between Treasury and your agency before any decisions about transfer are made."

The Journal reports that it's unclear exactly how many employees would be affected. Overall, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is expected to have hundreds of employees and a budget of around $500 million.

The seven agencies that could be asked to transfer employees to the new bureau are: the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Housing and Urban Development, National Credit Union Administration, and Office of Thrift Supervision.

Authority over consumer financial product regulation is expected to be transferred to the new agency within a year.

Say what you will about the federal government, at least Uncle Sam knows the size of his workforce (as long as you don't try to factor in contractors, grantees, etc.). The same can't be said for the state of New York.

The New York Times reports the state actually has two public workforces: One controlled by the governor that totals 131,000 employees, and another made up of people employed by independent public authorities and agencies. The latter is estimated to be about 163,000 workers, although it's impossible to tell exactly how many because the agencies don't all report their numbers to a central registry.

I missed this last week, but can't resist taking note of it: The Wall Street Journal reported that earlier this year, the Patent and Trademark Office created a new trademark category: "Processed plant matter for medicinal purposes, namely medical marijuana."

That set off a mad scramble for those in the medical marijuana industry in the 14 states where it is legal to trademark the names of their products, ranging from long-used names for weed, such as Chronic, to psychoactive sodas called Keef Cola and Canna Cola.

Alas, the trademark protection was short-lived. After the Journal started asking questions, PTO officials apparently thought better of the idea, and within a week, the new trademark category had disappeared from the PTO website. An agency spokesman called the whole thing a "mistake."

Even without a specific medical marijuana category, the agency says it will accept and review pot trademark applications. But dealers beware: PTO hasn't ever actually granted a weed trademark, and the official line is that it's "highly unlikely" it will happen in the future.

Shirley Sherrod is a very busy person these days. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack verbally offered her a job last week, after unceremoniously ousting her because he thought an excerpt of a speech she made indicated she was a racist. Then he sent along a formal offer in writing, according to CBS News. But while Sherrod says she finally got a chance to look at the offer this morning, she still hasn't fully read it through yet.

The position is deputy director of the Office of Advocacy and Outreach at USDA. The office, authorized in the 2008 farm bill, is designed to "increase access to programs of the department, and increase the viability and profitability of small farms and ranches, beginning farmers or ranchers, and socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers," according to this budget document. OAO is separate from USDA's Office of Civil Rights.

(Hat tip: Federal Eye)

On this day in 1789, the first agency of the United States government under the Constitution was created, when President Washington signed into law a measure establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs. Within a few months, the agency took on a new name: the State Department.

As the only federal agency for a time, State had a set of responsibilities that ranged far beyond foreign affairs. Among other things, the department initially managed the U.S. Mint, was responsible for the census and oversaw immigration policy.

And in the category of "the more things change..." the official history of the department notes that in its early years, there were "significant constraints on the Department of State in terms of budget and manpower."

(Hat tip: The State Department's own Alec Ross.)

Shane Harris, erstwhile GovExec technology editor, author of the great book The Watchers, and current senior writer at Washingtonian, has a new piece in the magazine about the Obama administration's tenacious effort to prosecute people who leak national security secrets to the media. It's a legally arduous and time-consuming process that requires a commitment bordering on obsession.

Harris writes:

Leak investigations are usually unproductive. Defying the perception of secrecy in the world of spycraft, the number of people who know about even the most highly classified program can be in the hundreds. It's rare that investigators identify a suspect, and rarer still that they bring an indictment and go to trial, because the accused could end up revealing more classified information in his defense--a kind of "graymail" that ensures that most leakers will never spend time in prison. From 2005 to 2009, federal agencies referred nearly 200 leaks to the FBI. Investigators opened 26 cases, identified 14 suspects, and prosecuted none of them.

So why the focus on such cases in the Obama administration? It seems to come right from the top. Harris quotes Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter from his book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One: "No one on his staff was brave enough to tell [Obama] that obsessing over leaks was a colossal waste of time. But it wouldn't have mattered: leaks offended Obama's sense of discipline and reminded him of everything he disliked about the capital."

Great piece in the New York Times yesterday on the uncanny ability of the operators of the White House switchboard to get anyone on the phone, anytime, if the president wants to speak to them. Anyone, that is, except Shirley Sherrod, who remained out of touch for hours last week as the White House was trying to reach her as part of a desperate effort to quell the firestorm caused by her ouster.

Why couldn't she be reached? Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had a theory:

Much of the time, Ms. Sherrod was busy chatting her way through network and cable television, leaving the White House and Mr. Vilsack scrambling to get her. When, at a news briefing, a reporter remarked, "She's been all over TV -- why wasn't she reachable," the press secretary wryly replied, "It may have been because she was all over TV."

Apparently OMB wants even more cost-cutting ideas from federal employees. Last week, OMB Director Peter Orszag made a plea for feds to submit their ideas in the second annual SAVE Awards, noting that the deadline was Thursday, July 22.

Now, though, a message on the SAVE Awards website says "submissions will now be accepted through July 29th."

It's not like there was a huge shortage of ideas: As of Sunday, more than 16,000 proposals for making government more efficient had been posted, drawing 144,000 votes and 11,000 comments from 17,000 users. Of course, that's a far cry from the 38,000 ideas submitted in the first SAVE Awards round.

In the Washington Post today, Alec MacGillis takes up the age-old issue of moving government out of Washington and distributing its functions around the country. For whatever reason, this proposal seems to rear its head every few years. (My own father-in-law made the case in USA Today five years ago.)

The interesting thing is that MacGillis doesn't get very far before acknowledging that "the federal government is less clustered on the Potomac than many think." He notes that 83 percent of the government's 1.9 million non-postal civilian employees work somewhere other than the D.C. metro area. But, he says, "Washington's share looks bigger if you don't include civilian military and Veterans Affairs workers, who are scattered at bases and hospitals across the country. Of the remaining federal employees, a quarter are in this region."

Two thoughts:

• Even using that calculation, you're still left with only 25 percent of the federal establishment on the Potomac.
• Isn't taking out Defense and VA employees kind of arbitrary? The only grounds for removing them seems to be that they're already geographically distributed. It's sort of like saying if you took out all the employees who actually manage or work at Wal-Mart stores out of the equation, a big percentage of the company's employees would work in Bentonville, Ark.

• Too many federal employees in any one place is a substantial security risk.
• The transportation system in the Washington area can't accommodate the workforce that already lives here. Adding any more feds would be a nightmare.

If you're convinced, though, that government needs to be more spread around, take heart: It's already happening. In the August issue of Government Executive, we'll look at just one example: the explosive growth of federal operations in Huntsville, Ala., which has benefited from the post-9/11 push to move defense and homeland security operations out of Washington.

More than 30 employees who work in sensitive national security organizations -- including the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- have been investigated for allegedly buying and dowloading child pornography, according to a report in today's Boston Globe.

Some of the investigations have led to prosecutions, others have been dropped, and others have yet to be resolved -- sometimes after years of inquiries.

From the Globe report:

The number of offenders is a small percentage of the thousands of people working for sensitive Pentagon-related agencies. But the fact that offenders include people with access to government secrets puts national security agencies "at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations,'' according to one report by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service from late 2009.

(Hat tip: Ed O'Keefe)

No, is the short answer from William J. Astore in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

"Simply joining the armed services does not make you a hero, nor does the act of serving in combat," Astore writes. "Still, ever since the events of 9/11, there's been an almost religious veneration of U.S. service members as "Our American Heroes" (as a well-intentioned sign puts it at my local post office). But a snappy uniform -- or even dented body armor -- is not a magical shortcut to hero status."

Astore is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.

So what's wrong with elevating all of those who make at least some measure of sacrifice -- and, in many cases, put themselves at great personal risk -- to serve their country? "A lot," says Astore. "By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of war will be played down. In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is guaranteed to degrade humanity as well."

By the way, just so we're clear here, I'm not endorsing or rejecting Astore's position. Just passing it along for your consideration.

(Hat tip: Atlantic Wire)

To hear President Obama tell it (or at least joke about it), White House aides are none too pleased that he has moved to freeze their salaries as part of his ongoing effort to trim federal spending. From his remarks at a bill-signing ceremony today in which he touted the cost-cutting initiative:

We froze salaries for senior White House staff -- hence the glum faces.

The Defense Department has a huge challenge ahead of it as it enters the stretch run for implementing the provisions of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure round, the Government Accountability Office reports.

"As opposed to simply closing bases, many of the BRAC 2005 recommendations involve complex realignments, such as designating where military forces returning to the United States from overseas bases would be located; establishing joint military medical centers; creating joint bases; and reconfiguring the defense supply, storage and distribution network," GAO says.

Under the BRAC law, Defense must complete the realignments approved under the 2005 round by Sept. 15, 2011. Almost half of the 800 Defense locations that are implementing BRAC recommendations aren't scheduled to finish their actions until sometime next year, and 230 have scheduled their completion dates within the last two weeks before the September deadline.

This, GAO notes, leaves "little or no margin for slippage to finish constructing buildings and to move or hire the needed personnel." That's potentially a huge issue when you're moving 123,000 personnel and spending $25 billion on new construction and renovation of facilities.

GAO says Defense is working to address BRAC implementation challenges, adding costs to the process. But the report concludes the Pentagon is "not reporting all of these additional costs."

In the August issue of Government Executive, we'll take an in-depth look at how the BRAC process has changed the face of Huntsville, Ala., turning it into a burgeoning hub not only for Defense operations, but those of other security-related federal agencies and contractors, too.

Wow again. Now Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wants to rehire Shirley Sherrod? For a civil rights post? The day after she was forced out of her job on the grounds of holding racist attitudes a couple of decades ago?

A couple of observations on today's turn of events:

• Vilsack says he made the decision to oust Sherrod on his own, without White House involvement. That just doesn't pass the smell test. How could Vilsack possibly take action in a highly charged case that was dominating the day's news cycle without consulting the White House? Answer: He couldn't.
• Here's White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: "We live in a culture [in which] things whip around, people want fast responses, [and] we want to give fast responses. One of the great lessons you take away from this is to ask all the questions first." So asking the right questions before you take action is a lesson that had to be learned at the highest levels of the administration yesterday?

Got an idea for saving the government money or making it work more efficiently? Better dust it off and whip it into shape. Tomorrow's the deadline for federal employees to submit ideas for the second annual SAVE Awards, the Office of Management and Budget contest aimed at generating new ideas for cutting spending and improving government.

OMB Director Peter Orszag reported today that more than 11,000 ideas have been submitted since the contest was announced on July 8. But he wants more, and also wants employees to go to the SAVE Awards website to vote on their colleagues' ideas. The winner gets a meeting with President Obama--hopefully not in a raging snowstorm this time.

Wow: Now USDA is reconsidering the ouster of Georgia State Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod after taking the time to watch the entire video of her controversial remarks on race.

To recap: Sherrod resigned under pressure Monday after Andrew Breitbart's Big Government site highlighted a speech she made earlier this year at an NAACP banquet. In that address, she acknowledged that back in 1986, she failed to give a white farmer the "full force" of her help in saving his farm, believing that he could get assistance from "his own."

Sherrod's defenders, including the NAACP -- which reversed itself on her ouster during the course of the day yesterday, saying it had been "snookered" by Breitbart -- said the full context of her remarks showed the point she was trying to make was that she had learned that taking such a race-based approach to efforts to aid farmers was wrong.

But that much actually was clear even from the edited excerpt of Sherrod's remarks, which made it apparent that the point of her story was to emphasize she had learned that race was not the dominant factor she had thought it was. That fact was simply overwhelmed by the "gotcha" reaction to her remarks about the white farmer.

This whole episode reinforces two truths about Washington:

• Honesty and forthrightness on key issues, especially involving race, is generally punished.
• In the radically truncated news cycle, the tendency to engage in knee-jerk reactions is incredibly powerful. In this case, USDA is reconsidering its decision largely because it simply didn't give the decision enough consideration in the first place.

The city of Maywood, Calif., has come up with a rather extreme solution to its budget woes: The New York Times reported this week that city leaders have outsourced all of its government jobs.

That's right, from police to crossing guards, all of Maywood's employees -- who only totaled about 60 -- saw their jobs eliminated. Many were then immediately rehired under contract. Police functions were shifted to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The townspeople don't seem to mind. "Remember the Soviet Union?" Hector Alvarado, who heads a civic advocacy group, told the Times. "They had a lot of bureaucracy, and they lost. Maywood was like that. Now people know if they don't work, they will be laid off. Much better this way."

Anne Applebaum, writing in today's Washington Post:

If you don't live in this country all of the time, and I don't, here is what you notice when you come home: Americans -- with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession and, above all, their addiction to government spending programs -- demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world. They don't simply want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is prevented, or that they are fully compensated in the event something goes wrong. And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too.

And there's more:

...we not only demand ludicrous levels of personal and political safety, we also rant and rave against the vast bureaucracies we have created -- democratically, constitutionally, openly -- to deliver it.

Takeaways from part two of the Washington Post's Top Secret America series today:

• The piece includes a specific estimate on the size of the intelligence contractor workforce: 265,000, a number the Post's reporters, Dana Priest and William H. Arkin, say was "vetted by several high-ranking intelligence officials."
• At the Homeland Security Department, the number of contractors equals the number of federal employees.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates makes what he calls a "terrible confession:" that he doesn't even know how many contractors work in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
• The Post's investigation concludes flatly that contractors are more expensive than federal employees, citing a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found contractors make up 29 percent of the workforce in intelligence agencies but cost the equivalent of 49 percent of their personnel budgets. Gates says contractors cost, on average, 25 percent more than federal employees.

I finally have had some time to digest the initial installment in the Washington Post's "Top Secret America" series on the post-9/11 growth of the U.S. intelligence, counterterrorism and homeland security apparatus. It's a stunningly comprehensive look at a secret world that raises some fairly serious questions about whether anyone, in or out of government, grasps the totality of what agencies and they're their contractors are doing in this realm.

First, in case you missed it, are some of the the key facts and figures:

• There are 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies that work on top secret programs.
• About 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances.
• Intelligence analysts produce a total of 50,000 reports a year.

"The complexity of this system defies description," says retired Army Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked to review the Defense Department's most sensitive programs last year after a career that included commanding more than 100,000 troops in Iraq.

"We've built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?" asks Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair characterized the post-9/11 attitude as "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

Of course, it's fairly easy to take anything that government does and make it seem massive, expensive and out of control. It's a big country, and a complex world. It's also very difficult to find the line between a healthy level of redundancy and sheer overkill. Here's the official reaction of current acting DNI, David C. Gompert, to the Post report:

In recent years, we have reformed the [intelligence community] in ways that have improved the quality, quantity, regularity, and speed of our support to policymakers, warfighters, and homeland defenders, and we will continue our reform efforts. We provide oversight, while also encouraging initiative. We work constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis, challenge conventional thinking, and eliminate single points of failure. We are mindful of the size of our contractor ranks, but greatly value the critical flexibility and specialized skills they contribute to our mission.

Note the phrase "intentional overlap." Doubtless, some of the redundancy that has developed has been built into the system purposefully. But it's also hard to believe that in the years since 9/11, when spending on security, intelligence and counterterrorism has consistently been exempt from budgetary restrictions and strict oversight, that we have evolved the ideal system for keeping America safe.

My apologies for the light blogging today. I'm at our Excellence in Government conference, where we're talking all things transparency, collaboration and open government. If you're interested, you can follow the conference on Twitter here.

Great piece in the New York Times today about Energy Secretary Steven Chu's role in the effort to cap the BP oil well in the Gulf. It provides more evidence that in times of crisis, chain of command doesn't matter nearly as much as having smart, effective leaders in place who can react to events and push key players to take appropriate actions.

Chu doesn't have a formal role in the disaster response. Nor does he have training in oil well technology. (He's a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.) But he got involved in the response effort as a "kibitzer," and his role has gradually grown to the point where he is challenging BP engineers, floating new approaches to problems, and ultimately stepping in and making key decisions. For example, in May, he overrode BP officials and ordered a stop to the "top kill" effort to stem the leak, citing "grave concerns" that it wouldn't work. And last month, he insisted that the company make the effort to put a tighter cap on the well.

Chu has assembled an ad hoc team of scientists and engineers from the Energy Department's laboratories, other federal agencies and various universities that he consults for advice. Then, when it's time for action, he steps up.

"He is confident, he is inquisitive and he seeks views from a variety of people," Robert Dudley, the top BP official handling the response, told the Times. "He can speak with senior executives and then with subsea engineers, and ask probing questions about pressure variants and burst steel casing. He can actually interpret the data and have a very sharp engineering discussion with an expert from BP."

Is Glacier National Park going to be due for a name change?

(Hat tip: Chris Dorobek)

William J. Boarman, who President Obama has nominated to head the Government Printing Office, has been on unpaid leave from GPO since way back in 1977, when he took the first in a series of labor union positions. But Ed O'Keefe reports today that this didn't stop GPO from occasionally issuing checks to him over the years. And Boarman cashed them, because, he says, he thought they were for leave he had built up while he was in a paid status at the agency.

Last week, GPO officials acknowledged that they had screwed up in issuing the payments, and told Boarman he nevertheless had to give the money back. Which he did on Tuesday.

The White House says Boarman "did absolutely nothing wrong" and that "this episode makes it clear that GPO is sorely in need of stronger financial management, and that's one of the reasons we're looking forward to Mr. Boarman's confirmation and service."

The Postal Service puts out new commemorative stamps all the time. But it's not every day that in the process, it recognizes one of its own employees.

Ed O'Keefe reports today about Cleophus Brown, 76, of Birmingham, Ala., who arrives at work at 3:30 a.m. every day to drive a postal tractor trailer full of mail from the airport to area postal stations.

But in a previous life, Brown was a first baseman and pitcher for the Birmingham Black Barrons and Louisville Clippers of the Negro Leagues--the same Negro Leagues that are being honored with a commemorative stamp today.

USPS officials reached out to their workforce to find out if any current employees had played in the Negro Leagues, and Brown turned out to be the only one.

The State Department does not take kindly to people fraudulently obtaining passports, especially if they steal the identity of dead people to do so. In fact, several years ago, State's Diplomatic Security Service, in cooperation with the FBI, launched Operation Deathmatch, which cross-matched passport records with government death records, resulting in more than 100 arrests.

This week, State and the Customs and Border Protection Bureau announced they had used the Deathmatch techniques to nail John Skelton, a British citizen, at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Federal officials allege he stole the identity of U.S. citizen Kurt Branham, who died in 1994. Skelton was charged with identity fraud, making false statements and posing as a U.S. citizen.

"Stealing another person's identity is a very serious crime, but stealing the identity of a deceased citizen is despicable," said Stephen Dearborn, CBP Acting Port Director for the Port of Baltimore. "CBP and Diplomatic Security Service officials work vigorously to bring impostors to justice and to protect American citizens' identities. We are very pleased to end Mr. Skelton's charade."

In a new report, the Government Accountability Office has found that in 2008, the State Department issued about 4,500 passports to registered sex offenders -- a figure the watchdog agency says is probably understated due to data limitations.

What's more, by analyzing salary data provided by the Treasury Department, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, GAO found that at least 30 of the offenders were federal employees.

To put all of those numbers in perspective, State issued more than 16 million passports in 2008. And, GAO noted, "Currently, State has no statutory authority to deny passports to registered sex offenders, except those convicted of sex tourism."

Great slice-of-bureaucratic-life story in the Washington Post today about the State Department's Operations Center, where 60 foreign service officers and other federal employees work round-the-clock to handle highly sensitive worldwide diplomatic communications.

Best anecdote:

[The center has a] Barbie-size wooden outhouse, nailed to a beam, fitted with a miniature blue bulb.

"I'm going blue!" duty desk officers call out when they stand up to go to the bathroom. They flip a switch, triggering a blue glow from the outhouse. As on an airplane, the light signals: Bathroom occupied; remain in your seats. Work stations must be staffed in case of an emergency.

President Obama on Tuesday nominated Jacob Lew to replace Peter R. Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Lew, who currently is deputy secretary for management and resources at the State Department, served as budget chief during the Clinton administration.

Lew has a long resume in budget, finance and management, and could be one of those rare leaders who brings both the 'M' and 'B' to the job.

Update, 12:03 p.m.: Here's some additional background on Lew, courtesy of a 1998 CongressDaily report, when he got the top job at OMB for the first time. And here's a GovExec piece from 2000, about Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., then chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, taking Lew to task for what he characterized as shortcomings in OMB's reports under the Government Performance and Results Act. Thompson said the goals OMB listed in its report weren't tied to specific and measurable outcomes, as the law requires. Lew's response: "Many of the measures we urge on operating agencies are not applicable to OMB's own work."

The Onion comes through again:

Nation Demands Tax Dollars Only Be Wasted On Stuff That's Awesome

Recovery.gov wants some information about you. From the site's official Twitter feed this morning:

Brand new poll up on our homepage. We want to know - Who are you? Check it out & leave us your answer: http://bit.ly/2CY2UQ

Tapes played at former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's trial on charges of racketeering, extortion and fraud yesterday show he discussed the idea of making a deal to appoint Valerie Jarrett, a friend of then-President-elect Obama's, to the Senate seat he was vacating in exchange for a Cabinet appointment for himself.

The only problem was Blagojevich wasn't quite sure of the name of the department he hoped to lead. Here's an exchange between the governor and an aide, as reported in today's Washington Post:

"Am I going to be the new secretary of health and human services? Is that what it's called? HEW. What's it called? What is that thing?" Blagojevich asks aide Robert Greenlee in one conversation.

"HHS," Greenlee responds.

Blagojevich then says, "HHS. I should know . . . health and human services, right?"

The scary thing is I'll bet at least some Cabinet appointees over the years, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, have had about this level of familiarity with the organizations they were tapped to lead.

For those of you who were never comfortable with the term "human capital" (and there were a lot of you, judging from the e-mails I've received and comments I've seen on stuff we've published in recent years), change apparently is on the way. Today's OPM unveiling of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey marked the end of its former name, the Federal Human Capital Survey, and provided just the latest piece of evidence that Obama administration officials seem to share many feds' queasiness with describing the human beings employed in government as a form of "capital."

Does this mean old terms like "personnel" and "human resources" are ready for a comeback? Don't hold your breath. The new term of art seems to be "talent." Just look at the name of one of the categories in which OPM ranked agencies in the survey: "Talent Management Index." Or count the number of times John Berry has talked about talent since he took over the agency.

Chief human capital officers, take note: Your days may be numbered. Or at least your titles.

After announcing earlier this year that it would relocate its headquarters to Northern Virginia, Northrop Grumman has decided exactly where it will live: an office building in Falls Church.

Northrop officials said they have entered into an agreement to purchase a building at 2980 Fairview Park Drive, just inside the Beltway off Arlington Boulevard. They plan to open the office by next summer. Employees from the company's current headquarters in Los Angeles, along with those who now work in a facility in Arlington, Va., will move to the building.

The federal government has a reputation as a place where it's very difficult to remove an employee. But at one agency it's not hard at all. For the Census, every 10 years, hundreds of thousands of jobs come with an expiration date. And that date is fast approaching: Almost all of the temporary workers hired by the agency to serve as enumerators for the decennial count will be gone by the end of August.

This crop of short-timers is a little different than in years past, the New York Times reports today. For starters, the agency "landed more experienced workers with more sophisticated skills than any time in recent memory," for the 2010 census. And many of them are going back out into an uncertain economy.

"Typically, at this point in the process, we're losing a lot of people because they're taking jobs," Kathleen Ludgate, the Census Bureau's regional director in Boston, told the Times. "I wish we had that problem now."

Over the years, there have been lots of movies and TV shows centered around federal employees. But now comes one that actually has its roots in the deaded "human capital crisis" brought on by the need to beef up key federal operations and the anticipated retirement of thousands of experienced employees.

USA Network's new series, Covert Affairs, centers around the character Annie Walker, a 28-year old Georgetown University grad who "speaks more languages than C3PO" but who has been engaged in "years of aimless postgrad globetrotting," according to a Washington Post review of the series today.

The agency welcomes her with open arms, for reasons outlined in dialogue between Annie and a CIA technology expert named Auggie:

Auggie: "Fifty percent of the agency has five years experience or less."
Annie: "That's both inspiring and unsettling."

OPM's John Berry wants to breathe new life into the Presidential Management Fellows program. To that end, today he announced he's creating "power packs" of current PMFs -- small teams that will work on special projects connected with the overhaul effort.

Specifically, Berry wrote, the teams will given the job of "1) increasing outreach to deepen and broaden the PMF applicant pool; 2) revamping future orientation sessions; 3) developing a job-matching process to connect finalists to jobs; 4) reenergizing the PMF Alumni Program; and 5) planning and executing the assessment center interview that we are restoring for the class of 2011."

The power packs will work mostly out of OPM headquarters, and their projects are expected to last about four months. Berry strongly urged agencies to let their PMFs serve on the teams, writing, "This is a great way to influence the PMF program and to help make government service cool again!"

At the PMFInfo blog, a current PMF weighs in on Berry's announcement:

Some of these activities are long overdue, but there is still no mention of one of the most visible signals of change: the horribly outdated PMF web site. Perhaps I am being too picky and should just take what I can get, but it seems to me that if you want to signal change badly enough, you ought to start with your most visible asset.

Sure, the Obama administration wants to do away with the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities statements that have drawn so much ire among those who've gone through the federal hiring process. But KSAs aren't quite gone yet. And while they're still around, some people have decided to have some fun with them.

At GovLoop, user GeekChick says that while vacancy announcements at her agency, the Forest Service, have become increasingly generic lately due to standardization and centralization of HR processes, they occasionally include KSAs that get very specific. For example, she came across an opening that included a requirement that applicants describe their "knowledge of microbiological science principles, theories, concepts, methods, and techniques."

GeekChick couldn't resist putting her tongue firmly in cheek in her response:

I possess a degree in biology, which included the basic instruction in microbiology. I am familiar with the concepts of growing samples in petri dishes, and in fact, am quite knowledgeable in conducting such experiments in my refrigerator. I have determined the length of time required for certain microorganisms to grow and which media they prefer to colonize (yogurt, cheese, sauces, etc). I recently have discovered a previously unknown organism, which had an unusual red color instead of the standard green and white. I also routinely conduct "dry" experiments, such as on bread in a cupboard.

In addition to simple growth experiments, I am also familiar with common sample collection techniques, such as skimming or cutting from the surface. This allows one to salvage the remainder of the growth medium for consumption or for future experiments.

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service has high standards when it comes to protecting personal information. After all, it is the Defense Department's payroll processing unit, and the agency's workers have access to sensitive data, such as employee Social Security numbers.

Earlier this year, DFAS moved to fire more than two dozen employees who were deemed to be unqualified to handle classified information, at least partly on the grounds that they had poor personal credit ratings. Eight of the employees work in the agency's Cleveland office.

Now two members of Congress are calling for an investigation into the proposed dismissals, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Marcia L. Fudge, both Democrats, have written letters asking the Government Accountability Office and the Defense inspector general to investigate whether the proposed actions are discriminatory.

The legislators noted that DFAS reports that 85 percent of those the agency already has moved to terminate or suspend as it implements stringent security measures are African Americans. "The African American community in Cleveland and elsewhere has been disproportionately affected by predatory lending and the foreclosure crisis which followed," they wrote.

In addition, Kucinich and Fudge wrote, "At least one of the fired DFAS employees in Cleveland is an officer and organizer of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3283." They are seeking a probe into whether DFAS is "targeting labor organizers for dismissal while using a pretext of financial problems."

Finally, the lawmakers questioned whether "DFAS employees may be targeted as a reprisal for congressional oversight of that agency's efforts to privatize its workforce."

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden managed to cause quite a stir on a recent trip to Cairo. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, he described the challenge he had been given by President Obama this way:

One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering -- science, math and engineering.

ABC's Jake Tapper noted this week that Bolden's words were not well-received in conservative circles. Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News that Bolden's remarks were "a new height of fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there." And former NASA administrator Michael Griffin told the Washington Examiner that "it is a perversion of NASA's purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics."

It strikes me that this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. First of all, Bolden was talking about what the president had asked him personally to focus in the course of his duties, not giving a full characterization of the agency's mission. (In other words, it sort of goes without saying that first and foremost NASA focuses on space exploration.) Second, Bolden was clearly trying to be nice to his guests. Third, as Slate's Christopher Beam points out, like it or not, NASA's mission has always been to a degree diplomatic. Why did Space Station Freedom mutate into the International Space Station? At least in part because the U.S. wanted to use NASA's auspices to build better relations with key countries.

And what's more, NASA's mission routinely has been characterized as ranging far beyond just launching rockets into space. Throughout its history, the agency's existence has been justified in terms of feel-good values that have little to do with its scientific mission. The last president certainly bought into this notion. "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts the national spirit," President Bush said in announcing his vision for space exploration in 2004.

Is this John Berry's idea of making government cool again? As temperatures in Washington and across the eastern United States climb into the triple digits this week, the OPM director is reminding agencies that "our employees are the federal government's most important asset, and we should take all available steps to ensure they are protected during potentially dangerous heat waves that are likely to continue throughout the summer."

Firs and foremost, especially for those who work outdoors, said Berry, is "the need for employees to remain adequately hydrated; providing immediate and ready access to potable drinking water and other liquids will ensure their health and well-being." He also directed agency chief human capital officers to several federal Web sites that provide information on dealing with severe weather.

First Lady Michelle Obama continued her tour of federal agencies today, with her shortest trip so far--across the street from the White House to the Treasury Department.

Some excerpts from her remarks:

And I want to join the Secretary in recognizing Valerie [Hunter, whose husband, Vernon, was killed in an attack on an IRS office earlier this year]. It is an honor to have you here. As the Secretary said, you've put in your share of years at the IRS in Austin, Texas, and working in the same building where her husband was killed. We are so incredibly sorry for your loss, but you should know that we are praying with you. And it is just wonderful to see such a strong support system here for you. So we are grateful that you're here. And I was honored to be able to take a picture with you and show it to -- if you can believe, she's got six kids, seven grandkids. She doesn't look like she would have all that. But thank you so much for being here today.

I also want to give a special welcome to someone else: Pauline Fenderson. Where is Pauline? Is that -- I could have known it was you. It was the hat that tipped me off. But Pauline is from the IRS in Detroit, and Pauline started her career as a typist when Harry Truman was President of the United States. So she was a typing prodigy. She was probably two when she did that. Because she looks fantastic. But now, 60 years later, she's still working as an individual taxpayer assistance specialist. And even though she says that sometimes -- just like all of us, she's a mere mortal -- sometimes getting up on Mondays is hard, she does it because she enjoys giving folks a helping hand. ...

But whether you've been here for 60 years or 60 days -- because we also know there are a lot of new folks who are just joining Treasury -- it's wonderful to see a group of people who work so hard every day and make such a strong commitment to this country. And it is a privilege, one of my greatest privileges as First Lady, to be able to travel throughout Washington to say hello and to thank you all for the work that you're doing, because as my husband always says, he gets a lot of the glory and a lot of the sympathy for working long hours, but the truth is, you all are working hard, you're making sacrifices. And we couldn't have accomplished the things that we have in this administration so quickly without your dedication. So my job here is simply to say thank you for all that you do and all that you'll continue to do. We are truly grateful for your service.

Tomorrow at the National Press Club in Washington, I'll be moderating a discussion with our Chiefs of the Year--the officials highlighted in our annual June 15 special issue on challenges facing government's chief officers.

In connection with the issue, our research arm, the Government Business Council, surveyed 200 federal managers about what they think the chiefs should focus on. Some of the results of the survey appear in the issue, and they'll be among the things we'll be talking about tomorrow. But now I'll put it to you: What do you think the chiefs of information, finance, human capital, acquisition and information security should be concerned about?

Remember Mitch Daniels? As head of OMB in the George W. Bush administration, he led the effort to put hundreds of thousands of federal jobs up for competition with the private sector. (It didn't go exactly as planned, but hey.)

Daniels went on to become governor of Indiana, and now he's being talked about as a potential contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Now, in an Independence Day interview about five books he recommends, Daniels revealed, in case you hadn't already guessed it, that he'd bring a very different sensibility to running the country than that of the current president.

In extolling E.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, Daniels says it "convincingly demonstrated what was already intuitive: namely, the utter futility, the illusion of government planning as a mechanism for uplifting those less fortunate. I read it together with dozens of other books, but the way he dissected and depicted the inexorable tendencies in statism to self-perpetuation of bureaucracies, matched what I thought was the evidence I saw around me."

But lest you think Daniels would enter office on a revolutionary crusade to cut back government, Daniels also says he's learned "humility and caution." On his first day on the job as governor, Daniels says:

We did a ton of things, we wanted to emphasise that a lot of change was afoot. But I went over to see our biggest regulatory agency - we had hundreds of people in the room or on the phone. It was an environmental management agency and I told them then, and I've told them since, that we did not intend to weaken or moderate a single rule that I knew of, in terms of environmental standards.

The bottom line for Daniels? "Our attitude here, I've expressed it a thousand times, is we believe in limited government, but within that sphere of things that government does, we believe government should do them as well as possible."

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

The Transportation Security Administration has issued new guidelines blocking employees from accessing certain Web sites. CBS News reports that the list includes sites that feature any of the following: "chat/messaging, controversial opinion, criminal activity, extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content, gaming."

That bit about "controversial opinion" is generating a backlash. In fact, TSA officials felt compelled to issue a response to CBS News, saying, "TSA does not block access to critical commentary about the organization and in fact expressly created the TSA IdeaFactory and the TSA Blog to promote diverse opinions."

That's a good point, actually. TSA is pretty far out ahead of the federal pack in terms of allowing criticism of the agency on its own sites. But what about other sites that are "controversial"? That's a very broad category. Luckily, none of the opinions expressed at Fedblog are "controversial," right?

Had an interesting morning today at the Next Generation of Government Summit in Arlington, Va. The sense of energy in the room at the first plenary session was palpable. This is clearly a group of people eager to make their mark. In fact, it's mildly depressing to attend a conference that is essentially devoted to helping such people learn how to overcome all the obstacles to energetic, creative work in the government context.

Matt Collier, a special assistant to OPM Director John Berry, got things started with an address that was part an update on the project he's working on to make government "cool" again and part a frank pep talk about how to harness the can-do spirit in government.

"Sometimes when I leave work, I want to cry," he acknowledged.

The creation of OPM's workplace innovation lab in the the "sub-basement" of the agency's headquarters building is proceeding apace, Collier reported. Leaders of the initiative deliberately chose to set up the lab in what had been storage space to avoid conflicts. But first, he noted, they had to clear the space of "old forms...from, like, 1992."

When it comes to implementing such initiatives, Collier said, the trick is perseverance. "Change isn't going to happen on the first try or even the second," he said. Those new to government, he said, shouldn't let rules, processes and procedures tie them down, but instead should repeatedly ask why such impediments exist and challenge them if they stand in the way of making initiatives succeed.

But Collier warned against writing off experienced people in government who might seem to be anti-progress. "Chances are," he said, " they've already tried what you want to do." Rather than pick fights with them, learn from their experiences, Collier said.

I had an interesting lunch yesterday with Anne Weisberg and Naomi Leventhal of consulting firm Deloitte, which is conducting an assessment of OPM's Results Only Work Environment pilot project. Almost 400 employees are involved in the project, under which the agency says that in general, they can work "whenever they want and wherever they want."

Deloitte is under contract to evaluate both employee performance and morale under the project. It already has conducted baseline assessments and is now in the process of periodically evaluating the results of the implementation.

That's no simple task, because the pilot covers a wide range of positions in retirement and benefits processing, human resources solutions, communications, and the office of OPM Director John Berry. Performance levels in some of the jobs, such as processing, are relatively easy to measure, while others -- such as HR solutions, which is essentially a consulting practice -- are more difficult to gauge.

Much is riding on Deloitte's assessment. Berry is strongly committed to the effort -- witness the fact that his own office is among the pilot participants -- and you can bet that if the assessment shows positive results, agencies will be under a lot pf pressure to implement such programs more widely. It'll be very interesting to watch how that plays out. Government is very fond of pilot programs, but its track record in taking such programs to wide-scale implementation is a lot more mixed. Remember how long the Defense Department conducted pay-for-performance pilot projects before trying to implement a departmentwide system? The time was measured in decades.

The White House has released its annual report on staff salaries, and not surprisingly, they're not much different than they were last year, because President Obama put a freeze on top officials' pay.

The biggest earners, Ed O'Keefe reports, take home nearly $180,000 a year. About two dozen senior aides, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, make $172,200. But there are plenty of folks at the lower levels, too: assistants and secretaries make between $40,000 and $60,000.

Another interesting note: the White House employs 17 fewer people than last year.

Update, 3:54 p.m.: Emily Long has more details on the salary data release.

Do Twitter and diplomacy mix? Some members of Congress aren't happy about two State Department officials' Twitter musings while leading a delegation on a delicate mission to Syria.

See my full post on this at Nextgov's Tech Insider, where I'm helping fill in this week.