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FAA's Missed Reviews
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, May 06, 2008  |  11:14 AM

The Federal Aviation Administration has missed more than 100 top-to-bottom safety reviews of airlines in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reports today. The reviews are supposed to be conducted at least once every five years, to make sure airlines have the systems in place to identify safety issues and deal with them.

Acting FAA Administrator Robert Sturgell told Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that "inadequate resources" may have been a factor in the missed assesments. The agency says it has completed most reviews, and is developing a system to alert top officials when they are overdue.

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Doan's Parting Shot
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, April 30, 2008  |  04:57 PM

The news that GSA's Lurita Doan was forced to resign yesterday wasn't exactly stunning. Given her history at the agency and the fact that, as Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., put it, "her management style was not everyone's cup of tea," it's somewhat surprising this didn't happen sooner.

But as Doan exits the public stage, I have to acknowledge that I (and, I'm sure, many of my colleagues in the media) will miss her. She is, to use an old newspaper term, "good copy."

The feeling, though, apparently isn't mutual. Doan made her feelings about reporters clear during a speech last week at a GSA expo in California in which she appeared with "arrows sticking out of her head, shoulders, arms and legs," according to an official transcript. One of those metaphorical arrows, she said, was shot at her by "the press who say: 'I’ve been covering this issue for some time. I’m the only one who really understands the issue. You need to consult me, listen to my recommendations.' ”

I really wish I knew who she was talking about here. As a general rule, the last thing those of us in the media want to do is consult with agency leaders and issue recommendations. If we did that, we might actually bear some responsibility if those recommendations turned out to be lousy. No thanks. We relish our role as outside observers.

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The Passing of a Public Health Giant
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, April 30, 2008  |  02:36 PM

Yesterday, the New York Times noted the passing of a truly impressive civil servant: William H. Stewart, who served as surgeon general in the Johnson administration. That was at a time, the paper noted, that the position was very different than it is now -- for example, it involved day-to-day oversight of the Public Health Service.

Stewart, who had joined the PHS in 1951, pressed for the integration of the agency as surgeon general, and used the then-new Medicare program as a wedge to force hospitals around the country to integrate, too. On top of that, he was responsible for the first health warnings on cigarette packs.

As Stewart's official biography indicates, he led PHS at a time of "dramatic changes" leading to "cycles of administrative upheaval." That included two major structural reorganizations during an "era characterized by ... complicated bureaucratic maneuvering, increased public involvement, and renewed efforts to control federal health expenditures." Stewart resigned his post midway through President Nixon's first year in office.

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Are Your Ready for the Transition?
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, April 29, 2008  |  05:54 PM

If not, we've got a tool to help you out. We've launched a new special report on the looming change in administrations, providing links to key resources and regularly updated coverage from Government Executive and GovernmentExecutive.com.

Help us out and let us know if there are any links we should add to the page.

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Catching Up on Competitive Sourcing
By Tom Shoop | Friday, April 25, 2008  |  01:55 PM

Christopher Lee of the Washington Post did a nice job today detailing how President Bush's effort to put federal jobs up for competition from the private sector has fallen short of its goals. But pride compels me to note that from where I sit, Robert Brodsky did just a little bit nicer job more than a month ago with the same subject in the pages of Government Executive.

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Challenging a Uniform Policy
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, April 24, 2008  |  11:21 AM

Remember the item about the Air Force's move to require its air reserve technicians (who technically are civilian federal employees, but must join the reserves as a condition of their employment) to wear military uniforms on the job? Officials at the American Federation of Government Employees, who represent the technicians, were not happy about the move, and now they've taken action. AFGE has filed an official complaint challenging the policy.

“We are arguing that the regulation regarding the uniforms is capricious and contrary to law,” said Eugene Fidell, an attorney handling the case on behalf of AFGE. “A civilian employee cannot be required to wear a military uniform. Requiring ARTs to wear military dress while serving in their civilian capacity improperly upsets settled expectations and confuses military and civilian status.”

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McCain: Lean Times Ahead
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, April 16, 2008  |  09:32 AM

John McCain may be a big fan of citizenship and public service, but he's no fan of big government. Here he is yesterday on CNBC's Kudlow and Company, talking about his economic recovery plan:

We need to have a year pause, a year pause on discretionary spending, except for veterans and defense. And let’s scrutinize every agency of government. ... It is not taxes that are insufficient, it’s spending that’s out of control. And one of the areas I would go after first and hardest is defense acquisition.

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Death Knell for Private Tax Collection?
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, April 16, 2008  |  09:07 AM

Yesterday, members of a House Appropriations subcommittee celebrated Tax Day by grilling new IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman about the agency's use of private debt collection agencies. IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson reported early this year that the program has a "dismal return on investment." But that didn't stop the IRS from renewing its contracts with two debt collection firms last month.

Shulman pleaded ignorance of the whole issue, saying he's only been on the job for three weeks and needs more time to study it.

House members seem disinclined to give him that time. After Tuesday's hearing, the House voted 238-189 to prohibit the use of private firms for tax debt collection. “The collection of taxes is an inherently governmental function that should be restricted to properly trained and proficient IRS personnel,” said National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen M. Kelley after the vote.

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Chronicling Pentagon's Financial Woes
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, April 15, 2008  |  03:40 PM

It's not exactly news that the Defense Department can't get its financial house in order. Still, this piece from Portfolio is a pretty damning indictment of the slow pace of improvements on this front.

Almost a decade ago, Government Executive was reporting that the Pentagon was making progress in financial reform. Four years ago we listed Defense among the agencies said to be on brink of a financial breakthrough. As recently as last fall, Defense comptroller Tina Jonas insisted that the department's financial management was better than perceived. It would be nice if the Pentagon bean-counters could clear the hurdle of being able to produce a clean financial statement, if only because of the symbolic value such an achievement would have.

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Collecting Human Capital Practices
By Tom Shoop | Friday, April 11, 2008  |  09:09 AM

The Chief Human Capital Officers Council released a report last week that could help federal agencies develop better human capital strategies. In the 96-page report, called “Collection of Human Capital Practices,” 12 high-performing agencies describe their approaches to not only performance management, training and telework programs, but pandemic influenza planning, and preparations for the transition to the next presidential administration.

The CHCO Council chose the agencies featured in the report -- which include the Social Security Administration, the National Science Foundation and the Homeland Security Department -- for their human capital successes based on two studies (here and here), and a performance culture index established by the Office of Personnel Management. OPM described the “high performing” agencies as having had “the greatest improvements in performance management.” -- Rafael Enrique Valero

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Zero Tolerance for Charge Card Abuse
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, April 10, 2008  |  03:44 PM

Here's Bush administration management chief Clay Johnson, quoted in Steve Barr's Federal Diary column in the Washington Post, on the latest revelations of misuse of government charge cards:

"The vast majority of civilian employees, government employees, use the cards responsibly. At the same time, I would say there is abuse, and the goal is zero, and we need to make it zero."

Zero? Setting aside the issue of whether that's at all realistic, it strikes me that getting even close to such a goal would be a lot more expensive than simply setting tough controls and accepting some minimal level of abuse as unavoidable. I know the anecdotes about misuse of cards are irritating (and, at the same time, amusing) but eliminating them entirely seems like a very costly and labor-intensive endeavor. Why does that have to be the standard for an effective card program?

(Hat tip: IEC Journal.)

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Out of the Safety Business
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, April 08, 2008  |  08:21 AM

Looks like the Federal Aviation Administration official who drew criticism over the agency's handling of missed safety inspections at Southwest Airlines is out of the safety business. Thomas Stuckey is no longer the director of flight standards for the five-state Southwest region, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told the Associated Press. He's been reassigned to “an administrative position that doesn’t have safety oversight.”

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Census Breakdown: The Full Story
By Tom Shoop | Friday, April 04, 2008  |  09:01 AM

By now I hope you've had a chance to see the story, broken by our sister site Nextgov.com yesterday, on the Census Bureau's decision to dramatically scale back its plans to use handheld computers to conduct the 2010 census. That was followed by a report on the grilling Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez took at the hands of a House Appropriations subcommittee about the move.

In case you didn't see this coming, I would point you to some of the work that Allan Holmes and the members of the team he has assembled at Nextgov have done on this issue over the past several months.

Allan got the ball rolling last summer with a "On the Brink," a piece in Government Executive that noted that the Census Bureau's leap of faith with handhelds "sends shivers down the spines of risk management experts."

Since then he, Gautham Nagesh and Jill Aitoro have followed up with a series of stories leading up to yesterday's blockbuster:

• GAO cites cost, schedule risks in IT projects supporting census (Oct. 10, 2007)


• GAO: Delays in systems testing put 2010 census at risk (Dec. 12, 2007)


• Census program to use handheld computers said to be in 'serious trouble' (Jan. 2, 2008)


• Census Bureau facing huge cost increase, possible delays in 2010 effort (March 5, 2008)

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Passport Snoops, Security and Management
By Tom Shoop | Friday, March 21, 2008  |  08:43 AM

Many times, information security problems aren't with the systems, but the people -- be they federal employees, contractors, or the managers who are supposed to monitor their work and keep higher-ups informed about potentially embarrassing incidents.

Such is the case the the news that three contract employees at the State Department poked through Barack Obama's passport files. Two of them were fired, and the other was disciplined, but didn't get canned.

The department's official position so far, expressed in a late-night conference call with reporters by spokesman Sean McCormack, is that this was merely a case of "imprudent curiosity." The department's inspector general will look into whether that's actually the case.

Obama's camp was quick to place blame on the Bush administration. "This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," said campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

The incidents took place on Jan. 9, Feb. 21, and March 14. But McCormack said senior State Department leaders only became aware of them yesterday. Which begs the question: Contract employees were fired for improperly accessing sensitive records on a high-profile presidential candidate, and no one thought of reporting it to the top brass for, in one case, more than two months?

"I will fully acknowledge that this information should have been passed up the line," said Patrick F. Kennedy, State's undersecretary for management, at last night's briefing. "It was dealt with at the office level where the incidents occurred by the office-level supervisors, who took immediate steps when they saw this. ... We have a very, very sophisticated computer tracking system that looks out for and looks out over the use of the computer, and when it sees anything that is potentially inappropriate, the computer calls it to the attention of the working-level supervisor. The system worked; it was called to their attention. They acted and -- but I will admit, they failed to pass the information up the chain to a sufficiently high level."

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The Citizenship Surge
By Tom Shoop | Monday, March 17, 2008  |  11:17 AM

Emilio T. Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Sevices, thinks his agency can pick up the pace on processing citizenship applications. He announced Friday that USCIS was lowering its projections for how long it would take to complete applications filed last summer from 16-18 months to 14-16 months. That would mean hundreds of thousands of applicants could be naturalized in time for next fall's elections.

The agency experienced a surge of applications last summer just before it implemented a big fee increase. Overall, USCIS received 1.4 million naturalization applications in fiscal 2007. Applications in June and July alone were nearly 350 percent higher than the year before. As a result, the agency has a huge backlog of paperwork to move through the pipeline.

Meeting the new target for processing times won't be easy, the New York Times reported Saturday. Of the more than 1 million applications the agency is currently processing, 75 percent are still in the early, less labor-intensive phases.

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More Bad Press for IRS Outsourcing
By Tom Shoop | Friday, March 14, 2008  |  09:02 AM

The New York Times picked up on the IRS tax collection privatization story yesterday, with a headline that doesn't exactly mince words: "Taxpayer Advocate Says Outsourcing at I.R.S. Is Inept."

This, of course, isn't the first time that the taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson, has raised concerns about the IRS effort to use private debt collection firms. But this kind of mainstream media attention to the issue may put the program in jeopardy, especially if it becomes a factor in the confirmation hearings of Douglas H. Shulman, whose nomination to head the agency is pending in the Senate.

Update: Oops. As I should have known, Shulman already has had his confirmation hearing. In fact, the Senate approved his nomination early this morning.

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EPA's Labor-Management Breakup
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, March 11, 2008  |  09:28 AM

The old labor-management partnership councils at federal agencies created under the Clinton adminstration are ghosts of their former selves since President Bush dissolved them in 2001. But now the one at the Environmental Protection Agency is officially out of business, the Washington Post reports today. Unionized scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have severed their official relationship with management, citing concerns that leaders are failing to follow "principles of scientific integrity."

"It's gotten worse than ever in terms of the agency just doing unilateral decision-making," said J. William Hirzy, executive vice president of Chapter 280 of the National Treasury Employees Union and a senior scientist in EPA's risk assessment division. "We're tired of it."

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How Would John McCain Govern?
By Tom Shoop | Monday, March 10, 2008  |  12:02 PM

We're only just beginning to see that question explored. McCain himself hasn't given a great deal of hints in this area, other than to say he's more of a leader than a manager and that he's not a fan of "bloated, irresponsible and incompetent government."

But eight years ago, McCain's then-communications director offered this morsel of wisdom about what a McCain administration would look like: it would, he said, be based on the idea that "government should have a limited but activist role in those areas where government is involved."

Former Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who served with McCain in the Senate, indicated he would be a hands-on manager as president. "He would be the chief of staff, he would be the commander, no question about it," Packwood said.

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When Goals Collide
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, February 27, 2008  |  10:02 AM

All federal agencies have multiple -- and sometimes competing -- goals that they're pursuing simultaneously. Why do they succeed in achieving some of them and fail to meet others? In a new research paper, Eric Biber, an acting professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, provides an answer: "Agencies will systematically underperform on goals that are hard to measure and that conflict with the achievement of other more measurable goals. The lack of information about these hard-to-measure goals means that there will be fewer rewards to agencies for any success on those goals."

So what can be done about the problem -- especially at land management agencies, where tradeoffs on goals can be very difficult to reconcile? That's where it gets tricky. Biber explores a range of direct options, such as having Congress take back some authority from agencies, splitting agencies into components focused on different goals, or requiring that an agency figure out how to track progress on hard-to-measure goals. He also looks at other potential approaches, such as having a different agency monitor -- and even issue legally binding opinions -- on an agency's efforts.

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Financial Managers: Opinions Wanted
By Tom Shoop | Monday, February 25, 2008  |  12:24 PM

Are you a government financial professional? If so, the Association of Government Accountants is interested in your opinions. The association is conducting an online survey on key issues facing the financial management community. Those include the performance of agency financial services and reporting and the impact of continuing resolutions on operations and support services.

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Management Reform: It's All About Tactics
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, February 20, 2008  |  12:38 PM

Along with EPA's Marcus Peacock, Jonathan Breul was featured at this morning's Government Executive Leadership Breakfast. Breul, the executive director of the IBM Center for the Business
of Government and a former high-ranking official at the Office of Management and Budget, contrasted the Bush and Clinton administration's approaches to management reform.

Clinton's National Performance Review, he noted, generated some 1,600 recommendations, while Bush's President's Management Agenda focused on only five key cross-cutting areas. The two president's approaches were "starkly different," he said. Clinton worked from the bottom up, seeking to empower employees on the front lines, and actively going around established management agencies such as OMB and the Office of Personnel Management. Bush, on the other hand, took the "MBA president" approach, tying his initiatives directly to the budget process and implementing them via OMB.

The interesting thing is that both approaches shared common themes: a focus on measuring results, a belief in the value of competition, and an emphasis on service to citizens. Whoever is elected in the fall will likely choose from this same general menu of management improvement options. So the big question, Breul said, is what tactical approach he or she will choose. That will make all the difference.

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EPA's Main Manager
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, February 20, 2008  |  11:14 AM

At the Government Executive Leadership Breakfast this morning, Marcus Peacock, deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, talked not only about his pioneering blog, but about how the agency managed to win the President's Quality Award for overall management. Some of the interesting things he noted:

• When Peacock took his current job, he learned there already were "tons of metrics" available about EPA operations. In fact, he said, the agency has cut the number of metrics it follows from about 500 to 100, which he said is "still too many."
• The agency has developed a quarterly management report on progress toward meeting its goals. Most of the metrics that figure into the report still measure outputs -- such as the number of farmers trained in practices that are designed to reduce the flow of nutrients from farms into the water supply -- rather than outcomes. But the agency is working on "logic models" that will provide better reporting on how its efforts translate into actual environmental improvements.
• Peacock considers his blog to be a valuable tool for communicating with the agency's 17,000 employees -- even though he said that since he started accepting comments on posts he's been called a "weasel" and a "Bush crony."
• One of government's singular problems, he acknowledged, was that career employees are rarely rewarded for taking risks, but often punished when something goes wrong.
• EPA, he said, is still "far too conservative" in setting goals for itself. Peacock carries a laminated card in his pocket listing his personal "stretch goals" for the year.

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OPM to New Execs: Back Bush's Plans
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, February 13, 2008  |  08:26 AM

There may be less than a year left in the Bush administration, but the Office of Personnel Management still has a singular message for new members of the Senior Executive Service: It's all about implementing the President's Management Agenda. The agency is continuing to send out invitations to its regularly scheduled orientation sessions on the president's plans for new SES members.

The briefings, writes OPM Director Linda M. Springer in the invitation, provide an opportunity for the newly minted execs to "learn about the President’s Management Agenda, his vision and values, and to discuss the unique challenges you face with your new responsibilities. As a new member of the SES, you will play a key role in turning President Bush’s principles of a citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based government into reality."

The SESers better be prepared to move quickly. The next session isn't until the end of March, and come next January, there's likely to be a whole new management agenda.

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Seeking Travel Innovators
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, February 07, 2008  |  12:56 PM

Are you a travel innovator? If so, the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy wants to hear about what you've done. The office is seeking applications for its biennial Travel and Relocation Innovation Award. Winners will be those who:

• Forge more results-oriented, cost effective travel and relocation programs and policy.


• Accomplish world-class management of travel and relocation.


• Install travel and relocation best business practices.


• Improve workforce planning and quality of life in areas related to travel and relocation.


• Expand the use of e-government.

The deadline for entries is March 31.

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Claiming Management Success
By Tom Shoop | Monday, February 04, 2008  |  02:02 PM

In his fiscal 2009 budget proposal, President Bush takes his last opportunity to declare that his management reform efforts of the past seven years are actually working. Among the accomplishments he cites:

• More than 1,000 federal programs have been evaluated using the administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool.


• Almost 90 percent of those programs have established or clarified their performance goals.


• 82 percent of programs are achieving their goals.


• 55 percent of programs that were initially unable to demonstrate any results have improved on that rating.


• 81 percent of agencies have reduced "skills gaps" in mission-critical occupations.
  
• 78 percent of new federal employees are now hired within 45 days, up from 64 percent in 2006.


• For the third straight year, all agencies completed their annual financial statements with 45 days after the close of the fiscal year.


• Last year, 13 agencies got clean audit opinions on their financial statements. The administration is shooting for 21 agencies to meet that goal this year.

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Should Your Agency Go to Rehab? (No, No, No)
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, January 29, 2008  |  06:36 PM

Is your agency like Amy Winehouse? That's what EPA's Marcus Peacock wants to know.

If you have no idea who Amy Winehouse is, I'll tell you how you want to answer the above question: No. And I'm impressed that Peacock does know who she is.

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Management vs. Leadership: GOP Edition
By Tom Shoop | Monday, January 28, 2008  |  02:06 PM

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been having a debate for several weeks now over whether managerial competence or inspirational leadership is more important in a president. Now a couple of Republican contenders are having their turn.

Speaking in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., late last week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., drew a contrast between himself and one of his top competitors, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Here's how MSNBC's "First Read" characterized McCain's remarks:

"I think everybody knows the difference between leadership and management," McCain told a group of reporters gathered at an airport here. "You can hire managers all the time, people who do the mechanics, people who implement policies, people who are good with assets. Leadership is people who inspire… Leadership is people who have had hands on experience with patriotism and service to the nation… Leadership is the ability to inspire and the ability to make Americans serve causes greater than their self-interest."

Asked what that description of leadership implied about his biggest opponent in Florida, McCain said, "Governor Romney is touting his qualities and his experience and resume as a manager. I am telling the American people that I am a leader and they know it."

Among the "people who inspire," McCain listed Ronald Reagan and Gen. David Petraeus.

Romney, CNN's "Political Ticker" reported, fired back thusly:

He told supporters in Pensacola that as the only candidate at Thursday’s Florida Republican debate who had worked in the private sector, he was uniquely qualified to lead on economic issues.

He added that in his view, McCain hadn’t done well at the forum: the senator “had to come back and flail a bit, trying to attack my record, saying that my record — 25 years in the business world and three years running the Olympics, and then four years as governor of Massachusetts — that that doesn't qualify me to understand how the economy works."

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Technical Snags Delay Candidate Development
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, January 24, 2008  |  08:36 PM

Earlier this week, the Office of Personnel Management put out this somewhat curious announcement:

Because of technical difficulties, the deadline for the application process to the Federal Candidate Development Program has been extended to midnight Friday, January 25, 2008, or until the end of the day when 500 Fed CDP applications have been received, whichever comes first.

Now, OPM says it won't provide any information to Government Executive on exactly what those "technical difficulties" were. Anybody have any intelligence on that?

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Thompson's Withdrawal
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, January 22, 2008  |  03:44 PM

Fred Thompson has made it official: He's out of the presidential race. Politics aside, this means that the race has lost the candidate with arguably the strongest working knowledge of the management challenges facing the federal government right now -- certainly the strongest on the Republican side. And as I keep saying, these issues really matter -- and not just to the people who work in government, but to the country as a whole.

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CIA Managers and Liability Insurance
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, January 22, 2008  |  09:47 AM

The issue of professional liability insurance for federal managers hit the mainstream media again Sunday, with a New York Times story about CIA officers who are turning to Wright & Company for policies to cover their legal costs in the event they get hauled into federal court or become ensnared in a congressional investigation.

As the story notes, FBI agents, Secret Service officers, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees also have purchased the insurance. They're not the only ones. In the late 1990s, professional liability insurance became popular at the IRS after reform legislation provided a new avenue for agency employees to file complaints against their supervisors.

Exactly who should get the insurance has long been open to question. The Justice Department typically represents federal employees in proceedings resulting from actions taken in the course of their job duties, but some managers see the benefit of having personal representation, too.

In a 1998 report, the Office of Personnel Management found that in the previous five years, only 14 federal employees had been found personally liable in lawsuits brought against them in relation to their government duties. And in only one reported case did an employee actually have to pay damages. The Justice Department reported that it had received about 7,000 requests for representation from federal employees in the same period, and had rejected 150 of those requests, or 2 percent.

The insurance costs about $300 a year, and the government pays half the premium for supervisors and certain other employees.

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Clinton, Obama Put Focus on Management
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, January 17, 2008  |  09:34 AM

With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination seeming to come down to a choice between Barack Obama's push for change and Hillary Clinton's focus on experienced leadership, an interesting shift has occurred: Suddenly, the issue of managing the federal government has taken center stage. It started on Monday, when Obama, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, said the following:

I'm not an operating officer. Some in this debate around experience seem to think the job of the president is to go in and run some bureaucracy. Well, that's not my job. My job is to set a vision of "here's where the bureaucracy needs to go."

Clinton took issue with that in a Democratic debate Tuesday night in Las Vegas:

I do think that being president is the chief executive officer. I respect what Barack said about setting the vision, setting the tone, bringing people together. But I think you have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy. You've got to pick good people, certainly, but you have to hold them accountable every single day. We've seen the results of a president who, frankly, failed at that. You know, he went in to office saying he was going to have the kind of Harvard Business School CEO model where he'd set the tone, he'd set the goals and then everybody else would have to implement it.

And we saw the failures. We saw the failures along the Gulf Coast with, you know, people who were totally incompetent and insensitive failing to help our fellow Americans. We've seen the failures with holding the administration accountable with the no-bid contracts and the cronyism. So I do think you have to do both. It's a really hard job, and in America we put the head of state and the head of government together in one person.

But I think you've got to set the tone, you've got to set the vision, you've got to set the goals, you've got to bring the country together. And then you do have to manage and operate and hold that bureaucracy accountable to get the results you're trying to achieve.

Obama responded:

Well, there's no doubt that you've got to be a good manager. And that's not what I was arguing. The point, in terms of bringing together a team, is that you get the best people and you're able to execute and hold them accountable. But I think that there's something, if we're going to evaluate George Bush and his failures as president, that I think are much more important. He was very efficient. He was on time all the time, and you know, and had... You know, I'm sure he never lost a paper. I'm sure he knows where it is. What he could not do is to listen to perspectives that didn't agree with his ideological predispositions. ...

I mean, those are the kinds of failures that have to do with judgment. They have to do with vision, the capacity to inspire people. They don't have to do with whether or not he was managing the bureaucracy properly. That's not to deny that there has to be strong management skills in the presidency. It is to say that what has been missing is the ability to bring people together, to mobilize the country, to move us in a better direction, and to be straight with the American people.

I'm not about to make any kind of endorsement in this race or the Republican one, but I'll acknowledge that I'm already on the record as saying that management really matters. In fact, nine months ago, I noted that it looked like the issue of effectively managing government operations might play a central role in this year's presidential contest, and I've been waiting for it to happen ever since.

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ID Theft Gets Real
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, January 16, 2008  |  09:38 AM

Most of the recent scary stories about the loss or theft of federal employees' personally identifiable information involve the theoretical possibility that such data could be used for fraudulent purposes. Now comes a story where it came much closer to really happening.

On Jan. 5, four people were arrested in Bensalem Township, Pa., for attempted identity fraud, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. One of the suspects had two pages of a 1994 report that included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, salary information and other data about roughly 100 employees of the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in Dahlgren, Va. The listed employees all had last names beginning with the letter B.

Officials don't know whether the suspects have all of the pages of the report, but as many as 10,000 employees may be at risk of identity theft. Dahlgren officials say they notified employees on Jan. 10 of the situation via an all-hands e-mail. Those possibily affected could have worked at the Naval Facilities Command, NSWC Dahlgren, NSWC White Oak, Md., NSWC Panama City, Fla., the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, the Naval Space Command and the Aegis Training and Readiness Center. The Navy has set up a call center at 1-800-352-7967 to provide more information.

(Hat tip: Fedsmith.)

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In Praise of Federal Executive Boards
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, January 15, 2008  |  10:32 AM

Federal Executive Boards across the country are getting the job done, the Office of Personnel Management says. Among the accomplishments highlighted in the FEB 2007 annual report:

• Efforts by the Minnesota FEB to coordinate federal agencies' response to the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis.


• Settlement of more than 565 cases through low-cost or no-cost mediation programs.


• A program to provide free or reduced cost training to more than 23,000 federal employees saved agencies more than $6 million.

At their best, Brian Friel wrote in a recent Management Matters column, FEBs "create lateral connections through which information can flow across organizational boundaries, rather than forcing information up chains of command and then back down other chains." That means they can play an integral role in helping agencies collaborate -- both during normal operations and in times of crisis.

So if FEBs are so effective, why don't they get more support? Alyssa Rosenberg noted in a November piece in Government Executive, "though the Office of Personnel Management oversees FEBs, their staffs consist of employees detailed from offices in the area. That lack of consistent staffing, and the fact that there is no standard for determining the jurisdiction of FEBs based on the number of federal workers in a given area, can leave directors dangerously short-handed in a crisis." Kathrene L. Hansen, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles FEB, which covers 125,000 federal employees at 230 agencies, told Rosenberg she was serving as a one-person office at the time of last fall's wildfires in southern California, because the only other employee -- her secretary -- had recently resigned.

If FEBs can really help government be more effective, maybe it's time to give them a stable source of funding and adequate staff.

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IGs: Policemen or Cheerleaders?
By Tom Shoop | Friday, January 11, 2008  |  10:17 AM

That's how Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., characterizes the choices facing inspectors general in the latest round of what seems to be an endless debate over their proper role and function in the federal government. USA Today reports on the efforts of McCaskill and others to boost the independence of IGs. The watchdogs, she says, need to operate without interference from the political leaders of agencies and be held accountable for their own misconduct.

In November, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed legislation that would raise the pay of IGs and provide them with more autonomy. The full House already has approved the measure.

Of course, this debate over IGs has been going on in one form or another for the entire 30 years since Congress created the IG position. And it's unlikely to stop any time soon, because even with the changes McCaskill has outlined, IGs will still be in the position of being charged both with helping agencies improve their management and with investigating misdeeds.

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Anticipating the Transition
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, January 10, 2008  |  10:52 AM

I spent part of this morning at a planning meeting for this year's Excellence in Government conference (which I can say with a complete lack of objectivity is going to be a fascinating set of two one-day events this year). I was interested to hear the federal folks in the room say that leaders of their agencies were really ramping up their preparations for the transition to the next presidential administration -- and not just trying to figure out how to react to whatever the next president proposes, but to provide help and information to the next set of political leaders. I hope agencies across government are taking that kind of forward-thinking approach. It will help not only federal employees, but the country as a whole if the experts in how this increasingly complicated set of structures known as the federal government actually works are fully prepared to help the next set of political appointees implement their agenda in the most effective way possible.

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What's Really 'Inherently Governmental'?
By Tom Shoop | Monday, January 07, 2008  |  11:34 AM

Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indianapolis, one-time adviser to President Bush on management issues, and an advocate of privatization of government functions, raises a provocative issue in a new essay in The American magazine: "Even if we could agree on core government functions that had to be walled off from contractors," he writes, "we would be left with a thorny question: what happens when government turns out not to be very good at inher­ently governmental work?"

Goldsmith argues that the feds are simply too hung up on the issue of whether particular work is too important to be contracted out to seriously address this question:

It appears almost certain that any significant steps toward privatization are going to occur at the state level. Why? Because that’s where the most exciting work is going on right now, and because Washington appears allergic to public-private innovation. Congress not only clings to the view that gov­ernment workers must produce all government services, but also even tries to impede progress when it surfaces outside the Beltway—witness the provision tucked inside the 2007 farm bill that would prohibit outsourcing by states and require government employees to process all applications for food stamps.

I think Goldmsith's taking it a little too far -- I'm not convinced Washington's "allergic to public private-innovation," or that Congress thinks that "government workers must provide all government services." If he thinks that's true, I think he's missed out on an awful lot of innovation in recent years, and a tremendous amount of outsourcing of government functions that has occurred with the active or tacit approval of Congress.

Nevertheless, Goldsmith's core question is a valid one, and it would be worth some exploration during this year's presidential campaign, if the candidates ever decide to get serious about federal management issues. And lest you think that's a pipe dream, remember it's happened before, and Goldsmith was involved.

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Hatch Act: Get Briefed
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, December 06, 2007  |  08:45 AM

White House counsel Fred Fielding has sent a memo to agencies urging them to provide Hatch Act briefings to all of their employees by the end of the year, IEC Journal reports.

"The 2008 election cycle will present many opportunities for federal employees to be involved in the political process," Fielding writes in the memo, "either through their own initiative or through outreach from campaigns." But agencies, he said, need to "ensure that those federal employees who choose to participate in political activity do so in accordance with the high ethical standards the president expects."

Fielding's office will be conducting its own set of Hatch Act briefings for White House staff. Judging from a whole series of events that have unfolded this year, that seems like a prudent idea.

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Planning a Freeze
By Tom Shoop | Friday, November 30, 2007  |  12:49 PM

Fred Thompson may understand that the real money in deficit reduction comes from entitlements reform, but apparently he's not going to be able to resist the temptation to package together some more conventional attack-the-bureaucracy proposals aimed at burnishing his small-government credentials.

In the Wall Street Journal's opinion section today, Kimberly A. Strassel writes, "According to a campaign source, in upcoming weeks Mr. Thompson will unveil plans to reduce federal spending by limiting nondefense growth to inflation, earmark reform, and a one-year freeze on the hiring of non-essential civilian workers and contractors."

Of course, that "non-essential" part, if it turns out to be true, is a rather gigantic loophole.

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Balancing the Budget, Honestly
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, November 29, 2007  |  10:32 AM

There was a moment in the CNN-YouTube Republican debate last night when Fred Thompson gave as honest an answer as I think you'll ever hear from a politician on reducing federal spending.

Asked what three programs he would cut to help balance the budget, Thompson responded this way:

The problem is that most of the programs we talk about, the ones that get the headlines, would not begin to solve the problem. ... That's why I have laid out a program not to attack entitlements, but to save Social Security. ... Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the ones we're really going to have to reform if we're going to make any headway on the spending.

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Giuliani The Slasher Returns
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, November 29, 2007  |  10:17 AM

Rudy Giuliani was at it again last night in the CNN-YouTube Republican debate. Asked what he would do to reduce the national debt, he once more took the opportunity to flog his pet proposal to slash federal spending and the federal workforce. Here's what he said:

I think you have to do across-the-board spending cuts like Ronald Reagan did -- 5, 10 percent per civilian agency. It should be done right now, actually. President Bush should do it to strengthen the dollar. We should commit not to rehire half of the civilian employees that will retire. That's 42 percent of the federal workforce that will retire in the next 10 years. Don't rehire half of them. Use technology -- one person doing the job of two or three. Every business has done it; the government has to do it.

Isn't it about time somebody started calling him on this stuff? Such as:

• Nobody knows how many federal employees actually will retire in the next 10 years. That 42 percent is merely a projection of people likely to retire based on estimates that have proven less than fully accurate in the past.
• Is Giuliani really in favor of a haphazard cut to federal operations based on who happens to retire? So if FEMA gets an unusually high number of retirements, he's fine with cutting our disaster response capability and potentially leaving excess capacity elsewhere?
• Government, just like the businesses Giuliani touts, already has replaced hundreds of thousands of workers with technology. Bill Clinton proudly claimed credit for slashing nearly 400,000 jobs during his administration, and agencies spent billions of dollars on technology (and contract workers) to continue to meet their missions. (By the way, does anybody think the federal government improved as a result?) Since George W. Bush took office, thousands of jobs have been added back, but mostly in the homeland security and defense areas. Does Mr. 9/11 really think that those are the jobs that we need to eliminate?

As I've said before, issues like these are simply too important to let candidates slide by with glib promises.

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Army Civilian Furlough Plans: The Memo
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, November 28, 2007  |  03:32 PM

Today's breaking news is that Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's Vice Chief of Staff, has issued a memo ordering commanders to plan for furloughs of civilians and contract workers if members of Congress can't iron out their differences on an Iraq spending bill.

"Military manpower, if available at your location, will be authorized to replace civilian and contractor workforce," Cody writes. " Military personnel other than those preparing to deploy should be considered available."

Here's the text of the memo:

-----Original Message-----
From: Cody, Richard A GEN VCSA
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 7:32 PM
To:

VCSA SENDS

TO ALL COMMANDS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Contingency Budget Planning

REF A. SecDef Memo, 16 NOV 07, Subj: Contingency Budget Planning

REF B. SecArmy and CSA Memo, 20 NOV 07, Subj. Contingency Budget Planning

REF C. VCSA Email, 26 SEP 07, Subj. Outlook for Funding in FY 2008

1. The FY2008 DoD Appropriations Act did not provide funds for the Global
War on Terror (GWOT) and we do not know at this time when or if the GWOT
funds will be approved by Congress.

2. References A and B directed that we take immediate action to begin
planning to reduce operations at all Army bases. This message provides
instructions for developing these plans. Send your initial plans through
your RM channels. They are due on 4 DEC 2007. Your plans will be reviewed

by a G3-led task force here at HQDA.

3. This is a planning effort, repeat, a planning effort to reduce OMA
funded operations to the minimum mission essential level. Your initial
plans will identify the weekly cost to continue those OMA funded minimum
mission essential activities allowable under Feed and Forage after 23
February 08 and will include the amount of OMA funds available for return to
the Department when all other services and functions are discontinued.

Guidance in reference C stands; take no action at this time to slow any
program. Continue to execute your approved programs and do not implement
any spending restriction or reduction in the scope and pace of operations
until notified. Continue following existing guidance to review civilian
hiring actions and contracts.

4. Include these assumptions in your plans:

a. On or about 22 February 08, all distributed Operation and Maintenance,
Army (OMA) funds will be fully obligated or committed.

b. On 23 February 08, installations and commands will move to a "warm base"

status and all OMA funded activities will cease except those noted in
paragraph 4 below.

c. Civilian furloughs may last more than 30 days and therefore require a 60
day notice.

d. Military manpower, if available at your location, will be authorized to
replace civilian and contractor workforce. Military personnel other than
those preparing to deploy should be considered available.

e. Only direct funded OMA activities are affected. Programs, projects and
activities funded with other than OMA will continue as planned.

5. Your plans should identify the minimum mission essential activities
along with their estimated costs that are permissible by Feed and Forage (if
approved by OSD) and the impact of discontinuing all other services and
functions effective 23 February 08. For these planning purposes, consider
the following as minimum mission essential operations:

a. To protect the life, health and safety of occupants and residents of
Army installations.

b. To protect and maintain assets vital to the national defense.

6. Your plans should also provide a separate estimate of the weekly minimum
essential costs in order to determine what is permissible under Feed and
Forage:

a. Support forces deployed overseas including Europe, Korea, Japan and
COCOM activities.

b. Prepare forces for deployment to include recruiting, individual training
and unit training.

7. The ASA(FM&C) will provide a reporting format through RM channels. You
should be prepared to report the following information:

a. Life, Health and Safety. Those activities and services and their
estimated weekly cost that must be continued to protect occupants and
residents of Army installations to include military, civilians and Family
members.

b. Training. The amount of OMA funds by week necessary to support training
activities for deploying forces.

c. Quality of Life. Those activities and services for Soldiers and
Families that will be impacted and/or terminated once all existing OMA funds
are fully obligated or committed.

d. Depot Level Reset. To the maximum extent possible, plan to work off FY
07 carry over and new orders received from customers funded with other than
OMA appropriations. Identify the amount of OMA (both base and GWOT) by week
necessary to fund only the organic depot work required to keep production
lines operating and the total amount of OMA Reset funds available for
return.

e. Recruiting: Report the minimum weekly cost to continue to recruit the
force and train the load.

f. Mobilization and Demobilization: Provide the weekly cost to continue
mobilization and demobilization activities to support rotations into and out
of theaters of operation.

g. Field Level Maintenance: Plan to suspend all field level maintenance
except that necessary for life, health or safety or to support the war
fight. Provide the weekly cost for the latter.

8. In the report, you will be asked to break out the activities in
paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 into these categories:

a. Civilian Personnel. Identify the number of minimum mission essential
(Life, Health and Safety) and non-mission essential civilian personnel
funded through direct OMA appropriations. You should anticipate that the
Department will issue furlough notices to civilian employees with sufficient
lead time to implement a furlough on or about 23 February 08. For foreign
national personnel, provide the equivalent of furlough procedures under the
respective Status of Forces Agreement. Identify the weekly payroll cost of
mission essential civilian personnel. Furlough dates will be provided for
US Civilian personnel by G1.

b. Contracts. Identify the total amount of OMA funds needed for minimum
mission essential contracts. Also identify the amounts that can be returned
to the Department when all other services and functions are terminated or
suspended on or about 23 February 08. Factor in termination costs before
reporting the amount available for return.

9. DoD is considering the use of other authorities, Feed and Forage for
example, to continue essential operations as directed. The ASA(FM&C) will
issue instructions on these special funding authorities. The G1 will
provide additional guidance on civilian furloughs.

10. POCs are:

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Hiring Authorities Bite the Dust
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, November 28, 2007  |  12:59 PM

It's time for federal agencies to stop using the special Outstanding Scholar and Bilingual/Bicultural hiring authorities, the Office of Personnel Management says. The agency "strongly advises against further use" of the authorities, officials said in a statement issued earlier this month.

The programs were created after a 1981 lawsuit challenged the civil service hiring examination on the grounds that it discriminated against blacks and Hispanics. They enabled agencies to circumvent the traditional civil service hiring process to bring highly talented students and minorities into the workforce quickly. But after years of use, the two hiring authorities came under fire themselves. Last year, the Merit Systems Protection Board said agencies couldn't use them unless they also applied veterans preference procedures. OPM says that just isn't possible, so agencies should quit using them altogether.

That still leaves the Federal Career Internship Program as an option for agencies looking to make quick non-traditional hires. But as Karen Rutzick reported earlier this year, that program, too has come under legal fire.

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Injured Diplomats Get Little Support
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, November 21, 2007  |  09:57 AM

Jeff Klein of CQ Homeland Security notes one reason diplomats didn't respond with relish to the notion of forced assignments to Iraq: "Wrecked physically and mentally from terrorist attacks or duty in combat zones," he writes, "State Department employees from senior diplomats on down to foreign aid workers say they have too often had to fend for themselves when they were hurt."

GovExec's Alyssa Rosenberg reported on this issue back in August, as did Brittany Ballenstedt in June.

While we're at it, here's some more perspective on the whole issue of directed assignments, courtesy of commenter Doug Ellrich on a previous item I wrote:

There is a lot of misinformation about this issue. Not one single FSO has refused, or even attempted to refuse an assignment to Iraq. There is just no truth to that belief. Sending FSOs to Iraq cannot be compared to sending soldiers and sailors to Iraq. DOD creates an entire cacoon around their people that includes families. DoD families live in familiar communities for several years while the soldier is deployed. They go to familiar schools, are supported by extensive social support systems. FSOs families will be relocating for the year of the Iraq assignment, attending unfamiliar schools in unfamiliar communities. Nothing like what DoD provides exists for the FSO families who are left behind. Most of the concern from FSOs has nothing to do with their personal safety or desire to serve in Iraq, it's usually about specific family situations. Only 16% of the military has served or ever will serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Already 25% of all FSOs have served in Iraq or/and Afghanistan, and the number will go higher as time goes by. That doesn't even include the FSOs who go to all the other dangerous posts abroad and leave their families behind. 65% of the FSOs are abroad serving, mostly in dangerous posts. Only 16% of uniformed personnel are overseas at any one time. DoD is so huge compared to the Foreign Service. It has more bandmembers than there are members of the Foreign Service total. If the State Department had as extensive a support system for families left behind as DoD does, there would be less concern. But in any case, FSOs do serve, they don't refuse, and that will always be the case.

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Minnesota U.S. Attorney Heads Back to Washington
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, November 20, 2007  |  10:16 AM

Embattled Minnesota U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose -- whose 20-month tenure was marked by sharp disagreements with her staff and the resignations of several top officials -- is on the way out. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Paulose announced yesterday that she will be returning to Washington to take a job at Justice Department headquarters.

Paulose had been caught up in this year's controversy over the Justice Department's handling of U.S. attorneys, largely because of her friendship with key Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling. But the main problem seems to be that she couldn't win the support of career attorneys in her office.

The Washington Post quotes an anonymous source "familiar with the decision" as saying Paulose "has come to realize, and the new attorney general and others, that management was a challenge for her there. She felt it was best for her office for her to . . . get out of this management position and into a place where she could excel."

Still unclear is what will happen to the Office of Special Counsel investigation into allegations that Paulose mishandled classified information and retaliated against career employees who challenged her management style.

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Romney: Consultant-in-Chief
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, November 20, 2007  |  09:27 AM

Thanks to Chris Dorobek of Federal Computer Week for linking to this Wall Street Journal piece I missed on Mitt Romney's management style. Romney was a consultant for 10 years, and it's pretty clear he'd bring that perspective to bear in running the executive branch.

Here's the key section of the article:

When asked for details about how he would reduce the size of government if elected, he mentions two things: The organizational chart of the executive branch, and consultants. "There's no corporation in America that would have a CEO, no COO, just a CEO, with 30 direct reports."

Running a government organized like this is, he explains, impossible. "So I would probably have super-cabinet secretaries, or at least some structure that McKinsey would guide me to put in place." He seems to catch a note of surprise in his audience, but he presses on: "I'm not kidding, I probably would bring in McKinsey. . . . I would consult with the best and the brightest minds, whether it's McKinsey, Bain, BCG or Jack Welch."

Dorobek also notes that after the Journal piece appeared, TIME columnist Michael Kinsley took some potshots at Romney, consultants and the whole concept of trying to introduce businesslike efficiency into government. "The notion that the cacophony of politics can be replaced with the smooth hum of expertise and that all the challenges our society faces can be solved by making the government run more efficiently has a long and generally laughable history," Kinsley wrote -- and a bipartisan one, too.

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Here's $2 Million, Boss
By Tom Shoop | Monday, November 19, 2007  |  04:37 PM

The employees of the Office of Governmentwide Policy at the General Services Administration have given agency administrator Lurita Doan an early Christmas present: a check for $2 million. That's how much the employees of the office saved through efficiency improvements, officials say.

Now Doan just needs to decide what to do with the money. Kevin Messner, acting associate GSA administrator in charge of OGP, has an idea: "It is my hope that the money will remain unspent and thus contribute to reducing the federal deficit," he says.

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What Really Matters
By Tom Shoop | Friday, November 16, 2007  |  10:43 AM

Here's just a sampling of headlines from today's Washington Post:

• State Dept. Won't Order Diplomats to Iraq
• TSA Minimizes Failure to Detect Threats
• FEMA Accused Of Wasting More Katrina Funding
• Justice Dept. Conducting Criminal Probe of Baghdad Embassy Contracts

This is a pretty typical day for the newspaper. Can there be any doubt at this stage that management of federal operations is not just something that's worthy of the next president's attention, but the critical issue facing the country in the next few years? If recent history has taught us anything, it's that we should be judging our candidates on the basis of how well they will manage the critical functions of the federal government, which are literally a matter of life and death to Americans. And we should be holding their feet to the fire when they make cavalier policy proposals like not replacing half of federal employees who retire and threatening to cut health benefits for political appointees.

While presidential candidates like to focus on policy proposals, and political reporters remain obsessed with the who's-up-who's-down horse race aspects of the campaign, the critically important issue is whether the next president will form an effective team of appointees, make sure agencies have the capacity to perform the roles they've been assigned, and hold federal managers and executives accountable for results. This issue ought to be central to the campaign, and its barely on the periphery.

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Edwards: Still After Appointees' Health Care
By Tom Shoop | Tuesday, November 13, 2007  |  04:47 PM

John Edwards is still flogging his promise to cut off health care for members of Congress and senior administration officials if the legislative and executive branches fail to agree on a comprehensive health care reform bill within his first six months in office. In fact, Matt Yglesias notes, Edwards is even running ads in Iowa touting the idea.

This is a terrific rhetorical device, but if Edwards is even halfway serious about it, I hope he's going to think it through a little more. Say what you want about political appointees, but they already have enough incentives not to serve their country. Why add more in the form of uncertainty about benefits? Here's what would be truly political courageous: For one of Edwards' opponents to say, "I see your point, John, but getting the most highly qualified and talented people to run government's programs and operations is too important to play games with the basic benefits they might receive in exchange for agreeing to serve and to help lead the effort to make government as efficient and effective as possible."

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Border Agency Sees Progress, Not Problems
By Tom Shoop | Friday, November 09, 2007  |  09:30 AM

While GAO and the unions are saying that Customs and Border protection has some serious staffing and training issues to deal with, the agency is pushing a different message. "CBP's front-line personnel were better equipped in fiscal 2007 than any period in the nation's history," agency spokesman Michael Friel told the Washington Times. The agency has made "significant progress" this year on securing the country's borders, he added.

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Where'd That Jelly Bean Jar Go?
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, November 08, 2007  |  07:02 PM

Yikes! The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum can't account for a whopping 80,000 of the 100,000 items it is supposed to have in its possession. The National Archives inspector general says a "near universal" breakdown in security left the facility vulnerable to theft from insiders.

The finding that Reagan's library was so poorly run, the paper reported, "may mortify fans of the late president, who often inveighed against government inefficiency."

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Checking Attendance
By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, November 07, 2007  |  10:39 AM

What's the biggest problem federal managers and supervisors face on a daily basis? Dealing with employee attendance issues,