The Public Manager

Collaborative Government Managers Succeed Where Others Fail

Government managers struggling to cope with a perfect storm of a shrinking workforce, arbitrary budget cuts, and increased demands for service delivery are finding some new answers in an old solution—collaboration.

A recent round of in-depth interviews with the federal government's top human resources officials uncovered a daunting array of challenges facing federal managers and leaders—and government in general—in 2013 and beyond. The impact of sequestration, inadequate resources, increasing workloads, an aging workforce, and demands for improved government outcomes can seem overwhelming. (See Challenges and Opportunities for 2nd Obama Administration in the spring 2013 issue of The Public Manager).

Balancing Task With Relationship to Create Interagency Collaboration

What do fighting fires on federal lands, combating terrorism, transitioning veterans from military careers to civilian life, responding to and recovering from disasters, building highways, and scouting infectious diseases have in common?

All these tasks depend on interagency collaboration. Over decades, various administrations, congresses, and federal agencies have used interagency collaboration to accomplish missions individual agencies could not get done alone.

Collarboration and Employee Satisfaction Drive Agencies

As government agencies seek new and more efficient ways to get the job done, the need for collaboration is stronger than ever. Government managers are tasked with "doing more with less," so they are rethinking business as usual by collaborating within their agency, across agencies, and with the public.

Statesmanship Takes Leadership and Governance to the Next Level

One can assume that readers of this publication are probably not only interested in leadership development, but are, quite likely, students of leadership theory and practice as well. Most of us have become familiar with the customary, sometimes tedious, repackaging of the same list of good leadership characteristics. But when was the last time your personal standard of leadership was really challenged?

Three Trends Affect Social Media Adoption in Your Agency

While social learning is gaining in momentum among chief learning officers, chief talent officers, and heads of human resources, there are a number of barriers to adopting social learning for an organization. To implement social learning, one has to understand the larger trends affecting the changing workplace, as well as key barriers that prevent the adoption of social learning inside the organization.

Three mega trends are having a huge impact on organizations: the increased use of social networking, the growth of workplace mobility, and the explosion of video-based traffic on the web. Taken together, these shifts increase organizations' interest in building more open, collaborative, and social cultures.

Driven by Your Mission and in Honor of Your Customer

Imagine walking into any federal agency. What would you experience there? Most likely you would experience a security process that has you waiting to be escorted by an employee. While you waited you may view news on a TV or rolling messages on a screen about agency activities—perhaps the only clue you'd have of that agency's culture or mission.

That was the lobby experience in the U.S. Department of Education 10 years ago, with the exception of stereotypical icons of education—cut outs of yellow school buses and crayons. Today, even before entering the building, you would experience windows full of original photographs from school visits announcing "This place is about education and helping students to be successful." Once in the lobby, you would be surrounded with examples of the stellar work students and their teachers are accomplishing in classrooms from around the nation and the world.

Award-Winning Video Embraces Geothermal Energy in Nebraska

The American Clean Skies Foundation awarded a second-place energy visions prize to a documentary co-produced by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) Public Media, and the Nebraska Well Drillers Association. "Geothermal: Energy from the Ground Up" features efficient geothermal technology (underground pipes installed with a heat pump to keep buildings cool in the summer and warm in the winter). It won in the foundation's long-form feature film or documentary category.

Collaboration Can Play a Lead Role in Development of Future Leaders

The desire to create public value is at the core of every federal agency. Developing leaders in the federal sector adds value because it equips people with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve their missions. Supporting agencies in reaching their leadership development goals is more critical now than ever.

Most agencies will not be hiring many new staff in the future; in fact, we can expect a continued erosion of the federal workforce. Agencies cannot afford to be without a succession plan and ways to engage and retain their employees.

Changing Culture and Lives Through Communities of Practice

A group of federal employees tackles federal disability employment issues using a collaborative workspace. Group members collaborate and share effective practices to support Executive Order 13548.

Online social networking has become the way people connect, communicate, collaborate, and create in the 21st century. So it's not surprising that in the workplace, communities of practice (CoPs) are tapping into the power of the Internet to connect professionals with similar interests and goals.

Collaboration Enables Operational and Cultural Transformation on a Shoestring

In an era of resource uncertainty, skillsets related to agility, adaptability, and collaboration now trump traditional, predictable rank-and-file behaviors for achieving resilient, large-scale transformation in the public service mission space.

After 10 years of treating most aviation passengers the same way, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) faced the possibility of shifting the security paradigm away from one-size-fits-all. The TSA administrator's extensive counterterrorism background informed the realization that most passengers do not pose a risk of catastrophic failure to an aircraft. Building on this premise, senior leaders understood that if passengers voluntarily provided information before they arrived at the airport (prescreening), TSA could tailor the physical screening experience accordingly, and air travel would be expedited for many people.

An enhanced, risk-based approach would enable TSA to better focus resources on threats, thereby improving security, enhancing the passenger experience, and significantly transforming the aviation system for nearly 1.8 million people per day.

Communication Provides Foundation for Being a ‘Best Place to Work’

At the U.S. Army Audit Agency, communication is vital to success and to reaching the next level of organizational performance and employee satisfaction.

These are tough times to be a federal employee. At nearly every turn, federal workers are facing pay freezes (no cost-of-living increase in three years and counting), no awards, threats of government shutdowns, fiscal cliffs, hiring freezes, and sequestration (and with that, furloughs). The federal workforce is often denigrated as a key reason why there's a bloated federal bureaucracy, but in reality there are fewer federal workers doing more work today than ever before and most take their charge to serve their country very seriously—and proudly.

It’s Not Easy Being a Federal ‘Best Place to Work’

Managers can use data to hone in on improving employee satisfaction. Agency leaders also should celebrate successes to solicit employee support for continued efforts.

There is little doubt that high levels of employee satisfaction and commitment lead to a more effective and productive workforce. Yet it is no easy task for public managers to keep employees motivated and engaged these days, given the increased workloads and decreased resources, pay freezes, the possibilities of furloughs, and negative public attitudes toward government.

Evolution of Collaboration Among Federal, State, and Local Agencies

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius came into office in the midst of the H1N1 public health crisis and faced a series of crises throughout the first Obama administration.

Her focus was, at first, to marshal the resources she had at her disposal to address the crisis. But after the first wave of H1N1 passed, Sebelius was less focused on responding to the current threat and more focused on building new and enduring structures of collaboration within the government and across sectors to address future public health threats.

Managing Training and Development at the National Gallery of Art

A new learning management system increases the scope and accuracy of data sharing, and provides opportunities to develop employee training in new ways.

With nearly 130,000 items, the National Gallery of Art has one of the finest collections of American and European art from the late middle ages to the present. More than 4 million people visit the gallery each year, making it the sixth most popular art museum in the world.

Abraham Lincoln and the Art of Collaborative Leadership

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he changed the course of the Civil War and transformed the lives of millions of enslaved blacks. Looking back through the lens of the 21st century, we can easily appreciate the profound consequences of this one act. But history is lived forward, not backward, and in early 1862, many of Lincoln's most ardent supporters worried that he might never make this fundamental break with the past.

Why did Lincoln hesitate, and how did he ultimately prepare the country for this enormous step forward? His ability to lead in a collaborative manner helped him to steer the country through a difficult and challenging time.

Generation Y Yearns for Challenging and Satisfying Government Work

A proper onboarding process geared toward Generation Y's needs can give federal agencies the upper hand.

When Baby Boomers began entering the federal workforce more than 40 years ago, they were welcomed into a workplace that embraced the idea of apprenticeship and knowledge transfer. Fresh off of the counterculture revolution, Boomers were eager to make a difference in running their country and were racing to answer President John F. Kennedy's call to government service.

Partnering for Performance at HUD and VA

Collaboration is not always easy but the benefits and potential force multipliers are well worth the effort. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are in robust collaboration to achieve a daring administration goal to end veteran homelessness across the nation by 2015.

Each agency's success in achieving this audacious goal clearly depends on close and effective collaboration with the other. To be clear, the joint agency collaboration, like any meaningful partnership, must go beyond meeting together and talking about partnering.

Labor Management and the Political Paths of Collaboration

This year will be the 20th anniversary of President Bill Clinton's Executive Order on Labor-Management Partnerships (E.O. 12871 issued October 1, 1993). Over the past two decades, federal government employees and their union representatives have worked with federal managers to improve the delivery of service to the American public.

As President Clinton noted in the preamble to his executive order, it was through cooperation that the design and implementation of comprehensive change would take place. E.O. 12871 called for the establishment of labor-management committees or councils at appropriate levels throughout the executive branch; employees and their union representatives were to be "full partners" with management representatives to better serve the agency's customers and to satisfy its mission.

Changing Attitudes: Recognizing Abilities of People with Disabilities

Managers need to weave disability into diversity programs. They must overcome fears of disability and take advantage of resources to foster inclusive hiring and retention of employees who may develop a disability.

A Blueprint for Change: Lessons in Educational Reform

As chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Joanne Weiss serves as senior advisor to the secretary, and was director of the Race to the Top (RTT) Fund during its early days of design and implementation. The walls of her office are covered with beautifully framed children's artwork. The view from her seventh-floor window covers an expanse of neighboring federal buildings and a sliver of the Washington Monument. Next to her door hangs a t-shirt with the words "Disrupt Ed" printed boldly across the front.

Patent Office Honored as Best Place to Work

In December 2012, the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was named one of the federal government's Best Places to Work by the not-for-profit Partnership for Public Service (PPS).

The partnership ranked the USPTO number five out of 292 federal agency subcomponents based on a survey of more than 700,000 civil servants conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The USPTO has climbed the rankings in recent years, from 105th in 2009, to 56th in 2010, to 19th in 2011—an achievement that speaks volumes about the dedication to excellence of every employee in the agency.

What Would GS System Pay Reform Look Like?

The debate over federal compensation continues, particularly as it relates to salaries in government and the private sector. Furloughs as part of sequestration have magnified the issue.

You're Expected to Improve Your Organization's Performance. Now What?

Regardless of your personal viewpoint on improving organizational performance, as a public policy objective, it is here to stay. The desire to demonstrate (preferably quantitatively) that public funds are achieving increasingly better outcomes has driven the establishment of both legislative and executive mandates, such as the Government Performance and Results Act and the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act. The renewal and expansion of these mandates reflects at least a perception that they are doing some good, in reality or politically or both.

Offering Institutional Insight to Government's Leaders

The winning candidates from the 2012 elections will face a daunting set of challenges. As difficult as modern campaigns have become, the governance challenges may very well prove to be more vexing. Public service professionals, acting through the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), have long felt a responsibility to provide advice and counsel to incoming administrations.

Tough Economic Times Call for Authentic Leaders

These are tough times for public servants. With the nation awash in debt, federal employees are sometimes branded as ineffective and inefficient. Floating around Washington, D.C., are proposals to extend the current two-year pay freeze to five years, increase employee retirement contributions, slash the federal workforce by 10 percent, and use furloughs and buyouts to manage cuts in agency budgets. Draconian, some say. Entirely possible, most admit. What should federal managers do? There is much advice on what to do, but little counsel on how to do it.

Greener Transport Mitigates Climate Change

The emission of greenhouse gasses is considered by most scientists to be a major cause of observed climate change. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), 28 percent of all GHG emissions in the United States came from transportation uses in 2006, 97 percent of which was from the combustion of fossil fuels. Creation of the fuel...

Community Leadership Programs Advance Public Leadership

As processes and hierarchies continue to flatten and public sector budgets persist in red ink, the search for relevant, cost-effective training grows ever more important. Public agencies at all levels of government are subject to escalating pressure from nongovernmental sectors both domestically and...

Case-Study-Driven Leadership Training from West Point

The 1992 Los Angeles riots led law enforcement executives to the department of behavioral sciences at West Point. Its curriculum would evolve and prove effective in enhancing leadership. One test came September 11.

Whos Next in Line? Develop Tomorrows Leaders Today

A wave of retirement presents federal agencies with an opportunity to renew and reshape the public sector leadership culture through visionary succession management. With some 60,000 federal workers set to retire by years end, according to OMB estimates, succession planning must be considered broadly throughout government. Tradit...

Innovation at Rancho Cordova

The City of Rancho Cordova in California was named #12 on the Great Place to Work best small workplaces list by the Great Place to Work Institute. It is the first local government agency to appear on the list.

The selection is based on an employee survey that evaluates management credibility, respect, and fairness; and employee pride and camaraderie. Additionally, a panel reviewed organizational practices that foster the positive work culture.

Understanding the Path Forward in Federal Human Capital

Efforts to refine the government's pay and promotion system have floundered. How can we develop and bring a new model to the majority of government employees?

Most federal employees work and are paid in a General Schedule system that has been in place since 1949, when a vastly different group of occupations, skill sets, and management principles were practiced. In the last decade, The Performance Institute, a think-tank in performance management and accountability for government, studied the two largest lost opportunities to change this model in the last decade: The Department of Homeland Security Max HR System and the Department of Defense National Security Personnel System. The study revealed the government's failure to understand the cultural, behavioral, and management challenges involved in this major paradigm shift.

Feds Lead the Way in Making Training Evaluations More Effective

U.S. government agencies are taking heed to the recommendations outlined in a 2009 ASTD report, The Value of Evaluation.

In 2009, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) published The Value of Evaluation: Making Training Evaluations More Effective, a report that revealed how well training evaluation was meeting organizations' business needs. Responses to the 26 questions led to disturbing conclusions, particularly that "Only about one-quarter of respondents... agreed that their organization got a solid 'bang for the buck' from its training evaluation efforts," the report states.

HowTo.gov Provides Government Tools to Engage Citizens Online

Social media in government is here to stay. The team in the General Services Administration's (GSA) Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT) knows this well. This is the team that provides agencies with best practices, training, and shared tools and technology so they can use social media and other digital media to better serve their customers and ensure people can access government information anywhere, anytime, on any device. HowTo.gov is the platform that pulls all these resources together in one place.

HowTo.gov also demonstrates how agencies can accelerate the adoption of these new tools to help government provide better digital services to customers. OCSIT shares examples of successes and lessons learned within its large and growing community of federal professionals who are engaged in using digital technologies and communications to improve their programs. It's working to expand its core Web and IT community to include a much broader network—innovative managers and practitioners across government who see the power of using digital media and technologies to deliver better service to citizens.

How FEMA Drove 23,000 People to Join it's Online Community

National preparedness is everyone's shared responsibility—not just government's. While the responsibility for coordinating and advancing national preparedness and enhancing resiliency falls on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) shoulders, every person, group, and organization has a critical role to play.

Since 2003, FEMA has used National Preparedness Month (NPM) to promote preparedness to the public. During NPM, citizens, community groups, and public- and private-sector organizations coordinate preparedness drills, trainings, and awareness activities. NPM has been successful, but FEMA has had to start from scratch each year to rebuild momentum.

Designing a Social Media Strategy to Fulfill Agency's Mission

Social media applications have become acceptable communication and interaction channels in the public sector. Driven by online behavior of citizens, available social networking platforms, and the governments' need to become more participatory, transparent, and collaborative, public managers must design a social media strategy that helps to fulfill the mission of their organization.

Social Media Matures into Viable, Valuable Communications Tool

Recent trends in the use of social media and mobile technology have given governments fresh
opportunities to engage and educate a diverse array of citizens.

Sixty-nine percent of adults in the United States were using social networks as of August 2012, according to the Pew Internet and American Life. Two-thirds of them report using Facebook, 20 percent are on LinkedIn, and 16 percent are on Twitter.

Figure 1 on the next page reveals that social networking use has grown among every age group, including 57 percent of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 and 38 percent above age 65.

Science Radio App Brings On-Demand Programming Worldwide

There's an old saying in radio: If no one is calling to complain, then nobody is listening. So when Science360 Radio received a phone call from someone who was upset because she suddenly could no longer access the online radio channel, that was, oddly, a good thing.

It turns out the person calling had purchased a new smart phone specifically to listen to Science360 Radio—even better! Indeed, it appears the first Internet radio stream dedicated to programming about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) has a loyal and growing group of listeners. Since the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched Science360 Radio in September 2011, the number of listeners has grown to 7,300 a week, and 21,000 people have downloaded the app.

Making Social Media Content as Accessible as Possible

Most everyone has heard of Section 508, the requirement that federal electronic information technology must be accessible to those with disabilities. Section 508 applies to more than is commonly understood, however. It applies to all online content that is created by the federal government and its contractors, not just content that appears on a .gov or .mil domain.

The rise in use of social media and the ability to share information at lightning speed have encouraged more agencies to examine social media as a major business asset. As with any agency effort, existing policies and requirements still apply.

The Past Present and Future of Social Media At USGS

It's no surprise that the use of social media within the government sector has been exploding over the past several years. The possibilities to improve government using social media are endless. Having a social presence is expected. It's progressed to a point where, if someone asks if your agency is on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+, and you respond "no," you're scoffed at.

While it's tempting to jump into the water head first, you need to know what's waiting for you beneath the surface. Here is the story of how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) started exploring the use of social media, the mistakes made and lessons learned, where the agency stands now, and what the future holds.

Successfully Managing Federal Rightsizing Initiatives

Federal managers can anticipate mission changes, organizational restructuring, and austere budgets in fiscal year 2013 and beyond. The challenge will be to incorporate these into headquarters-mandated mission changes while creating and maintaining high-performing subordinate teams.

The most successful managers will understand headquarters' reality and be prepared to participate in decision making. They must provide well-reasoned alternatives aligned to established metrics and program assessment criteria.

What Can Managers Do to Mitigate Violent Employee Behaviors?

All too often we are confronted with news stories about violence occurring in the workplace. Incidents that involve physical violence and even murder make the news, but they are only one part of the workplace violence problem.

Employees encounter violent behaviors—such as threats, harassment, intimidation, and bullying—more frequently in the workplace than outright physical violence. These behaviors warrant management attention because they can poison the work environment, can present legal or liability issues, and may be precursors to serious physical altercations.

Connecting the Dots Among People Budgets and Missions

Managing human capital in the federal workforce is a challenge that has plagued presidential administrations and Congress for the past three decades. Significant issues such as homeland security threats, fiscal imbalances, generational differences, and disruptive technologies have caused senior leaders to rethink the traditional management approaches in use since the industrial age.

In addition to these human capital issues, reports by the Partnership for Public Service indicate that nearly half the federal workforce is eligible for retirement in 2016. Experts have described these impending retirements as "the perfect storm," a "workforce tsunami," and a "brain drain" to name a few. Benjamin Franklin said it best when he stated, "by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." By tapping into knowledge management and understanding the distinctions among generation cohorts, managers can connect the dots between succession planning, human capital management, strategic planning, and fiscal responsibility.

The Benefit Is Mutuals: New Models of Public Service Delivery

Public managers around the world are exploring more personalized, proactive, entrepreneurial, and productive models of service delivery. They should study developments in the United Kingdom with interest.

As governments around the world are searching for ways to square the circle of fiscal austerity, rising citizen demands, and the need to stimulate wider economic vitality, old organizational forms may offer new hope. In the United Kingdom, mutuals are enjoying a renaissance as the government opens up the provision of services to public servants. Mutuals are organizations owned by their employees or members and loosely encompass many forms, such as cooperatives and social enterprises.

Challenges and Opportunities for Second Obama Administration

The results of the 2012 presidential election offer both good news and bad news for President Obama. The good news is that he now has another four years to work on improving government performance. The bad news is that he now has another four years to work on improving government performance.

This somewhat tongue-in-check assessment is based on the fact that while the Obama Administration faced a number of challenges during its first term—including its share of workforce management challenges—what's coming up could make the first four years seem like the good old days. This view was reinforced during a round of individual interviews with the federal government's top human resource (HR) leaders: the chief human capital officers (CHCOs).

Investing in People Supports Veterans' Affairs Mission

With more than 314,000 employees, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the federal government's second largest department, responsible for a nationwide system of healthcare services, benefits programs, and national cemeteries for America's veterans and their dependents.

As deputy secretary of VA since 2009, W. Scott Gould has shown himself to be a true champion of human capital. He has fought for and won training budgets that support more than 60 learning and development initiatives to help VA employees deliver on their mission of service—and show measurable results.

Teleworking Thrives at U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Telework programs at the Alexandria, Virginia, agency improved employee productivity and employee satisfaction while maintaining high levels of customer service and employee performance.

When the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 was signed into law on December 9, 2010, the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) already had established an award-winning telework program for its employees.

The agency has 16 percent (62) of its telework attorneys who reside more than 50 miles from Alexandria, Virginia, in 27 states. Eleven percent (751) of its telework patent examiners reside in 42 states.

Technology and People Are the Lifeblood of Government

This first journal of 2013 examines social media in the government. While there were perceived and real barriers just a few years ago, federal, state, and local governments have jumped feet first into social media with Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, mobile apps, and virtual worlds.

How Titleless Leaders Use Conflict to Get Workplace Results

Getting things done when you're not in charge is no easy feat. As any successful government manager or public service leader—any employee—can tell you, it takes the application of specific attributes to lead others, especially absent title or authority. And when it comes to dealing with differences and conflict in the public sector, titleless leadership approaches can improve your results.

America's Storied History Is a Compelling Budget Story

America's story is a budget story, the ongoing struggle to allocate limited resources between worthy and competing demands, all balanced against the ability to generate and collect revenue.

Develop a Habit of Inspiration to Unleash Innovative Approach

Look at More is written for any individual or team willing to adopt a few new behaviors to develop the habit of being inspired. Given the complex challenges and budget shortfalls that are facing government at all levels, the fact that inspiration can be learned is good news.