Strengthen The Corps of Senior Leaders

Strengthen the Corps of Senior Leaders

Background

Over the past decade, the General Accounting Office has examined the
management of most major federal departments and agencies. Two findings
are consistent: good management requires stable leadership in key
positions, and most government institutions fall short of that mark.(1)

In the Jacksonian era of the 1830's, it was believed that anyone could
fill a government job.(2) However, with its immense size, budget, and
complexity, the executive branch today requires a tremendous amount of
executive talent to lead and manage it. A combination of political
appointees and career executives provides this leadership and
management.

The President relies on about 3,000 political appointees to promote his
policies, make policy decisions on his behalf, and ensure that the
President's policies are carried out by the entire civil service.  The
President also depends on about 8,000 career executives to provide the
continuity, knowledge, and institutional memory needed to implement his
policies.

The career executives are members of the Senior Executive Service (SES).
Political appointees include Presidential Appointments with Senate
Confirmation (PAS) who hold very high-level positions such as Cabinet
secretaries; Presidential Appointments (PA) who generally hold positions
on boards and commissions; non-career SES; and Schedule C's, who often
hold mid-level positions and serve in policy- related positions or as
confidential assistants to other political appointees.(3) Generally
speaking, the number of political appointments has increased over the
past three decades while the number of civil servants has remained about
the same.(4)

Political appointees have relatively short stints in government--most
leave before two years are completed--and are often referred to as
"in-and-outers," as illustrated in figure 1.(5)

This lack of continuity has been decried by GAO, which sees continual
turnover in top positions as one of the root causes of management
problems in the federal government.(6) There are several options. For
example, a career SES member can receive a political appointment and
retain the right to revert to his or her career status after serving in
the political appointment slot.(7) While this authority is not widely
used, the flexibility built into the existing personnel system permits
the use of career employees as a source of qualified leadership.(8) This
is one way of providing needed continuity. Other options include finding
ways to improve the process to speed the appointment of political
appointees, or to find ways of getting a commitment from nominees to
stay in place for longer periods of time.

Need for Change

There are not enough qualified leaders in place for long enough periods
of time to effectively manage our complex government.(9) The root of
this problem is the selection, placement, training, and development of
both career and non-career appointments. In addition, the relationship
between these two corps of senior managers plays a crucial role in
managing the executive branch effectively.

When a new Administration comes to office, it must quickly deal with
numerous critical issues--not the least of which is filling vacancies in
political positions throughout the government. The political appointment
process is vital to the success or failure of a presidency. It is an
arduous process of selection, clearance, and confirmation. According to
Laurence Thompson, Assistant Comptroller General, "No modern
administration has yet fully succeeded in developing a set of initial
staffing procedures that are comprehensive, timely, or adequately
related to the new president's immediate policy objectives."(10)

Lack of Job Descriptions.

One key obstacle to achieving an effective political appointment process
is the lack of any descriptions of responsibilities and qualifications
for each position.(11) Imagine the tremendous task of the staff of the
Presidential Personnel Office. They must fill over 3,000 positions--over
500 of which are critical to the management of the government--without
any institutional memory and only scant information as to what all those
positions entail.(12) Every four years congressional committees publish
a report--commonly referred to as the "Plum Book"--that lists all
non-career positions.(13) The Council for Excellence in Government, a
nonpartisan organization, publishes the "Prune Book," which contains a
list of qualifications needed to successfully meet the duties of about
50 key subcabinet jobs.(14) However, there is no thorough listing of the
duties of the roughly 500 senior-level political positions and the
general requirements of these positions.

The "Vetting" Process.

A second obstacle in the political appointment process is the "vetting"
process, which includes background investigations, financial
disclosures, conflict of interest clearances, and confirmation hearings.
The increasing complexity of this process has played a major role in
delaying the placement of political appointees. One veteran journalist
laments:

In the time I have been in Washington the vetting, and in some respects,
harassing and humiliating of people about to enter the public service
have become increasingly detailed, comprehensive and intrusive, often
unfair and equally irrelevant to their suitability for the job.(15)

The President's Commission on the Federal Appointment Process addressed
the issue of the complexity of the forms that political appointees must
fill out: the financial disclosure form (SF-278), the Personal Data
Statement (White House), the FBI personal history form (SF-86) and forms
required by Senate committees.(16) The purpose of the vetting process is
to set standards for the political appointees and to make them publicly
accountable.(17) However, the current process also impedes the timely
placement of appointees, which in turn has appreciable management
consequences. Figure 2 shows that the amount of time required to
complete the appointment process has been steadily increasing.

Long-standing vacancies in top positions seriously disrupt the smooth
operations of the government and make management improvement exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible.(18) Private companies would never leave
major leadership and management positions vacant for months or years,
but such longstanding vacancies have become all too common in the
federal government. Figure 3 on the next page illustrates the void that
occurs during a change of administration.  Clearly, however, these
vacancies are not solely tied to the change of administration.

Lack of Familiarity with the Federal Government.

Another attribute of the political appointment process that affects the
government's operations is the background of political appointees. Many
of them have been very successful in the private sector and their
experiences are an asset to the government. However, a good number of
appointees are unfamiliar with the workings of the federal government
and Washington. Since the Eisenhower administration, there has been a
recognized need for political appointees to attend an orientation and
follow-on seminars.(19) However, the methods for carrying this out have
not been institutionalized and must be re-developed with each new
administration.

Poor Relations Between Career and Political Staffs.

Another significant factor hampering good leadership and management of
the federal government is the generally poor relationship between
political appointees and career leaders and managers. Political
appointees and career executives historically have distrusted one
another. Civil servants often become disenchanted by the rapid turnover
of political appointees and the placement of political appointees in
positions that may appear more suited for qualified career
employees.(20) Furthermore, some political appointees sometimes do not
believe that career public servants will carry out the President's
policies adequately. As the National Commission on the Public Service
(known as the Volcker Commission) stated in its 1989 report, it is the
responsibility of both career and non-career federal executives to
improve their working relationship.(21)

Cross References to Other NPR Accompanying Reports

Reinventing Human Resource Management, HRM11: Strengthen the Senior
Executive Service So That It Becomes a Key Element in the Governmentwide
Culture Change Effort.

Mission-Driven, Results-Oriented Budgeting, BGT01: Develop Performance
Agreements with Senior Political Leadership that Reflect Organizational
and Policy Goals.

Executive Office of the President, EOP11: Improve the Presidential
Transition Process.

Endnotes

1. See U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), Service to the Public:  How
Effective and Responsive is the Government?, GAO/T-HRD-91-26
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office [GAO], May 8, 1991).

2. Pfiffner, James, "Strangers in a Strange Land: Orienting New
Presidential Appointees," in Mackenzie, G. Calvin, ed., The In-and-
Outers: Presidential Appointees and Transient Government in Washington
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p.  143.

3. An additional category of appointees, judges, is excluded from this
discussion because they are in the judicial branch of government.

4. National Commission on the Public Service (Volcker Commission),
Leadership for America: Rebuilding the Public Service (Washington, D.C.,
1989), p. 170.

5. See Mackenzie, The In-and-Outers.

6. U.S. General Accounting Office, Government Management Issues,
GAO/OCG-93-3TR (Washington, D.C.: GAO, December 1992), p. 30.

7. P.L. 95-454.

8. See NPR Accompanying Report Reinventing Human Resource Management,
HRM11: Strengthen the Senior Executive Service So That It Becomes a Key
Element in the Governmentwide Culture Change Effort, for a more in-depth
discussion of career executives.

9. National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), Leadership in
Jeopardy: The Fraying of the Presidential Appointments System
(Washington, D.C., November 1985), pp. 4-5. See also GAO, Government
Management Issues, pp. 30-32.

10. See GAO, Service to the Public.

11. See President's Commission on the Federal Appointment Process,
statement by James Pfiffner, October 2, 1990, p. 42, and
"Recommendations," p. 7 in Report of the President's Commission on the
Federal Appointment Process (Washington, D.C., December 1990); NAPA, p.
9; Volcker Commission, p. 180; and letter from Paul Light, Professor,
Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota,
to Senator John Glenn, August 3, 1992.

12. Ibid.

13. See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S.
Government Policy and Supporting Positions (Washington, D.C., November
10, 1992). See also U.S. Congress, House Committee on Post Office and
Civil Service and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

14. See Trattner, John H., ed., The 1992 Prune Book (Washington, D.C.:
Council for Excellence in Government, 1992).

15. Greenfield, Meg, "Has Vetting Become Harassment?," Newsweek (July
19, 1993), p. 62.

16. Report of President's Commission on the Federal Appointment Process,
p. 6.

17. Ibid.

18. GAO, Service to the Public, p. 5.

19. Pfiffner, Strangers in a Strange Land, p. 143.

20. Volcker Commission, pp. 175, 170-171.

21. Ibid., p.176.

22. The National Academy of Public Administration published a handbook
in 1988, and the Office of Personnel Management is currently drafting a
revision.

23. Preston, Edward, Human Resources Development Group, U.S. Office of
Personnel Management, "Orienting Presidential Appointees: An Essential
White House Task," Washington, D.C., undated, p. 3.

24. Interview with Rosslyn Kleeman, July 30, 1993, and interview with
Edward Preston, August 6, 1993.