WALKER, DAVIS: PAIR OF GIANTS EXIT THE SCENE
Whatever preoccupation federal managers may have had with the presidential primary drama in mid-February, it was likely eclipsed by the departures of two giants. -> Read More

THE BUDGET NEWS: INFO TECH CONTINUES TO RISE
IT spending will be up 3.8 percent, according to analysis from the Office of Management and Budget, to $70.9 billion, up from the $68.3 billion enacted for the current fiscal year. -> Read More

ALL CLOUDY ON THE PERSONNEL FRONT
Change is often difficult, and federal employment has undergone a lot of change lately. -> Read More

• Bridge the Latest Generation Gap

  In many ways, the government is the ultimate sandwich generation. You know, struggling to take care of its aging folks while figuring out how to cater to the younger generation.

  That’s true not only for the citizens at large, but also for the federal workforce. The federal government has a constant need to refresh its ranks with new talent. Attracting recent college graduates and slightly older, but still young, people has become something of a cottage industry.

  Recent studies, including research done by the Partnership for Public Service in Washington, show that young people in many ways aren’t that much different from anyone else. They want good pay and benefits, reasonable job stability, and the chance to make a contribution to the organization that hires them. Those factors would seem to mitigate in favor of federal employment.

  But where baby boomers and their forebears might have seen a federal job as a good place to make the mortgage payments and look forward to a secure retirement, such inducements mean much less to those born between 1976 and 1982.

  This generation, roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population, “is entering the work force with high expectations,” says Mary Crane. Crane is proprietor of a Washington, D.C. consultancy bearing her name. Crane—who will be speaking at the upcoming IRMCO conference—has spent considerable time studying this fascinating group.

  “This is the most technology savvy generation the country has seen,” Crane says. “They are looking for a workplace with up-to-date IT. They have been connected and online since the day they put their hands on a keyboard.” For most them, that means about the time they stood up and started walking.

  That might be obvious to anyone observing such people intently thumbing on their communication devices. But there are more subtle cultural differences between the ’76-’82 generation and those still around to supervise them.

  “Boomer bosses came up expecting a lot of face time” with their own bosses as well as their subordinates. Lots of time jawing with the boss for generation y-ers? Fugettabout it, says Crane. For them, even coming to the office on a 5-day, nine-to-five basis seems strange. If you are connected and engaged, what does it matter where you work, they ask.

  “They need to understand, a little face time is needed,” Crane says.

  Crane describes the y-ers as the T-ball generation. They grew up working in teams. That means supervisors should look for ways to foster teams, whose members may not even care about having a private office.

  They also value so-called green workplaces. Crane says a survey of summer associates at a major law firm revealed the Number One complaint was that the conference room lacked a recycling bin.

  Crane counsels supervisors to become more coach-like and less boss-like. She points out, when boomers entered the work force there was high unemployment and inflation. People figured, “If I’m lucky enough to have a job, I’ll do anything to keep it.” Crane adds, “Now we have to encourage people to stay with us. This generation is looking for a tremendous amount of feedback. ‘If there’s a problem I’ll let you know’ won’t work.”

  Be sure to check out Mary Crane herself. A Midwesterner who went to George Washington law school in D.C., she subsequently trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., eventually becoming executive chef to First Lady Hillary Clinton. This work led to a consulting practice that includes business and social etiquette.

  Young people “are often aware they don’t know the rules, but are afraid of asking about them,” Crane says.
  
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• Walker, Davis: Pair Of Giants Exit The Scene

  Whatever preoccupation federal managers may have had with the presidential primary drama in mid-February, it was likely eclipsed by the departures of two giants.

  One was Rep. Tom Davis, the Northern Virginia Republican who chaired than became ranking minority member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. The other was David M. Walker, Comptroller General, leaving the Government Accountability Office with five years left on his term.

  What do these departures mean?

  Davis, who will of course remain in office until his term expires in just under a year, has a deep understanding of and enthusiastic interest the nuts and bolts of government management—acquisition, IT, work force issues, outsourcing and the District of Columbia. (And baseball, bless his heart.) He maintained a deft balance between the needs of career government managers and the contracting community on which the government has become completely dependent.

  When General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan got into hot water last year over a spat with her department’s inspector general, Davis provided a balance Waxman (D-Calif.) Waxman, who suspects scandal and abuse in almost everything, grilled Doan. Davis’ questioning showed the IG was no choir boy.

  Davis has anointed Rep. Darrell Issa of California vast 49th district. I interviewed Issa Feb. 15 on Federal News Radio AM 1050 and he appears to have a grasp of the issues affecting feds. Note, too, that among his accomplishment, Issa founded a company called Directed Electronics, which made automotive technology products, and was chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association.

  David Walker’s sudden announcement on Feb. 15 was not, in retrospect, a huge surprise. Walker, an auditor’s auditor, was appointed to the 15-year Comptroller’s job by President Bill Clinton in 1998. In recent years he has tangled with GAO’s professional staff to the point where they joined a union and recently ratified a pay increase that matches what other feds in D.C. are getting but was higher than Walker wanted. Moreover, Walker was restless with his own boss—the U.S. Congress—for its inaction on addressing the actuarial deficits looming for the nation’s entitlement programs. His Fiscal Wake Up Tour and award-winning documentary movie in which he starred, “I.O.U.S.A.” couldn’t quite satisfy his urge to speak out even more strongly. How can you kick your boss, or your 535 bosses, in the proverbial backside?

  The GAO agenda is driven by members of Congress, not really by the Comptroller, so at this writing it remains to be seen what sort of agency overseer the executive branch will end up with.

  But I predict that with his richly funded perch at the new Peter G. Peterson foundation, Walker may yet exert the influence over entitlement policy he is so passionate about. He'll leave GAO in mid-March.
  
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• The Budget News: IT Continues to Rise

  When President Bush proposed his 2009 budget earlier this month, it looked as if he wanted some serious belt-tightening among the discretionary accounts.

  Yet IT spending will be up 3.8 percent, according to analysis from the Office of Management and Budget, to $70.9 billion, up from the $68.3 billion enacted for the current fiscal year. You can see all the Exhibit 53 charts online, but the trend is clear.

  Some big agencies are getting sizeable increases. For example, Commerce’s IT budget will rise from $1.79 billion to $2.26 billion. Housing and Urban Development and State also get large increases. Other will get less—the Navy, for example, will see a slight drop from $7.0 billion to $6.7 billion. DOD IT budgets will be up an average of 2.3 percent, civilian departments up 5.2 percent.

  All departments and independent agencies can expect an increase in IT security spending—again, if this corner of the budget is enacted by Congress as proposed. According to OMB estimates, security will account for more than 10 percent of agency IT spending, or about $7.3 billion in total.

  Only a portion of the budget represents new acquisitions and new initiatives. Input, the market research firm in Reston, Va., finds that money requested for new initiatives is actually down slightly, while money for ongoing operations and maintenance is up by 7 percent.

  The Bush OMB has been concerned with consolidation, shared services, outsourcing and generally getting the most value out of investments already sunk. To see where the specific areas of new spending are found, it’s worth a few hours downloading and reading the various documents at www.budget.gov.

  You won’t be alone—within two days of the budget having been put online, OMB’s associate administrator, Karen Evans, said more than 622,000 people had downloaded it.
  
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• All Cloudy On the Personnel Front

  Change is often difficult, and federal employment has undergone a lot of change lately.

  Of note is pay for performance, an important bud in the Bush administration’s bouquet of management initiatives. The concept of pay for performance is simple, and at first glance its merit is irrefutable. Rather than give everyone the same across-the-board pay increase, use the dollar pool available for raises disproportionately, giving high-performing individuals bigger raises and low-performing people little or no raise.

  While that may be standard in the private sector, it is anathema to many feds. They believe they have a different deal with the federal government, and that that deal is being unceremoniously yanked.

  In two recent instances, federal workers fought back and won on the grounds that pay for performance violated collective bargaining agreements. Earlier this month the Homeland Security Department abandoned plans to implement its pay for performance system after being tied up in the court for several years. And unionized workers at the Defense Department are not part of the National Security Personnel System while the Supreme Court decides whether NSPS violates agreements between DOD and the American Federation of Government Workers. All this while a second wave of more than 100,000 non-union workers were moved into NSPS.

  On the outsourcing of jobs front, in its last year the administration is still trying to do more. Most of the A-76 competitions in recent years have gone the way of the federal workforce. At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for example, a call center operation was de-outsourced last year and returned to government employees.

  Still, within the administration’s budget request for 2009 is a provision to remove health and retirement costs from public-private comparisons, giving the advantage to the private sector. This provision is unlikely to stand with Democrats in Congress, but it shows that when it comes to federal employment issues, never take anything for granted.
  
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