Transition Can Be Slow Going for Political Appointees

By Joe Davidson
Friday, November 21, 2008

Jennifer L. Dorn, who has had four presidential appointments, remembers her first days in a new agency this way: "It's like being on a first date. How close do I dance with my partner?"

When she became head of the Federal Transit Administration in 2001, the Senior Executive Service staffers assigned to brief her were at first cautious, too cautious. "They were risk adverse," she said. "They were very careful about what they revealed."

Lauren Peduzzi was on other side of that dance, but she remembers it the same way. She was a career staffer with the National Transportation Safety Board assigned to work with the incoming vice chairman.

"There's a lot of playing it safe until you figure out what the political appointee wants," Peduzzi said over lunch with Dorn earlier this week.

But playing it safe can hinder communication, slow the transition and even sow distrust between the civil servants and politicos who must work as a team. Those issues were explored at a National Academy of Public Administration conference yesterday. Dorn now is president of the Academy and Peduzzi handles its media. The opening session looked at the dance they described, but with facts and figures. Some of the data were encouraging, but not all of it.

The stats were in companion studies. One covered the views of presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate; the other gave senior executives' responses.

Particularly unsettling is that 20 percent of the senior executives agreed with the statement: "I have no knowledge of transition activities in this agency."

"That's deplorable," said Kristine M. Marcy, a charter member of the Senior Executive Service who is now a consultant with McConnell International.

Marcy, who presented the report, formerly was chief operating officer at the Small Business Administration, in addition to positions at various other agencies. Her disappointment was echoed by Gail T. Lovelace, a conference panelist who also is the presidential transition director at the General Services Administration: "That was appalling to me."

High-level civil servants have a responsibility to know about the presidential transition, said Lovelace, who has been working on it all year. If they don't, they can't guide their staffs.

"There's no excuse" for the ignorance of her colleagues, Lovelace, herself a senior executive, said after the panel. "Go to Change.gov," the transition Web site, she urged them.

The survey was done in September and October. "It would be my hope that now that the election is over," she added, "that the senior executive in the federal government is paying attention."

There also was a troubling finding in the survey among presidential appointees in the Bush administration. Almost four-fifths of the respondents said they were either unsatisfied with their orientation when they took office or had none at all.

G. Edward DeSeve, a University of Pennsylvania professor who presented the presidential appointee findings, found that one very significant. "Orientation should be done continually and in many ways," he said. He added that a formal process should be developed to bring career civil servants more fully into the appointees' orientation.

Rating Federal Employees' Performance

Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, says the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama presents "a new opportunity" to change the attitude President Reagan expressed when he said "government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem."

Stier uses a Gallup Poll he plans to release on Monday to make his point. It indicates strong support for the government's job in providing air travel security and protecting the nation from military and terrorist threats.

But at the same time, only 37 percent rated the performance of federal officials and employees as good or excellent. More than half, 52 percent, said it is fair or poor.

There's a lot of opportunity for improvement there.

Diplomatic Double and Triple Duty

The American Academy of Diplomacy held a forum at American University on Wednesday evening to discuss its recent report, "A Foreign Affairs Budget of the Future." That document says Obama needs to increase the State Department's diplomatic corps by 50 percent.

Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi E. Frazer gave an example of the understaffing when she met with members of the Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, last week. The shortages are so bad that diplomats in some embassies are doing double and triple duty. "I have some posts where you have officers who are serving as the political counselor, the economic counselor and the DCM [deputy chief of mission]," she said.

Resolving Impasses

In yesterday's column I said that an obscure federal office, the Federal Service Impasses Panel, resolves complaints of unfair labor practices. Actually that's the job of its parent body, the Federal Labor Relations Agency. The panel resolves impasses between agencies and federal employee unions.

Contact Joe Davidson at federaldiary@washpost.com.