The new president, coming into office Jan. 20, 2009, will face what the current head of the Office of Personnel Management has called a “retirement tsunami." According to many experts, 60 percent of the federal government’s rank and file workforce and 90 percent of its top managers will be eligible to retire in the next decade. OPM projections show that nearly 61,000 full-time permanent federal employees will retire in fiscal 2008 and that the number of retirements will peak between 2008 and 2010 – just as an incoming president seeks to launch her or his new administration.
Over the next five years, the federal government will lose more than 550,000 employees. But the market for recruits has never been more competitive and government employees are locked in a fierce contest with the private sector.
For government procurement, a wave of retirements could be especially critical. Contracting officers oversee about $400 billion a year in spending and there are concerns that not enough mid-career professionals will be left to replace retirees because of budget and staff cuts in the 1990s that thinned those ranks. In fact, while the federal acquisition workforce remains largely flat – increasing about 3 percent since fiscal 1999 – federal contracting dollars more than doubled during that same period!
Because of efforts to downsize the federal workforce without similarly reducing its functions, the government has also come to rely more and more on the private sector. The problems is especially telling in areas such as intelligence (for staffing surges after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks), defense (to maintain operations because personnel have been pulled away on military duty), and information technology (as the demand for complex technology has soared).
As a result of all of the above, the number of contract workers has grown to 7.5 million, four times bigger than the federal civilian workforce. The risk of this approach, in the words of my friend Warren Suss, a Pennsylvania-base IT consultant, is that government could wind up "outsourcing its brain."
Some would say that day is already upon us. Staff shortages in the acquisition and program/project management fields have already been pointed to by the Government Accountability Office and various inspectors general as the cause of cost overruns, schedule delays and project failures and shortcomings at the departments of Homeland Security, Defense and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among others.
Any one of these would be a major challenge for an incoming administration. But their convergence creates a “perfect management storm” – to paraphrase the well-known movie and book – for the incoming president. Never before has government management mattered more. Just look at the partial list of 21st century challenges prepared by the GAO.
Never before then have we needed new and big ideas on government management. Never before have we needed strong managers and leaders in government. And never before have we been so bereft of both. Or so argues University of Pennsylvania professor Donald Kettl in a recent article in the journal, The Public Manager, part of a forum on “PMA 44” – the need for a “management agenda” for the incoming 44th president of the United States, who will take office a year from now . Kettl claims that "for the first time in more than a generation, no obvious 'big idea' resides at the executive branch’s core." So, no PPBS, no MBO, no ZBB, no Reform ’88, no NPR or ReGo, no PMA. So, no three- or four-letter acronym for reforming and improving government. Perhaps this gap won’t be mourned by government workers, who have their own acronym for many such initiatives – BOHICA, or the more polite version, WOHICA (Watch Out, Here It Comes Again).
I happen to disagree with Kettl, as I did in the aforementioned forum. But what do you think? Are we lacking "new and big ideas" on government management? If not, what are they? If so, why? Let me know your views. And I will soon share mine.
COMMENTS
Concur with the above article, not to mention a lot of the senior experienced Federal civil service workers on FERS are fed up with the loss of benefits they once had and how they are being treated by their commands because of the poor economy. This will force a good percentage of those more experienced to retire early and work for a contractor until they are eligible for social security. The junior people will not have the experience level and knowledge of those folks and costly mistakes will occur.
One example is government engineers are different then private sector engineers. Government engineers are usually experienced in several engineering specialties, various science fields, project management, and procurement that took a decade to achieve the knowledge and experience after being hired to the point they make little to know mistakes. For example, I am an educated and experienced electrical engineer (Power Systems), electronics engineer, metrologist, oceanographer, project manager, and procurement as both a technical representative and a contract officer for purchases up to $100K. Mistakes in any of the above areas could cost in the millions of dollars in my case. Due to downsizing it is difficult for most commands to transition such work such as mine to more than one person and lately even to one person. Junior personnel tend to work with several lead engineers to gain various experience, but rarely with one particular engineer to learn all of the above specialties to become efficient as someone with all my knowledge and experience. Training and Transition costs are all most none existent today because of the economy and trimmed down workforce.
Bill 03/20/08 12:18 pm ET
Here's an idea especially for Defense: Limit the veteran's preference points to getting the first federal civilian job for which the vet qualifies. The veteran's preference should be a one-time-only silver bullet, and once in the civil service door, the vet competes for future jobs based on education and training just like everyone else. Defense is so intent on hiring "the brightest and the best" that they fail to see that the best don't sign on because they understand that they cannot compete against vets who continuously invoke the same preferential treatment.
The management team in Defense is loaded with former enlisted and junior officers who immediately step into GS-13 positions once out of uniform. This sets up a ceiling that those with no prior military experience cannot breach, blocking advancement, and causing stagnation. If you step back and look at it, this is an across the board EEO violation since most of the civil servants caught in the "no prior military experience" game are women.
Engineer 03/20/08 12:01 am ET
The new administration and the legilative branch need to recognize that a factor in the good government they seek is in valuing and respecting the contributions of the careerists. They are there to do the day to day work of goverment, accomplish the mission/delivery of their programs in context of the leadership/guidance of the Administration. The careerist in turn must respect and value the role of the appointee in the Executive Branch. They are there to lead/guid delivery or elimination of programs in the context of the Administration's initiatives, policies.
People who work for government join the ranks because they believe in good government and/or have a passion for an agency mission. We collectively need to regenerate that enthusiasm/dedication that put a man on the moon, deliver feeding programs to many of the needy, who work to deliver fresh, safe food, who put their lives at risk to protect us in a variety of ways each and every day from drugs to safety on the streets.
If we do that, more people with the right skills, subject matter knowledge will become government employees.
NextGov Reader 03/19/08 02:01 pm ET
Alan:
While the task ahead will indeed challenge careerists and the newcomers (the next administration), as well as the industry at large, I anticipate that ingenuity and innovation will once again prevail.
I recall many innovations that have come, matured and been replaced over the last 35+ years. Each administration faced challenges appropriate for their time. And for the most part solutions were found.
Ultimately, bright people, the thought leaders, emerged with notions that caught the attention of the federal employees, the program managers and industry stakeholders. Groups, such as AFCEA and IAC brought capable people, ideas and technology into play. True partnerships evolve through trial and error, and the work gets done.
While the work is never complete, and the execution of policies brought about by changes in the Executive office and new laws from the Legislature still challenge us all, leaders will emerge and new acronyms will abound. It will be glorious :-)
Denny Smith 03/19/08 12:41 pm ET
I hope our various federal bureaucracies are developing a solid transition program and are not one deep in any important positions. Of course, my personal experience says this won't happen, in which case we're all in for a bumpy ride over the next decade.
Phil 03/19/08 12:20 pm ET
I have been in federal service for 30 years, the past 20 in IT management positions and currently hold the PMP certification. I have watched, with growing concern, the decline of younger federal employees that are even willing to go into management. We don't necessarily need any big "new" ideas, instead we need to act on some of the old "new" ideas, most importantly overhauling the federal hiring systems. In the past five years I have had over 10 hiring actions as a manager. Each and every one took 8 months, from start to finish. During one set of interviews, two of the applicants stated they had forgotten they had applied for the job! In other cases, the hiring process has been severely hampered by the "Rule of 3" preventing well qualified individuals from being selected over far less qualified individuals that would require extensive training at GS-12 and above positions. And finally, federal agency budgets are being overrun by staff expenses and annual cost of living raises that congress requires agencies to take out of existing budgets. This means that in many agencies they have lost 2.5% to 4% of their budget every year. Budget managers then place prohibitions on hiring due to the increasing overhead costs and we end up continuing to shuffle internal people around to fill positions - robbing Peter to pay Paul in most cases.
One of those retiring managers 03/19/08 10:41 am ET
The problem isn't that so many managers are retiring. It's that more of the bad managers didn't leave sooner by one means or another. It's the legacy of a bloated, wasteful federal government that the bureaucrats are leaving behind for someone else to fix because they got their rewards with little concern about the mess they made doing so.
So, while the managers and Execs have their nice retirement packages to live on, someone else will have to bite the bullet. Reform has been and still is disparately needed. Business as usual is starting to wear real thin on the taxpayers and, one way or another, the government will have to downsize. What "qualified" individuals want to take on this mess?
Robert M. 03/18/08 07:11 pm ET
Not to worry. The current plunge in TSP valuations will keep many workers in place well beyond their projected retirement dates as they wait for their TSPs to rebound. ;>)
John Douglas 03/18/08 09:47 am ET