© Copyright Lewis D. Eigen, 2009

Library of Congress Control Number:
2008910019

ISBN-13:
978-1-935034-05-6

368 Pages—151,458 Words
6 inches X 9 inches
1.6 lbs.
First Printing: December 2008

$36.00

The Obama Political Appointee Primer:
How to Do Much Worthwhile, Avoid Failure and Scandal, and Keep Your Self Respect at the Same Time

By Lewis D. Eigen

A BEA Press Publication n BEA Enterprises Inc. n 17 Lake Potomac Court n Potomac, MD 20854
Phone: 301 299-7900 n E-Mail: info@BEA-Enterprises.com
 

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“A marvelous insight into the Federal bureaucratic world and the  appointees who lead the Government’s internal workings and operations but sometimes self-destruct in the unfamiliar setting.  Related in a breezy, dramatic style, saturated with real incidents and fascinating history, it is written by a terrific storyteller who has been there himself and knows and shares the details which affect all our lives that are almost always under the radar of even investigative reporters.  Required reading for anyone recruiting and vetting candidates for the new Obama administration and certainly for anyone notified of appointment or considering such.  A really fun read for the rest of us who learn how Government really works along the way.”
Text Box: Excerpt The GPRA Conundrum Mason O’Bannon was appointed as a Schedule C employee. His father had been a significant contributor, and Miles, who had been a Peace Corps Volunteer before he worked in his father’s business, wanted to work in the Government for a while. Given his business and management experience in his father’s auto dealership, he was assigned as a chief of a small staff that operated a hotline to respond to public inquiries. There was a major contractor who provided the manpower for the hotline, so his responsibly included Government staff and a contract. He had been a little unnerved in his first few meetings with his staff and with the key contract personnel. He really wanted to do a good job, was willing to work 12 hours a day or whatever was required, and wanted to explain to his new colleagues that he was not just the idiot son of a wealthy auto dealer, but was a good manager in his own right. So he went out of his way to talk about his accomplishments in improving the dealership. However, after 3 days he overheard several of his staff in the halls referring to him using the famous Texas Governor Ann Richards in describing George Bush I. “He was born on third base and thinks that he hit a triple.” What Mason didn’t realize is that each of his key subordinates had run much larger operations than a local car dealership. The key contractor officials had managed operations, orders of magnitude more complex, important, and sensitive than the dealership. Mason did not appreciate the scale of Government. A small businessperson running a $5 million a year business can be a very rich person as a result. But in the scale of the U. S. Government, $5 million is a small operation. Recall the great line of the Republican Senate Majority Leader Ev Dirksen: Spend a billion dollars here; a billion dollars there. Sooner or later it adds up to real money. Everett McKinley Dirksen, 1896-1969 U.S. Congressman (Republican, IL) U.S. Senate Minority Leader Quotation #17575, Eigen’s Political & Historical Quotations The reality was that a number of the people in his branch and the key contractor personnel were more experienced and qualified than was Mason. What Mason didn’t realize is that is OK. Everyone understands that. Neither he nor you have to be the most qualified person even if you are running the team. What you do have to do is whatever you can to help your staff. Sometimes that will be just being encouraging, other times, defending their budget from others who want a piece of it. Arguing for additional personnel if they need more, resolving differences among them which are inevitable in any staff larger than one person. You can help to promote their achievements within the agency and the bureaucracy; you can use your political contacts to get reactions to new ideas. The leader does not have to be the smartest, bravest, most creative or most experienced member of the team. Mason’s attempts at promoting his experience certainly did not help him, but it wasn’t a fatal error either. It was a week later when Mason got into serious difficulty with his staff. They were preparing to submit their proposed GPRA goals. GPRA stands for Government Performance and Results Act. GPRA is a result of decades of dealing with the problem of determining which programs are effective and should be expanded and which are not very effective. In the 2008 Presidential Campaign, McCain advocated a “across the board” budget reduction for all agencies except the ones on which he placed very high priority. However he also claimed he wanted to reduce or terminate “waste” and “ineffective” programs (including some weapons systems fiascos. Obama took a more difficult but more sound approach. He was going to examine each and every program—“every line of the budget”—and reduce or terminate the ineffective ones and continue or expand those that were successful. Some opponents jumped all over Obama for hyperbole because there are tens of thousands of budget line items and even more programs in the Federal Government. Barak Obama was not intending to put on a green eyeshade and personally go over each budget line. He was going to see to it that his staff—the new appointees and the civil servants did this in some systematic and rational way. What he knew was that there already is a system in place that makes this somewhat feasible: GPRA: The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. It was developed under Republican and Democratic administrations with the support of Congress. It has been in place for over a decade. Here is a rough summary of the way GPRA operates at the program and program review level. Each program staff must annually come up with objectives for their programs. GPRA goals cannot be general so “Improving the Health of the Nation” would not do. Goals have to specific and MEASURABLE. “Increasing the percentage of adult women over 40 who have annual mammograms” is a proper statement of a GPRA goal. The goals should reflect the purpose of the program as defined by Congress and or the Administration. The goals are first suggested and submitted by the program staff. They are generally reviewed and sometimes modified by the line officials in the cabinet department in which the program is ensconced. Often there is a collaboration and negotiation process. When the line officials in the cabinet department or independent agency sign off on the GPRA goals, they go to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) where they are again reviewed by GPRA specialists. They are either accepted as is or sent back for amendment and change and a negotiation takes place. At the end of the subsequent year, each agency must report on its GPRA performance. Funds, personnel slots and even bonuses can depend on the performance. Mason, on a Friday afternoon, received the draft GPRA goals on which his staff had been working before he even arrived. They were appended to a memo that the staff had prepared for his approval, signature, and transmittal to his superiors. Mason took the files home and worked on them all weekend. He generally agreed that the staff had covered all the bases, but he was a little disappointed that they had limited aspirations. He thought the goals had not been set high enough. For example, one of the proposed goals was to obtain a 60 percent customer satisfaction level as measured by a survey of the public callers who would rate the service as “Satisfactory”, “Good”, or “Excellent” on the 5 point question of the survey. Mason was bothered by the 60 percent criterion. His father would never have tolerated only a 60 percent satisfaction level on a survey of customers at the auto dealership. Even 80 percent would be considered pretty low. He spent the weekend calling his father’s business friends and getting their take on what might be an acceptable customer satisfaction level. No one thought that 60 percent was decent. One, knowing he was now with the Federal Government, jokingly observed, “But I guess that 60 percent is good enough for Government work.” Mason had also read “Reinventing Government” a Al Gore product which President Clinton issued as an Executive Order. It called for Government customer service to be as good as that of the best of the private sector. That was one of the reasons that Mason asked his father to try and get him a Government job. After a good bit of thinking, Mason made his decision. He upped the GPRA goal of 60 percent to 80 percent and transmitted the memo and attachment up the system. He had thought about 90 percent but decided to back off to 80 for this year and up it to 90 the next. He would try and motivate his civil servants to have higher standards and more ambitious goals. Since he arrived on the job, he had not been able to really add any value to the team, but now he made a difference. “You what??” one of Mason’s team asked him. Mason had called them all to a Monday morning meeting and told them that there were underrating themselves and their ability. He shared the fact that he had upped several of the GPRA goals and transmitted them.” “How in God’s name could you do such a stupid thing?” another asked. Mason O’Bannon was a little shocked. He expected he might get some resistance to setting higher goals, but the ferocity of the concern was disarming. He tried to explain himself and shared his thought process and telephone calls. Harry Myers, the senior man on the staff spoke for the group. He stood up from the conference table to emphasize his points. “I, for one. could give you the benefit of the doubt as to your motivation, but you have no idea what you have done. First, you have probably destroyed your own career in the Government. You’ll probably never see a promotion or a better assignment and might get dumped in a year. However, that is your problem, and candidly we don’t worry about you. When you fail here, you can go back to Daddy’s car dealership. However, you have harmed the careers of the four of us also. We may never see a promotion again. We will certainly not get a bonus. If we stay here, we will get unsatisfactory performance ratings and that will be on our records for ever.” “Wait a second! I am responsible for your performance evaluations. What makes you think they will be “unsatisfactory”? “With due respect, you haven’t even ever done one. What are you going to fill in when you are asked whether or not we met the GPRA goals?” “Why be so defeatist? 80 percent is not even that high for customer service. I didn’t set the goal that we have to have 80 percent rate us ‘Excellent’. 80 percent can include the ‘Good’ and even ‘Satisfactory’. That can’t be too hard to reach.” Two of the staff started rolling their eyes. “Mason”, Meyers said. When I leave this meeting, the first thing I am going to do is to send my Form 171 Resume to everyone in the Government that I have ever known. And I will try and find some other job and transfer there so that I am out of here, before we will have failed. I can’t speak for the others, but I suspect they will be doing the same.” Three heads nodded. “That’s nuts. There is no reason we can’t reach 80 percent”, Mason said. “No reason? I wish there were no reason. I wish you would have talked with us before you went off half cocked on your own. I’ll give you the reasons.” He paused and collected his thought and control his frustration. “First, what do you think it was last year?” “I hadn’t thought about that. That was then; this is now.” 80 percent is not that high!” “It was 46 percent.” “Well, that certainly wasn’t very good.” Helen who had been quiet jumped on Mason. “Instead of pontificating about what reality should be, why don’t you at least have the courtesy to ask us why it was only 46 percent.” “That’s a point well taken. I should have asked. Why?” Harry laid it on him. “First, we don’t have enough phone lines. About 30 percent of the callers are on the phone waiting for more than 2 minutes. How do you feel if you call your stock broker and have to wait two minutes….or your physician’s office. How would your car customers feel if they had to wait 2 minutes before they could get anyone to help them?” But that is just an issue of increasing the number of lines. That is an easy problem to solve.” “That’s what I thought over a year ago when our traffic went up and I ordered more lines. But we don’t have them yet, and we have no idea when we will get them.” “So go to another phone company. We don’t have a monopoly anymore. The cable TV companies will even install phone lines.” “Every American has the right to choose his telephone provider except Federal Employees. We not only don’t get to choose, but we can’t order phone lines. The Secretary—a Cabinet member can’t order phone lines. Even he has to go through GSA (General Services Administration). We can’t even talk to them. There are telecommunication specialists who talk to each other and they made us do a study that cost us $7000 to justify the need for a couple of additional $15 a month lines. Now that the study has been accepted, we are in line when they get around to us. But that is one of the reasons for the dissatisfaction. Another is the reliability of the lines we have.” “Don’t tell me the Federal Government hasn’t get good telephone technology.” “Actually it is not the state-of-the-art VOIP lines. But it is certainly technologically capable enough. Giving us poor service is a deliberate decision sometimes.” “How can that be? Who would ever decide to provide poor phone service?” “We’re on the same major telephone trunking system as the Social Security Administration. Whenever something happens and they are a few hours late with the checks or the amounts change for everyone, 50 million people start calling them. Whenever that happens, the people controlling the Federal phone system take capacity from us and others and give it to Social Security. And we don’t think that is the wrong decision; each of us would make that same decision. Millions of people live on those checks; people get hurt if the checks don’t get through. With us, the public just gets pissed off.” Helen added, “About 3 months ago we couldn’t revieve a call for a couple of hours. Unhappy customers. Only 46 percent satisfaction.” Harry kept going. “But ignore the phone problem because that will be fixed, but we might have a few more months of shitty service until they do. Are you aware that for most of the people who call in, we take their names and addresses and send them material?” “Yes, I knew that. The contractor is responsible for the fulfillment. Doesn’t he perform fast enough?” “He can do a little better, and we are working on that, but the thing that kills us is that they have no real control over our inventory. We are, at this very moment, out of stock, of 25 percent of our items. But as you can imagine, those publications represent more than half of the requested titles. We can’t ship half of what is requested from us?” “Well why don’t you manage the inventory better?” “All we—and you by the way—get do is tell Public Affairs what items we are out of and how many we think that they should order?” “I don’t understand. I examined our budget. A large part of it goes to printing.” “It does,” Helen responded. “But we don’t get to spend it. Public affairs buys all printing for the agency. They rip the money off us, and if we are lucky, we get some printing, but God knows when or how much. They really don’t arrange for the printing. The Government Printing Office does; they are terrible and our control is negligible.” Harry continued, “Public Affairs keeps second guessing our quantities. They care very little for what the public wants; they care what they think the public ought to have. Another group works on a new publication. Their GPRA says that they will distribute 100,000. If Public Affairs orders only 25,000, they scream and yell that they cannot possibly make their GPRA goals. So they get their 100,000, but the public doesn’t really want that publication…. As a matter of fact we get dissatisfied customers because the physicians and allied health customers think it is patronizing, and they won’t recommend it. If it was a brand of canned peas, the supermarkets would take it off the shelves. Meanwhile we don’t have what there is huge public demand for. This is one area where the private sector has it right. No publisher in their right mind would print tens of thousands of copies of books that are not in demand and not print the books that people are begging for.” Helen added, “Our contractor has 48,000 copies of a 3 volume set piled up in their warehouse that we pay for.” “And there is no demand for it?” “There is some. About 72 copies a month, and that is because we push it. At this rate, we will be out of inventory in 50 years or so. Meanwhile we are out of stock of what we need.” “Look every business makes mistakes,” Mason said. ‘Surely, people recognize that.” “The fool that made this one 5 years ago happened to be a Presidential Appointment. If we explain the error to Congress, they will want to blame someone, and the opposition party will accuse the administration of wasting taxpayer money. Every member of the President’s party running for reelection will have the fiasco of the waste thrown in his face by the other party. So no one wants people to find out. But it is not a secret either. Sooner or later it will come out, and then at least we can turn the dead inventory into some cash for the Treasury by selling it as scrap paper for recycling.” “OK I know that politics is a body contact sport. But surely if those same Congress members knew that citizens can’t get material they need, they would appropriate enough money for more.” “They always appropriate all the money we need, but they screw up the timing.” Mason looked puzzled and Helen picked up the narrative. “Congress and the President hassle it out over the budget. With their posturing they can never get the budget completed on time. The new Government fiscal year starts in October. But the budget is never passed that early as it is supposed to be.” “I thought that the Congress passes a resolution that allows the Government to operate even without the appropriation.” “Yes, a Continuing Resolution its called. But that only says that the agency can spend a certain percentage of their budget of the previous year, That could be 80 percent, 90 percent, whatever. Even if it were at 100 percent, we still have to absorb the inflation. While not huge, it is significant. So first we have to pay our people, and our rent and overhead expenses. Then we have to pay our contractors and grantees. So the printing gets pushed off until we know what our budget will be--for sure.” “But that could be most of the year,” Mason observed. “Right, and that’s one big reason that we never can have inventory when we need it. Congress and the Executive Branch dally and posture, and then they look at our GPRA scores and castigate our bosses.” “Why not explain that in your GPRA reports. Let Congress know. Let the administration know.” “They know. They’re very sophisticated. Everyone knows except the public. But no agency can really blame the Congress even if it is their fault; just like you can’t blame the President if OMB screws up. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. In the Army they have a saying: ‘Shit flows down hill’.” “I didn’t realize much of this. I just wanted to improve the quality of the operation.” .”As do we, and we have been at it for several years. And now we are going to look like a group of failures, and you are going to be the chief failure.” “I have an idea. Why don’t we just change the survey questionnaire? We could ask the people to assess our performance on everything other than the phone answering or shipping time. Or better still, we ask separate questions for each element of our service, Courtesy, knowledge, empathy and telephone.. Then we show that the telephone response and shipping times are unsatisfactory, but the rest of the operation, the part we could have control over, is very good. We can get 80 percent of these, can’t we?” “That would be easy. We’d probably get more than 90 percent, but we’re not allowed to do that.” “What do you mean, not allowed? I can authorize you and direct you to change the survey form.” “Even if you did, we are not allowed to follow those instructions. The contractor would never do that.” “I don’t understand. The contractor works for us.” “Mason, I know you mean well, but you just don’t understand how the Government operates—I mean the details. Every contractor these days has a clause in his contract that says that he may not spend one cent of public money on a survey unless OMB has approved the survey form and methods in advance.” “The Office of Management and Budget?” This is our program, what do they have to say about it? “There is a Federal law that makes it illegal for any agency to conduct any survey of more than 9 people without getting OMB approval. They have a whole unit that does nothing but review evaluations that involve surveys.” “I never realized that. Why did that law ever get passed? Surely the agencies have their own scientists who know how to design and create surveys.” “It’s required by an Executive Order. The reason however was the consequence of a law passed by Congress called the Paperwork Reduction Act. Some citizens on the left and on the right objected to the Government making them fill out forms and questionnaires. There was always a grey area between required Government forms and others. At the same time, agencies would send forms willy nilly for everything that someone in the bureaucracy thought was a good idea. So the effort at first was to make sure that each survey that would involve citizen time to respond was really necessary. So OMB assumed the role of the survey traffic cop. However, they then went far beyond the original purpose, and OMB took the position that if the citizen

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How the new appointee to the Federal Government can avoid the 6 most common pitfalls that have perplexed all of their predecessors, embarrassed others, and destroyed some.”

 

“The Federal Appointee is the servant of two masters whose demands for loyalty sometimes conflict.  Eigen’s dramatic, example –packed book really improves his or her chances.”

 

“The inside picture of how Federal executives have to function. Must reading for the intelligent citizen and the aspiring appointee.