Rebuilding federal agencies - Democratic Underground

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Mon Mar-23-09 08:13 PM
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Rebuilding federal agencies

The Next FEMA
Barack Obama must begin rebuilding federal agencies fast—or risk seeing his entire agenda undermined.
By John D. Donahue and Max Stier

Every two years the federal government conducts a "Human Capital Survey" of its own employees. Nearly a quarter of a million civil servants participate, providing anonymous, detailed, and often quite revealing answers to questions about their own agencies: What’s the level of morale and teamwork? Do their skills match their missions? Do they have the resources to get the job done? How able and trustworthy are their leaders? Are high-performing employees promoted, and the lazy and incompetent shown the door?

When the answers to these questions are processed and released by the Office of Personnel Management they fuel some watercooler banter, and that’s usually about it. Administration officials mostly ignore the results. Congress, which mandated the survey, pays little attention; the press, virtually none. The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service (headed by one of the authors of this article) uses the data, with some statistical refinements, to prepare a more detailed and accessible set of agency rankings dubbed "Best Places to Work in the Federal Government." But even this version is mostly inside baseball, discussed largely by civil servants themselves. To the average American, and even to most public policy mavens, what bureaucrats think about their bureaucracies is the very definition of dull.

Yet there’s a reason why top private-sector companies conduct similar surveys of their employees: such data can provide precious insight into an organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and an early-warning sensor for trouble ahead. Had anybody bothered to look at the results of the 2002 federal survey (released in 2003), they would have found that the cabinet agency ranked dead last was the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Inside a dusty control room, buried deep in the federal government’s bureaucratic machinery, this warning light was blinking furiously. Few people noticed—until, of course, Hurricane Katrina hit two years later, and FEMA’s feebleness was inside baseball no more.

Today, across our federal government, other warning lights are flashing. And if the president-elect and his team are wise, they will pay attention, because some of the most dysfunctional agencies happen to have jurisdiction over some of the most urgent challenges the new president is likely to face. Consider:

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--Washington Monthly

The article shows where a few departments/agencies ranked in the "Human Capital Survey" (out of 222):
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services which oversee Medicare and Medicaid ranked 186th

the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees federally chartered savings and loans (like WaMu) ranked 192nd

the FAA ranked 204th

the Defense Contract Management Agency that is charged with oversight of about 18,000 private companies providing billions of dollars’ worth of goods and services to the military ranked 206th

the Defense Nuclear Detection Office, that is supposed to prevent terrorists from smuggling nuclear materials into our country ranked 208th

INS's replacement, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ranked 213rd

FEMA ranked 211th

But, the article is more than just a list of rankings, there is a whole lot more.

Check it out