March 27, 2008
A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.
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Secret's Out: They Want Strong Intelligence Chiefs
The Washington Post
By Stephen Barr
By and large, the 100,000 employees in the U.S. intelligence community have the
same workplace concerns as the rest of the government.
Only 28 percent think their bosses take steps to deal with colleagues who slack off at
work, and less than half -- 47 percent -- are satisfied with the policies and practices of their senior leaders, according to an employee survey
released this week by the director of national intelligence.
On average, the keepers of the nation's secrets rate their leaders more favorably than employees across the government. But employees in
intelligence jobs, like other white-collar federal workers, want stronger leadership in their agencies.
The survey found that 45 percent of respondents in the intelligence community agreed with the statement that their leaders "generate high levels
of motivation and commitment." In comparison, 38 percent of federal employees in a government-wide survey agreed.
It is difficult to parse survey results, in large part because many respondents choose "neutral" or "don't know." On the statement about their
leaders inspiring and motivating employees, 29 percent were neutral and 25 percent disagreed, or were negative, with the rest in the don't know
category.
Still, it is "clearly an improvement area," said Ronald P. Sanders, who heads up personnel policy for the director of national intelligence.
The intelligence community, as it is called inside the government, is a mix of civilian and military personnel, housed in 16 agencies. The summary
did not provide agency-by-agency comparisons.
The survey, conducted from October to January, does not seem to show any widespread morale problems in the intelligence
community, which had been caught up in controversy over how best to evaluate threats posed by Iraq and Iran.
More than 80 percent of the employees surveyed said they like their work, believe their work is important and enjoy the support of supervisors
when balancing work and family issues.
Still, less than half of the intelligence employees, 41 percent, think promotions are based on merit. Twenty-four percent
disagreed, and 36 percent had no opinion. Only 28 percent think pay raises are linked to job performance, while 33 percent said they were not, with
the rest undecided.
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, has called for intelligence employees to be evaluated against common
standards for how well they analyze problems, share information and stand behind their professional judgments. The new performance standards are to
take effect no later than Oct. 1.
McConnell also wants to break down barriers between the intelligence agencies and to broaden the experience and knowledge of intelligence
officers. One effort involves "joint duty" under which employees seek assignments in other intelligence agencies in order to qualify for promotions
into the top ranks.
In the survey, 34 percent of the intelligence employees indicated that it was easy to share information and collaborate with colleagues in other
agencies, 14 percent said it was difficult, and 52 percent were neutral or didn't know.
Thirty percent said they share information often, 50 percent said not often at all and the remainder were neutral.
"The senior leadership looked at these results as a glass half full," Sanders said.
But, he added, more intelligence employees understand that their agencies will succeed only if they share knowledge and
collaborate with others in the intelligence community. That awareness increased by 9 percentage points, to 84 percent, from 2001 to 2006, he said.
Agencies Increase Hiring at Top General Schedule Pay Grades
Federal Times
By Stephen Losey
More of the government’s new hires are coming in at the highest General Schedule pay grades, a
new report from the Merit Systems Protection Board shows.
And the fact that the government is attracting highly skilled, experienced employees bodes well for future recruiting to replace retiring senior
employees, MSPB said in its March 25 report, "In Search of Highly
Skilled Workers: A Study on the Hiring of Upper Level Employees From Outside the Federal Government."
The government hired more than 12,000 new employees in fiscal 2005 to fill jobs that ranged from GS-12 to GS-15, MSPB found. That compares with
more than 8,600 new upper-level employees hired in fiscal 1990, the report said.
Many new hires were attracted to the federal government’s public service mission, flexibilities such as teleworking opportunities, and
strong benefits package, MSPB said. The report drew its conclusions from surveys of 1,815 new upper-level employees who were hired in fiscal 2005 and
their supervisors.
"Government service has strengths that agencies can capitalize [on] to compete for highly skilled workers," MSPB chairman Neil McPhie said in a
statement.
Most of the upper-level hires were needed to help with homeland security issues, national defense, or to use technology to provide services to the
public, MSPB said. They were most frequently hired to be information technology managers.
The Defense Department alone hired 47 percent of the new
upper-level employees in fiscal 2005, the report said. Six other agencies — the Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services,
Agriculture and Treasury departments and the Social Security Administration — accounted for another 33 percent of the new upper-level hires
that year, MSPB said.
HHS Secretary Keeps it Real on Blog
The National
Journal
By Marilyn Werber Serafini
Got something to say to Mike Leavitt, secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, but
can't get an appointment? Try his blog, at
secretarysblog.hhs.gov.
Last August, Leavitt became the first Cabinet member to hit the blogosphere, although others have followed suit. Leavitt's self-written blog is
chatty and reflective, in comparison with the more formal (and mostly staff-written) one for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
"I'm sitting at my desk with a bowl of soup for lunch. I have 30 minutes and I'm thinking this might be a good time to respond to a few comments
you have sent," Leavitt wrote on January 30. While slurping his soup, he responded to postings about bird flu in Latin America, health care reform,
import safety, and electronic medical records as a means of lowering Medicare spending.
Leavitt doesn't shy away from critics, such as one who wrote on January 22: "Instead of talking about 'safe' topics such as India or Guatemala,
why don't you address meaningful topics to the American people, such as what efforts you and the administration are undertaking to fix our health
care system?"
Leavitt defended the overseas entries, and the trips themselves, saying they directly affect the health of Americans. "Most of my time in India
was focused on products Americans consume," he said. However, he added, "I should also confess that I use this blog as a way to keep track of what I
learn on these trips as a journal of sorts."
Leavitt does some of his blogging on overseas flights. On airplanes between destinations in China and India, he kept readers up to speed about his
progress on import safety negotiations with government officials. The blog entries often offer personal impressions of the people and places he's
visited, and what he's learned from the experience.
On January 7, Leavitt wrote about a cardiologist he met in Chennai, India, who had trained in the United States. "He returned to India to set up
private hospitals. His company, Apollo Hospitals Group, now has 46 hospitals. I want to write more about this later, because one of their hospitals'
trademark characteristics is, they make their results public and post their prices. They have results that rival the best U.S. hospitals, and their
costs are a fraction of U.S. prices."
