March 2, 2009

A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.

1. Analysis: Hard-Earned Cabinet Wisdom
   
2. Federal Player - Orlando Illi: Unraveling a Web of Medical Records, One Veteran at a Time
3. Stimulus Has Funds for GAO to Beef Up Staff
4. 2009 Spending: So Many Billions, So Little Time
5. Service to America Medals Nominations Deadline Approaching
   

Analysis: Hard-Earned Cabinet Wisdom

Special to the Washington Post
By Dan Glickman

With the nation facing unprecedented economic challenges, reality is likely accelerating a rite of passage familiar to virtually every former Cabinet member, that moment when unanticipated circumstances beg the timeless question posed by Robert Redford in the 1972 film classic The Candidate: 'What do we do now?'

At a time when all Americans, regardless of politics, should want to see the Obama administration succeed, let me offer some practical lessons of experience to his newly formed Cabinet, gleaned from past successes and ample helpings of humble pie while serving as Agriculture Secretary during the Clinton administration.

One of the biggest early shocks to the system for a new Cabinet member comes with the full realization of the sheer scale of the organization you now run. You'll inherit an existing workforce, whose average tenure is 17 years, and try to lead them with a team of political appointees, who typically stick around for about 24 months.

You might also notice that the job you have isn't exactly the one you thought you signed up for. At Commerce, in addition to stoking the business prospects of private enterprise, you may at times find yourself elbow-deep in fish. Who knew the department oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency? At Agriculture, you may think you're in charge of food safety, only to learn that you share this role with 13 other agencies. If it's tainted hamburgers, you're on deck. But peanut butter's another story -- one belonging to the Food & Drug Administration.

A few additional tips:

Listen to your elders: As a cabinet member, few can truly understand the complex challenges you face. Open the lines of communications to your predecessors. Regardless of party affiliation, each has something unique to offer, even if you don't always take their advice.

Respect the 'lifers': Build immediate bridges to career staff. Identify your home-grown stars and turn to them routinely for counsel. They may not always see eye-to-eye with your political advisors, but a genuine back-and-forth can help avoid some painful 'see I told you so's.'

 

To read the entire article, click here.

 

Federal Player - Orlando Illi: Unraveling a Web of Medical Records, One Veteran at a Time

The Washington Post

Orlando Illi has been a man on a mission, a very personal mission to change the way the military handles medical records.

Three decades ago, Illi was thrown from a vehicle during an Army training accident, hospitalized for a month and left with permanent back injuries. Many years later the medical file detailing his injury could not be found when he applied for veterans' disability benefits, causing him great difficulty proving his claim.

Now a civilian manager working for the Army at Fort Detrick in Maryland, Illi is playing a pivotal role bringing electronic medical records to the battlefield -- a task that is helping improve the care of wounded soldiers and ensuring that injured veterans will not have to fight our government for the benefits they deserve.

"When I leave here at night, I know that somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq that if somebody is injured or in combat and wounded, that data is being captured and that guy will know forever what happened to him," said Illi. "That's what keeps me going. That is the bottom line."

Illi, deputy product manager with the Army's Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Team, or MC4, has been a steady and persistent hand for almost 10 years in helping oversee the worldwide deployment, expansion and improvement of the military's electronic medical records system that today is used in 14 countries.

While President Obama has made electronic medical records one of the hallmarks of the recently--approved economic stimulus package, Illi and his team have been ahead of the curve. The Army's MC4 unit has already trained more than 33,000 personnel, fielded 28,000 laptops, servers and handheld devices used to collect 9.6 million medical encounters.

The system has made a real difference.

When a soldier is injured in Iraq, doctors and nurses in the field hospitals use MC4's system to immediately create a permanent electronic record of the patient's condition, treatment and medications -- digital records that follow the soldier to larger military hospitals in Iraq, Germany or the United States. This allows doctors to have the complete medical history at their fingertips, and to make quick and often critical life-saving decisions.

To read the entire article, click here.

 

Stimulus Has Funds for GAO to Beef Up Staff

USA Today
By Matt Kelley

For three years, the investigative arm of Congress has seen its staff dwindle in size. Now, the agency is getting a $25 million infusion of cash from the stimulus bill signed by President Obama last month to hire investigators, auditors and others to track hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending to jump-start the economy.

The stimulus bill contains $330.5 million for oversight and offers the president his first opportunity to put into practice his campaign pledge to demand greater accountability of federal spending. It provides $25 million for the Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan congressional agency; $84 million to create an accountability board within the administration and $221.5 million to the inspectors general who serve as department watchdogs.

The GAO will use the money to hire about 100 accountants, lawyers, economists and policy analysts to root out and prevent waste and fraud by the federal, state and local agencies spending the money, GAO spokesman Chuck Young says. "The GAO has been at a record low in terms of our personnel for several years, so we certainly have the room to add people," Young says.

The idea was not only to give investigators the resources needed to oversee such a large amount of money but also to "remove the ability of people to rationalize their failure," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

"They're not going to be able to hang their hat on the excuse of not having enough resources to look at this spending," said McCaskill, a former state auditor.

Will all of this prevent misuse of the money?

"While I'm sure that everybody will do their best, there's no question there will be waste," said David Walker, a former head of the GAO who is president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a non-partisan group that promotes federal fiscal responsibility. "The only question is, how much waste will there be?"

Walker said he's encouraged by the focus on oversight but concerned that there may not be clear goals for what the spending is supposed to produce or guidelines for how the money is to be distributed and spent. "If you don't have those rules in place, by merely having more people look at what's happened after the fact, all you're going to do is identify problems too late," Walker said.

To read the entire article, click here.

2009 Spending: So Many Billions, So Little Time

Federal Times
By Rebecca Neal

Two weeks ago, federal agencies were handed a stimulus package of $787 billion to dole out in the form of loans, grants, contracts, hiring and program expansions.
Last week, the House added on another $410 billion in 2009 appropriations to spend before Oct. 1.

The omnibus bill was passed last week by the House, and the Senate is expected to take it up for a vote shortly.

Those vast sums challenge agency managers to spend billions of dollars more than usual. The sums more than double the typical budgets for the Education, Energy and Commerce departments and increase General Services Administration spending more than 1,000 percent.

Is the understaffed and notoriously slow-moving federal workforce up to the challenge?

Managers will be scrambling, experts predict.

"I've heard of one [inspector general] who's canceled all planned regular investigations and reports to focus on the recovery package spending," said Robert Shea, an Office of Management and Budget associate director during the Bush administration.

Some oversight of regular appropriations spending may be neglected, he said, but the stimulus spending is more dire.

"The recovery activities are a much greater risk because they have fewer spending controls than appropriations bills," said Shea, now director, global public sector, at Grant Thornton.

Contract and grant managers may struggle to administer all the competitive contracts required in the stimulus while juggling regular appropriations contracts.

"It may require Agency A, which has no stimulus money, loaning some contract officers to Agency B, which has a massive amount of stimulus money," said John Kamensky, senior fellow for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

To read the entire article, click here. 

Service to America Medals Nominations Deadline Approaching

The Partnership for Public Service

Do you know extraordinary federal employees who are doing remarkable work on behalf of our country? There is one week remaining to help them receive the recognition they deserve and a chance to win up to $10,000 by nominating them for the 2009 Service to America Medals (Sammies).

With your help, the Sammies put a compelling face on government service and seek to inspire a new generation of Americans to serve.

The awards include cash prizes from $3,000 to $10,000 in eight categories.

Nominations must be submitted online at http://www.servicetoamericamedals.org by March 9, 2009.

Also, click here to sign up for the Service to America Medals Webinar: "How to Write a Winning Sammies Nomination."

March 3, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. (EST)

During the webinar we will share:   

• What we look for when choosing Sammies finalists;   
• Top five tips for writing a winning nomination; and   
• Samples of past winning nominations.
  

Thank you to our sponsor: FedChoice Federal Credit Union.

For more information, please send an e-mail to sammies@ourpublicservice.org or call Jim Seymour at 202-775-9111.

The summaries of news items appearing in the Pipeline are selected to provide subscribers with a full range of that day's important news about issues affecting our federal government workforce and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Partnership for Public Service.