March 18, 2008
A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.
-
-
-
The Lectern: One More Time -- Can We Keep the Kids?
Federal Computer Week
By Steve Kelman
I am trying to repeat the point that perhaps the biggest human capital challenge for the government will not be recruiting a new generation of
young people to public service (though that will be a challenge enough), but retaining them once we've gotten them.
If we lose the kids, a big reason will be too much bureaucracy in government. This is one reason the bureaucracy-promoting fear industry is a
danger to good government. The people who never met a rule or a control they didn't like drive creative young people (and perhaps older ones as well)
from government.
I wrote on this issue in my "reinvent the wheel" post last week. One of the respondents, who identified himself as "jswhetsell," wrote, among
other things in a very thoughtful response, "[E]very day I find myself considering a decision to leave government because I spend so much of my
energy dealing with rules and bureaucracy."
The comment came from a young contracting professional named Jason Whetsell. Jason started his career right out of undergraduate school, working
at the Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection, and is now a contract specialist at the Office of Personnel Management, (he has
been fortunate to work under John Ely at DHS and his wife Kay Ely at OPM, both great contracting professionals). I originally got to know Jason
because he was one of the young procurement professionals working to introduce innovative reverse auctions for commodity buys at DHS. So I sent Jason
an e-mail and asked if it was okay to write about him and to use his full name, and he said it was.
Jason wrote in his e-mail to me: "The most frustrating thing about my situation is that I feel like I actually excel at procurement, but I find
myself spending at least 80 percent of my time navigating through unnecessary bureaucracy."
I've met Jason several times. Were the government to lose him, it would be an absolute tragedy. He is mission-driven and public-interest driven,
caring about DHS' important responsibilities and focused on getting a good deal for taxpayers. He is articulate and hard-working. He is eager to
learn more about procurement and about how to be a business adviser for agency programs. He is exactly the kind of young person the government should
be looking for as the next generation of public servant.
We cannot afford to lose young people like Jason. Yet everything going on in the procurement system now is sending Jason a message -- leave!
Could some Hill staffers -- even better, their bosses -- invite Jason to lunch to get a feel for the impact of some of their rule/control-mania on
Jason and on the procurement system?
I would particularly like to get thoughts on these issues from young feds and/or young people who could consider becoming feds, whether in
procurement or other areas.
Jason, I'll keep fighting for you. I hope others will too.
Harvard Law, Hoping Students Will Consider Public Service, Offers Tuition Break
New York Times
By Jonathan D. Glater
Concerned by the low numbers of law students choosing careers in public service, Harvard Law School plans to waive tuition for third-year students
who pledge to spend five years working either for nonprofit organizations or the government.
The program, to be announced Tuesday, would save students more than $40,000 in tuition and follows by scant months the announcement of a sharp
increase in financial aid to Harvard's undergraduates. The law school, which already has a loan forgiveness program for students choosing public
service, said it knew of no other law school offering such a tuition incentive.
"We know that debt is a big issue," said Elena Kagan, dean of the law school. "We have tried to address that over the years with a very generous
loan forgiveness program, but we started to think that we could do better."
For years, prosecutors, public defenders and lawyers in traditionally low-paying areas of the law have argued that financial
pressures were pushing graduates toward corporate law and away from the kind of careers that they would pursue in the absence of tens of thousands of
dollars in student loans.
"The debt loads that people are coming out of law schools with are now in six figures," said Joshua Marquis, the district
attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. "When the debt load is that great, I have had a
lot of applicants who’ve said, 'I’d like to take the job, but I really can’t afford it.' "
Perhaps worse, Mr. Marquis said, some indebted young lawyers who choose to try to survive on a low salary as a junior prosecutor may decide to
leave to earn more just as they gain enough experience to handle more important cases. For that reason, he added, Harvard’s program sounded
like a "great idea."
Harvard’s third-year-free program is expected to cost the law school an average of $3 million annually over the next five years, Ms. Kagan
said, but that number is just an estimate because it is unclear how many students will take advantage of the offer. The law school’s share of
the university’s endowment of $34.9 billion is more than $1.7 billion.
From 2003 to 2006, as many as 67 and as few as 54 of the 550 students graduating from Harvard Law went to work for a nonprofit organization or the
government. That translates to 9.8 to 12.1 percent of the graduating class. A vast majority of students have chosen to join law firms, where they can
earn well over $100,000 a year immediately after getting their degree.
"This is an interesting move," Larry Kramer, dean of the law school at Stanford, said of the Harvard initiative. Compared with other loan
repayment assistance programs, Mr. Kramer said, "It’s unclear whether it is more generous."
It may be, he said, that loan forgiveness over a longer period of time may encourage more students to go into public service and stay there. He
added that it would take time to see how students reacted to the program.
Brandon Weiss, 26, a third-year student at Harvard Law who plans to join a public-interest law firm after he graduates, said he thought the
tuition waiver program might sway students concerned about their debt to consider more career possibilities.
"Some students come in and know that public interest is what they want to do," said Mr. Weiss, who will not benefit from the program himself
because it does not begin until next fall. "There are probably other students that know they want to go to a big law firm. This program will help
those students who are in between."
Michelle J. Anderson, dean of the law school of the City University of New York, said the waiver of tuition sounded like an ambitious experiment.
"Harvard Law School is an extremely expensive, elite law school," Ms. Anderson said, adding that tuition at CUNY Law was less than $9,000 a year.
For Harvard, she added, reducing the price "is a different way of trying to attract students" interested in public-interest jobs.
Harvard law students who want to participate in the program will have to demonstrate their commitment to public interest while in law school,
through participation in clinical programs working with real clients or other activities and projects.
Students who are currently enrolled will get a partial benefit, with those who will be third-year students next year getting a $5,000 grant toward
tuition if they commit to public interest, and second-year students, $10,000.
Students who clerk for a judge after they graduate will be able to count that year toward their five-year commitment. Graduates will still be able
to take advantage of the existing loan-repayment assistance program.
Lawmakers have also begun paying more attention to the ways in which student debt deters graduates from going into public-interest careers.
Legislation passed in the fall by Congress provides student loan forgiveness for public servants, like public defenders, librarians, teachers,
firefighters and nurses, after 10 years of service.
A problem could arise for Harvard’s program if a student took the free year of tuition but then, at some point before the five years were
up, decided to leave public-interest or government work to make more money. Ms. Kagan said the school would be ready for that because it already had
to track graduates’ income under its existing loan forgiveness program, which provides assistance with loan payments to students in
public-interest jobs.
If a student tried to switch to a high-paying job on the sly, Ms. Kagan said, "then we’re going to ask for the money
back."
Telework Pace Picks Up at National Science Foundation
Government
Executive
By Alyssa Rosenberg
The telework program at the National Science Foundation is winning support from managers, and participation among employees is on the rise,
according to a report released last week by the Telework Exchange.
"We haven't taken a hard-sell approach; it's like, 'Try it, you'll like it,'" said Sue Whitney, labor relations officer and telework coordinator
at the agency. "We let people ease into it, and I think letting people start out as a situational or ad hoc teleworker lets them get comfortable with
the technology."
The Telework Exchange surveyed 1,200 NSF employees, and found that 51 percent of them work remotely, 32 percent on a regular basis. Fifty-five
percent telework one to five times a month; 19 percent, six to 10 days; 15 percent, 11 to 15 days; and 11 percent, more than 15 days.
All NSF employees are eligible to telework, though the program is voluntary, Whitney said. The director and deputy director also have telework
programs on file as part of the agency's continuity of operations plan and to set a model for employees.
Not only is telework spreading among rank-and file employees, but managers are working remotely in large numbers as well, the survey found.
Sixty-seven percent of managers who oversee teleworkers work remotely, and 84 percent of managers overall view telework positively for its
flexibility.
Perhaps most significant, 87 percent of managers who oversee teleworkers said productivity remained the same or improved when employees worked
remotely. Sixty-six percent of managers said it was not difficult for them to evaluate teleworkers' performance.
Whitney said providing managers with information and the option to telework helped win their respect for the program early on. "When we instituted
the policy, I went out and did a lot of briefings, and I still do briefings at staff meetings," she said. "I think one of the biggest pluses is that
our policy is very open and we opened it up to managers right from the start."
Whitney also noted that the American Federation of Government Employees local that represents NSF workers supported the rollout of the telework
program, and that collaboration built trust between the union and the agency.
"Telework was one of the first areas we tackled when I became the labor relations officer, and I think it did establish that we could be
successful, and trust each other, and work together," she said. "The union encourages [telework] at their monthly meetings or their one-on-one
meetings with employees. We can talk to managers or employees who have concerns."
Whitney said that while NSF is small and most of its employees are familiar and comfortable with the technology that makes telework possible,
other agencies can still learn from its experiences in rolling out its program.
"We haven't mandated it, we haven't said everyone has to do 10 percent of their workers," she said. "But it's spreading across the agency because
it works, and it improves productivity and it improves people's lives."
