- Sun. Sep 7, 2008
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Who Has the Greenest Light of All?
The Office of Management and Budget says that federal departments and agencies are showing significant improvement in implementing its President's Management Agenda. And which agency is recording the most progress? The Office of Management and Budget.
The Bush administration last week released its quarterly scorecard on management issues, and the grades were among the highest since the stoplight-style evaluation system was introduced six years ago. Nearly half of the agencies' status scores were green, the highest grade possible. The news was even better for OMB, which credited itself with progress in four of five categories: competitive sourcing, financial performance, e-government, and performance improvement. Only "human capital" remained static.
Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management, said that the grades reflect progress since 2002, when "the performance of federal programs was assessed only on an as-needed, inconsistent basis."
--Robert Brodsky/Government Executive
Networx Finally Lands a Big One
Verizon and AT&T got good news this week when they won a telecommunications contract worth as much as $1 billion from the Homeland Security Department. It's also a positive development for the General Services Administration, which manages the government-wide Networx program that DHS chose to use.
The DHS contract award, first reported on May 13 by Government Executive's NextGov.com, will consolidate seven legacy networks to establish an intranet for sensitive but unclassified information.
Networx, designed to allow one-stop shopping for government agencies that need telecommunications services, has experienced some false starts since it was launched in 2005 and has yet to earn the confidence of federal agencies, said Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president for the McLean, Va., consulting firm FedSources.
"This reaffirms that Networx is a viable vehicle for buying these kinds of services," Bjorklund said. "Agencies should be using it, and maybe this will give it some traction."
--Jill R. Aitoro/Government Executive
Roll Out the Welcome Wagon
Too many federal departments and agencies do little to integrate new employees into office culture and practices, and they could increase employee retention by as much as 25 percent by improving orientation programs, the Partnership for Public Service and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton say.
Their report concludes that most agencies view orientation as simply a time to fill out human-resources paperwork rather than as an opportunity to lay out performance expectations and make employees feel welcome. "They may not be getting any mission information," Leslie Ann Pearson, a senior associate at Booz Allen, said of new hires. "One employee said he was sworn in in a hallway without an American flag. It's not inspiring. We had one employee who showed up for work and their manager didn't know they were coming."
The report offers a comprehensive strategy for improving orientation that boils down to a relatively simple message: If managers get involved earlier, employees are more likely to stick around--and more likely to perform. Some agencies cited in the report as examples go further than that.
Joyce Cofield, director of recruitment, diversity, and retention in the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said that the OCC woos candidates seriously, sends them gift baskets when they accept jobs, and then repeatedly impresses the office's values on them.
"Orientation is where we seal the deal," she said. "We spend a full week with our college recruits, and we do all those pieces of reinforcing the OCC culture."
--Alyssa Rosenberg/Government Executive