Look what Tammy Flanagan and Bob Leins of the National Institute of Transition Planning have for us.  It’s very interesting news about retirement planning, new laws affecting retirement benefits, strategies, and more.

Here’s their article.

This Monday (6/21/06), a front-page article by Christopher Lee in The Washington Post uncovered what appears to be new, tighter provisions to reclassify previously unclassified information.

What material should be classified and kept from our enemies – and from ourselves in the process?

That’s the nettlesome matter that leaders and government employees working in the classification business must address everyday.

Mr. Lee’s article reports that shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, then Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered agencies to be more circumspect when determining what information should be in the public realm.

This, of course, was understandable.  We had just been horribly violated.  Plus, we learned shortly thereafter of the enormous volume and scope of material available on the Internet, which terrorists could easily access and use it to harm us again.

Clearly, we had to find a way to protect critical information – and ourselves – while maintaining a free and open society which Americans not only covet but view as a virtual God-given hallmark of our polity.

Soon, however, we realized that being free and open presented us with a difficult, if not impossible, challenge.  How can a society be free and open, yet sufficiently guarded in its information sharing with citizens and voters?

It’s philosophically, practically, and actually incompatible to pronounce ourselves a free society yet dramatically restrict the type and volume of information available to the public.  In any well-oiled democracy, people must understand and evaluate important information related to the commonweal so that they may thoughtfully and meaningfully elect – select - politicians who will pursue known and sensible priorities.  Without this, we may as well buy a pig in a poke.

What prompted this article was the revelation that our government now wishes to classify the number of missiles that were in our Cold War stockpiles, which, interestingly, had been out in the public press for years, and was even shared with the Soviet Union during strategic arms limitation talks.  Why now must such information be classified when all inquiring minds need do is “Google” the information?  Does this apparent new approach signal mean-spirited obstacles for taxpayers, or indicate that there are new enemies who would not know how to retrieve information that’s already been cast out into the water years ago? 

If this report is true, the move most certainly is a case of closing the barn door after the cows have exited. In the intelligence world, sometimes it is wise to ignore, or downplay, any inadvertent release of sensitive or classified information, lest you tip off the enemy that this slip-up represented something important.  However, that wouldn’t seem to be operative in this situation.  After all, what’s done is long done.

What all this suggests is the neverending shifting of priorities, wishes, desires, preferences, and maybe even power-tripping thrills for those exerting influence to effect a course of action simply because they, the leaders, can do so.

It’s not clear from whom this decision came, if a specific, conscious decision was even made as opposed to merely being presumed or divined by the troops.  It’s hard to imagine that the President or anyone in the White House would concern him- or herself with this sort of matter given the exigencies of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Mid-Term elections, and the like. 

Yet somehow someone is sensing a reemphasis on asserting maximum information security.  It’ll be interesting to learn more, and get the “real” story behind this rather strange development.

Do any of our readers have an answer for this?  What do you know that Understanding Government readers need to know?

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor

Imagine getting 99 hits out of 100 at bats.  Or correctly spelling 99 of 100 previously unknown polysyllabic words.  How about writing 100 memos and getting 99 of them through your management chain without any changes?

Not bad, eh?  Excellent, but a 99.5% accuracy rate in some large federal programs isn’t good enough, or if even that rate is really good, the "relatively" small number errors still impact hypernumerous taxpayers, not of whom will care at the moment that almost everyone else was served accurately.

I used to work at the IRS.  If our tax return processing error rate was only one percent (not bad, eh?), unfortunately, over 1,000,000 citizens (!) would be affected negatively, and they wouldn’t be happy.  It was the IRS, after all. 

Looks like our Medicare Program friends at SSA discovered a very small error percentagewise, which touched over 200,000 beneficiaries.  And in this case, Medicare mistakened sent refunds to all these folks, who will soon be getting bills to return their new-found booty. 

Read the details in Christopher Lee’s article in the Washington Post

from August 24, 2006.  Do you have any similar tales which you’d like to share with the world, or at least "Forum" readers, who don’t quite yet (never say never) cover the entire planet?

Take a look at this.  Karen Rutzick gives us another great article, this time about the interesting dynamics that could result in impending pay-for-performance evaluation systems in business – and government!

Read her article from Government Executive for August 17, 2006  and tells us where you fit into the scheme. 

Brian Hartsell, a young Air Force employee, tells a fascinating tale in Government Executive about “fast bucks,” outsourcing, and more. 

How does his assessment square with yours?

So much for pay comparability.  Federal workers are on top of the heap, compensated twice as much as their private sector colleagues. 

That’s what Karen Rutzick’s article on GovExec.com claims.  Chris Edwards’ report repeats the theme. 

Per the U.S. Commerce Department, the average fed’s overall compensation is twice that of the average private sector bloke.

Check out the article, the “average” six-figure compensation for federal workers, and then let’s talk.  [Do you notice any holes in these analyses, any apples-and-pomegranates comparisons?]

We’d love to hear what you’ve got to say.

As soon as President Bush OKs recent Senate action approving Paul Denett to serve as head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, he will be charged with the enormous task of setting policy and procedures to ensure that all federal procurements are advertised, let, and reviewed properly. 

Whew!  That’ll keep someone up at night.

Seriously, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, located within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB; that’s within the Executive Office of the President) has the critical, although non-glamorous, chore of setting internal rules and procedures to ensure that we taxpayers are getting the goods and services for which government agencies contract out.

In light of all the news about waste in managing contracts for Hurricane Katrina relief, homeland security, the war in Iraq, etc., Mr. Denett’s job is probably one of the most important, highest priorities facing Executive Branch operations today.

Here’s the govexec.com article reporting on Mr. Denett’s background and confirmation.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0806/080406m1.htm

Fred Apelquist

Our readers will be interested to learn that Congress is working to strengthen legal protections for federal whistle blowers based on recent court rulings.  Unfortunately, specifics are absent from Stephen Barr’s article today about the nature of these enhancements.  I’ve invited Senator Akaka’s (D-HI) office to describe the changes contained in an amendment, which he proposed to the FY 2007 Defense Authorization bill.

The second item in Stephen’s article is notification from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner, Mark Everson, that IRS will begin using outside contractors to collect delinquent taxes as soon as late this month or early next.  Colleen Kelly, head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), understandably objects, and believes that only fed employees should perform such work.  In the past, objections have been raised, which this site has reported, that outsourcing the collection of federal taxes is not as economical as doing it with government staff.  The 21 to 24 cents per dollar paid to contractors contrasts unfavorably to the 3-cent expense for IRS Officers retrieving revenue.  I’m also following up on these claims, as the higher cost per dollar going to private debt collectors may be due to that fact that these are lower-dollar yield cases anyway which the IRS, given its current staffing, would be unable to pursue as aggressively or effectively in the first place.  Again, I’ve asked IRS and NTEU to explain this cost difference and put it into an accurate perspective so our readers can determine whether this issue centers on philosophy (role of contractors in government work) or economy (cost of services rendered) — or both.

See Stephen Barr’s article on this subject.

Studying executive branch operations may not seem all that stimulating, but it could be a matter of life and death.

Karen DeYoung’s article the Washington Post (9 August 2006) describes the bureaucratic (read: human!) challenges to be overcome in order to identify, coordinate, and execute an effective fight against terrorist threats to this country.

Trying to avoid a persistent personal trait to (over)simplify as a means to bring clarity to an issue, I’m struck nevertheless by the quintessential significance of communications in any human endeavor, especially with this massive bureaucratic task of gathering 16 intelligence agencies into some sort of consistent cosmic universe where we interact and analyze so precisely and effectively that our enemies don’t stand a chance to penetrate our protections.  Well, maybe that time will come, but it’s not here yet.

Several points in this article are quite telling; however, the one that resonated most with me was the discussion of separating the collection and analysis of intelligence information.  Is this a sensible way of doing business?  In my experience in the federal bureaucracy, the answer is both yes and no.  As always, it boils down to timing and politics.  This, as with other philosophical matters like centralization v. decentralization, depends environmental circumstances largely out of anyone’s control. 

I’m reminded about a “planning” office I was asked to run a quarter century ago.  The theory, which sounded good at the time, was front-line people didn’t have the time to sit and stargaze into the future.  They had to keep the trains running. Someone else should be given the job of assessing the current state and developing and providing needed resources for a desirable future state.  In practice, however, conflicts arose almost immediately because operational folks, due to these time constraints, couldn’t (or wouldn’t) provide needed data to me and my staff so that we could craft meaningful, realistic, and positive plans for future operations.  Of course, in the absence of such quality input, my staff, required by the bureaucracy to produce products and meet due dates, did its best to craft plans that the operational folks never really bought into or accepted.

So, how much of the problem in the Intel Community is due to an insufficient amount of time for employees to adequately both collect and analyze intelligence information?  I’d like to hear from our readers.  I think it’s a fair bet that because of 9/11, where we didn’t connect dots, the country now wants and needs “dot connectors,” and what better way to ensure an effective end result than by assigning people this one specific task without diluting it with other competing priorities?  Ah, but what was behind this?  Again, our friends politics and timing, as mentioned above.  It is now as it always shall be.  Yet, our executive branches must be diligent and continue to fight the negative aspects of human dynamics (selfishness, desire for personal praise and recognition, etc.) so that citizens receive better government goods and services.

Other key points were that the new structure seems to not only be adding layers of bureaucracy and possibly clogging effective coordination and communication, but also presenting more confusion, not less.  Regardless of how you may view this, whether you’re inside the Intel community or not, it’s clear that the same human dynamics that underlie any organization’s ability to successfully achieve mission is just as prominently present in this life and death area as it is in getting one’s supervisor to sign-off on a memorandum about ordering office supplies.  Unfortunately, the stakes facing us now are far more important than most of the usual daily bureaucratic tasks that are often frustrated by the bureaucracy itself.

This is certainly good and high theater, interesting to observe.  Whether the results will be just as positive remains to be seen.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor

Anyone who has worked in government knows about the training conundrum.  It’s allegedly the most important part of enhancing employee performance and retention, but it’s also the first budget line cut when funds get tight.

How can training be both so important and dispensable?  How can the whole program be so paradoxical in practice?

With millions of government training program beneficiaries, there are probably a million answers to that question.

My answer is that training is not always as relevant to the employee’s current or imminent work responsibility.  Some training, of course, must be excluded from this discussion.  Basic entry-level training of new employees, for example, is needed to teach relevant federal rules and regulations so these employees can apply or explain them to citizens during their prescribed work.  But other courses, such as management, communication, organizational change, and certain specific computer applications courses, often fail to materialize tangible results.

One reason is that the organizational culture will overwhelm and prevent any breakthrough ideas emanating from classes like management philosophy, organizational change, etc.  If your manager does not buy-in to the latest management approach or writing style, etc., then you will be unable to exploit whatever benefit you believe you gained through training.  Second, courses dealing with new computer capabilities will be rendered ineffective if employees are unable to apply this new knowledge (like PowerPoint, Project Management software, Excel, etc.) immediately and consistently to perform their jobs.

Julie Sturgeon’s analysis in Government Executive (July 31, 2006) outlines how few resources are even earmarked for employee training.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor