Get that sleep you needed over the weekend?  Feeling good because your team is still in the NCAAs?  Maybe spring is coming to your corner of the world?  Well, if you need something to curb your enthusiasm, take a closer look at the March 6 raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security on a New Bedford, MA factory producing backpacks and vests for the U.S. military.  The raid resulted in arrests of 361 illegal immigrants, many of whom were taken to jail as far away as Texas.  The raid offers a dizzying array of screwups from which to choose, if your mood today is up to it.  And they all relate to the question of good government.  A few salient points:

-         the company, Michael Bianco, Inc., recently received a $138 million contract from the Department of Defense, so it is part of the American war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan;

-         The illegal workers at the plant somehow escaped the notice of the Pentagon inspector located at the factory and responsible for monitoring performance of the military’s contract for Bianco Inc.’s products;

-         New Bedford has the highest unemployment of any large city in Massachusetts at nearly 10%;

-         New Bedford natives and legal immigrants rushed to fill the 361 low-paying jobs previously held by illegals, but few of them will be hired because they lack professional stitching skills needed by the plant.

So, there are plenty of Americans willing to work these jobs, if they only had the training.   The factory, which clearly had these illegal employees for quite some time, will be hard pressed to produce the modular backpacks needed by our troops overseas.  And New Bedford will have fewer gainfully-employed people as a result.  Possibly the plant itself will have to close. 

Who even wants to try to navigate this maze of mistakes and illegality?  At Understanding Government, we know that skilled journalists, by following up, can inform the public and get government to follow through.  Jack Spillane, reporter for the Standard-Times of New Bedford, shows in a recent article where real people stand on the raid, illegal immigration, and jobs.  He writes that while people are against illegal immigration, they’re not blindly angry at the illegal immigrants.  Mostly, these Americans want work at any wage, and they are ready to be trained.  In spite of their own problems, they manage to look at this issue in rational and humane ways.   Why can’t our government?  See Spillane’s article here.

What’s the difference between a leader and a manager?

For purposes of the Department of the Defense’s mission and activities, one will urge you to “take that hill” while the other will require you to “meet program goals within budget.”

Of course, that’s a crude oversimplification, especially since the study referenced in an article by Brittany Ballenstadt (govexec.com) fails to define the two executive types other than to acknowledge one deals with fighting more than figuring. 

Managers, i.e., non-service “leaders,” deal with fighting, too, as in bureaucratic turf and other battles, but these usually happen without the presence of armaments.

Seriously, please read Brittany’s article and the four-page Policy Brief by two researchers at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs.  Then, share your reactions.

Relatively dated employee surveys (2002 & 2004; the most recent 2006 evaluation was not included) are not my idea of the most valuable insight into analyzing and understanding the difference in nature and effectiveness of leaders and managers in military v. non-military enterprises.  However, within the Department of Defense, due to its commitment of frequent rotation of its military “leaders” into non-service executive positions which require a greater management skill and orientation, there is a lesson to be learned about proper deployment of its highest-level employees.

Several things concern me about this study, and I consider them fairly serious shortcomings:

Ø      Findings are stratified by length of employee tenure.  In general, the longer one serves in a given office, the more positive will be that employee’s assessment of the office, its management, desirability as a place to work, etc.   This doesn’t strike me as particularly noteworthy or significant, as I believe it is reasonable to expect the more-tenured employees would be prone to greater contentment/comfort within their organizations and positions otherwise they would have moved or been moved by management to other jobs before they lasted there for three or four years.

Ø      Lack of comparable quantitative performance data between military and non-service Defense agencies required use of the softer, less analytically and interpretatively valuable qualitative measures of an employee survey.  Granted, it would be very difficult to construct performance metrics that would make possible comparable evaluation of an Army unit capturing an Iraqi outpost at a cost of “x” casualties and “y” lost or damaged tanks and humvees with managing a multi-billion dollar program to procure thousands of tanks and humvees.  Yet, if this cannot be done, what’s the point?  What is learned without a clear, congruent insight into interdependent military and non-service activities within the Defense Department to ensure that they achieve their overarching mission and goal of preserving national security?

Ø      Employee surveys are always heavily influenced by the personality and temperament of the incumbent executive at the time of the survey.  As a result, researcher ability is marginalized to extend conclusions across agencies, as there can be no reasonable expectation at survey time that the mixture of executive personalities and abilities across organizational lines was roughly comparable.

Notwithstanding the above qualifications, I feel that the real “significant” finding is that employees rated retired military personnel with higher education (advanced degrees) and private management credentials up to 10 percentage points better than other leaders and managers.

As mentioned at the end of the Policy Brief, this finding could be very helpful when considering “…the primary mission of an agency and who is needed to lead that agency.”

What’d’ya think?

Does your organization need a leader or a manager?   Does it need both?  Can any person turn from role of leader into manager at will and exactly at the proper moment?  Do we need more leaders today or more managers?

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor

It’s nice to know that our public servants at the Department of Justice and White House are regular folks like you and me.  Even when they’re busy targeting U.S. attorneys who should be “pushed out” because they haven’t “exhibited loyalty to the President and the Attorney General” they can still observe the niceties of standard office e-mails, complete with “things have been crazy around here!” excuses for late replies, and regular mentions of the boss reviewing decisions he would review in any case — to make sure everyone knows that this work is important.  The only difference is that these pleasantries are being exchanged on the public’s time and the public’s dime.  And then there’s the question of how truly “political” political appointees in law enforcement should be. 

It probably sounds quaint, but I want our government to care more about its citizens.  Government employees should show that they care about their responsibilities and be humane in carrying them out.  Returning to America after time overseas, I see a harder attitude and what often seems like a casual approach in the way government employees interact with citizens.  We could attribute it to the war in Iraq, to the rise of income inequality in America, or to the fact that it’s getting hotter all the time.  All of these things affect government employees; after all, they’re people like the rest of us.  But whatever the source of this uncaring behavior, the truth is that people need to take care of each other if we’re going to survive, not to mention prosper.  So: why do I read almost every day in the newspaper about government employees treating citizens in ways that can only be called inhumane?  Why does the evening news so often bring us another example of government making life more difficult for our fellow citizens, or stepping away from the real actions needed to fix a problem?  Here are a few examples:

-         FEMA employees kick out residents of a Louisiana trailer park, giving them 48 hours to get out of the trailers where they have been living and raising families.  Could they have found a better way to solve this problem? It sure doesn’t look like they were putting people first.  Read the Washington Post story here to learn more. 

-         A young man in Maryland who dies from tooth decay that spreads to his brain, causing an infection that kills him.  He didn’t get dental care because (1) there are very few dentists who accept Medicaid; (2) the ones who do have to fill out a mountain of paperwork; and (3) his life was out of whack because his mother was temporarily homeless and he lost his Medicaid status.  Congress has responded to this tragedy, Maryland elected officials have responded, dentists have made proposals, the public is up in arms.  Where is the creative and timely response from the relevant government agencies on the federal and state levels that should change the policy so that Deamonte Driver’s death can at least save someone else’s life?  Couldn’t we find a way to keep people on Medicaid once they’re on it?  If I’ve missed something here, please tell me.  The story that started it all, complete with haunting Washington Post photographs of the young man who is no longer with us, is right here.

-         More Medicaid.  A measure directed at stopping illegal aliens from getting Medicaid has instead resulted in “tens of thousands of U.S. citizens” losing health care because they couldn’t provide proper documentation.  The story, from the New York Times, can be found by clicking here.  Did someone stop to think about this problem before it happened?  If someone had received care before and was on the rolls, how about grandfathering those people in (whether illegal or not) – so they could receive urgent medical care – and then require them to provide documentation over time?

At Understanding Government, we are not afraid to make mistakes if we make a difference.  We’re ready to stand corrected.  We help government by helping journalists cover the work the government does.  Any government employee, any citizen who sees things differently can give it right back to us if we’ve misunderstood or missed something salient.  After all, our organization is trying to help government do a better job.  Yes, we’re going to point out problems.  We’re going to shine the light on mistakes.  But we’re proud of our country and the many things our government does well, and we’ll be bringing attention to government innovations, to creative employees, to people who go the extra mile for their fellow citizens — making America a better place to live.  We know you’re out there.  But in the meantime, who out there cares enough to do things differently?

I touched on the concept of ‘civilian soldiers’ a couple weeks ago when I mentioned the possible tiff between Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates over lack of State Department employee support of and participation in Iraqi reconstruction efforts.

Now, another article addresses the need for a new national Peace Corps of sorts, but this time one geared more for serious and large-scale infrastructure building, agricultural production, and the like.

Interestingly, this story paints the State Department in an entirely different light from earlier accounts that suggested a reluctance on the part of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to contribute support personnel to the reconstruction effort. 

Apparently, when Colin Powell was Secretary, he decided to form a 200-person response team under the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization.  This group would be comprised half of State Department staff and half from other government agencies.  After two years, this cadre would evolve into reservists, and another 200-man component would be constituted.

However, as is often the case, the money didn’t follow and fuel the momentum for movement.  Inertia ensued.  What the State Department projected as required funds ($350 million) for the government team and a 3,000-person state and local government and private sector contingent was pared down 98% to a paltry $7 million.

Enter Congress.  Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and 2008-presidential-hopeful Joseph Biden (D-Del.) introduced a bill to create the Response Readiness Corps with the mission to respond to international crises immediately.

Enter politics.  Some Republicans didn’t think the White House truly supported this vehicle, and wouldn’t vote for it.  Some Democrats thought that this ‘mop up crew’ would further embolden President Bush and Vice President Cheney to pillage from pillar to post with impunity knowing that other Americans would spring forth to rescue debilitated countries and salvage America’s reputation in the process.

What happened to the vision? 

It was there as early as the Fall of 2003 when now-maligned (in some circles) former Iraq Reconstruction Chief, Paul Bremer, cried out for help from Cabinet members to send overseas their Executive Branch employees to help out. Senators Lugar and Biden followed a few months later with their legislative proposal.

This entire episode epitomizes how, in yet another way, this country was inadequately prepared to execute President Bush’s controversial foreign policy doctrine of preemptory action against enemies or threats to our national security.

We’ve learned that our intelligence apparatus wasn’t up to the task of satisfactorily culling out enemies’ identities, intentions, or capabilities.  Now, we’re learning that we haven’t properly thought through a vision of how to walk with countries against which we take military action.

This lack of vision – the absence of the truly big picture understanding of war and its aftermath – may ultimately be judged as our single biggest shortcoming in the prosecution of the Iraqi War.

One thing is obvious.  History will have much to consider in the coming decades as it analyzes our motivations and effectiveness in Iraq and the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor