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Two federal agencies seemed to burn brightest in their roles dealing with Hurricane Katrina: the Coast Guard and the National Weather Service. Leading up to landfall, the weather service gave accurate warnings that helped convince a majority of Gulf Coast residents to evacuate, thereby saving thousands of lives. The Coast Guard rescued thousands more, who chose to stay behind and found themselves trapped by floodwaters.

It is thus no surprise to learn that they are two of the best-managed agencies in the federal government. In the Federal Performance Project, which Government Executive participated in from 1999 to 2004, the Coast Guard and the National Weather Service received top ratings in managing for results, and human capital, financial, physical assets and information technology management. They have been similarly lauded by various outside groups.

The two agencies share traits that help explain their success. Both have clear missions that inspire workers to do their best. Generally, employees love what they do. Both have cultures that emphasize professionalism. They provide top-notch technical training and emphasize leadership development for managers. They push responsibility down the ranks so that local Coast Guard officers and on-the-spot NWS meteorologists have the authority to act quickly. Both do their best within budget constraints to give employees the best tools available for their jobs, whether it be information technology, facilities or, in the case of the Coast Guard, ships and aircraft.

But perhaps the most important trait is a commitment to continuous improvement. In today's buzzwords, they could be called learning organizations. They are constantly reviewing operations to determine how to do a better job. They recognize there is room for improvement, and they try to do so, using objective measures of performance. "Our willingness to change operationally, organizationally and technologically are fundamental to our success," Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thomas Collins said in his state of the Coast Guard speech in March.

Walt Zaleski, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Southern Region headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, compared the service's continuous improvement efforts to those of the auto industry. While the automobile basically has been four tires and a steering wheel for a century, every year automakers refine their vehicles with upgrades requested by customers and identified by engineers.

Similarly, Zaleski said, NWS reviews its performance during hurricanes to identify potential improvements in forecasting (such as more narrowly predicting the location of landfall and affected areas) and in public communications (such as how warnings are worded). "It is an ongoing improvement process that the Weather Service really takes seriously," Zaleski says.

Instilling such processes in agencies is easier said than done, since political leaders' short tenures mean that they are constantly touting successes and minimizing problems. They are not as interested in learning as they are in protecting the short-term interests of their regimes.

A sign of a potentially dysfunctional organization is a totally sunshine-filled, everything-is-hunky-dory assessment of operations by the agency's leader. By admitting they're not perfect, as the Coast Guard and the Weather Service have done, organizations are far more likely to become the best.

COMMENTS

• This past September, I received an assignment to provide weather support for Hurricane Rita at the FEMA Joint Field Operations in Baton Rouge. While on this assignment, I had the privilege to work the long days sitting next to Coast Guard personnel. Some were reservists and others on active duty. Every one of these folks had a great attitude and work ethic. Like Brian stated in the article, very professional and dedicated to their jobs. I was impressed. William Adams Posted November 8, 2005 8:46 PM
• Three cheers for SSA! Three more! Rain or shine All the time, They lead the way, SSA! GovExec.com reader Posted November 8, 2005 6:58 PM
• I agree that both the Coast Guard (CS) and the National Weather Service (NWS) performed admirably during Katrina, and that much of this was due to what the article termed their "learning organization" ethos. The implied, but unstated, thought that could have begun this article was "Unlike FEMA,..." One theme of the article is the value of realistic performance assessment against organizational expectations. I think it should be noted that CS and NWS carried out the missions they were trained and prepared to perform, although in the case of CS it was the same mission, ten-fold. (By the way, it took a number of days for CS to pluck thousands of people off roof-tops. I didn't hear anyone suggesting poor planning on the part of CS for not having enough choppers and personnel on hand to get this job done quicker.) Due to the incompetence of local and state first responders, FEMA was thrust into the fray as what might be termed a "first responder of last resort," a role different from FEMA's stated mission and authority. This created a double-whammy: a poorly-run agency asked to operate beyond the parameters of its mission. In fairness, these two only-somewhat-overlapping problems need to be addressed separately. EJC in ATL GovExec.com reader Posted October 26, 2005 6:57 AM