Government Executive - Authors - Denise Kersten Wills

Defensive Line

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Chasing the evolution of influenza has kept Centers for Disease Control and Prevention virologist Nancy Cox on the run for 31 years.

Nancy Cox wants to stop playing defense. As a virologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1975, she has spent her entire career chasing a nimble and stealthy opponent that has always been at least one step ahead: the rapidly mutating influenza virus.

Not that Cox is complaining. The fast pace of influenza's evolution, the hefty toll it takes each year, and the constant potential for a global pandemic were reasons why she chose to study the virus in the first place. "I find the organism fascinating because of its ability to change and replicate in multiple different forms," she says. "I haven't gotten tired of influenza because there's always something new."

Cox first battled the virus as a 9-year-old in Iowa in 1957, when the Asian flu pandemic killed millions. She beat the bug, and went on to study it at Cambridge University. During a fellowship at CDC, she saw firsthand the complex interplay between science and public policy when the United States confronted outbreaks of swine flu and Legionnaire's disease and had to decide whether to provide vaccinations. Instead of returning to academia as she had planned, she chose to stay at CDC. "I could get up every morning and know that what I was doing was important," she says.

Now, as head of CDC's influenza division, Cox has assembled a team of cutting-edge scientists whose aim is to take the offensive. "We're always chasing the evolution of the virus, and what we'd really like to do is get ahead of the curve," she says. By using genetic data and patterns of evolution, they hope to be able to anticipate influenza's next move-predicting which strains are likely to outsmart antibodies and which could defy vaccines.

One group of viruses is of particular interest. Called H5N1, it lives mainly in birds. Since 2003, though, H5N1 viruses have attacked more than 200 people in 10 countries. If they were to mutate into a form that could pass easily from human to human, the effect would be devastating. "Obviously, we're very, very concerned," says Jacqueline Katz, chief of the immunology and pathogenesis branch under Cox. "We all believe it is a potential pandemic threat."

Cox, who also directs the World Health Organization collaborating center for influenza, has been preparing for that possibility on multiple fronts. She and her group have been monitoring the avian viruses circulating in Asia. They have developed a nasal swab test for diagnosing human and avian influenza infections and identified potential vaccines for H5N1. They re-created the virus that killed 40 million people in 1918 to study what made it so dangerous and combined H5N1 with a highly contagious human strain in a secure lab to better understand its potential.

Cox "is widely known as a giant international authority in the field," says Keiji Fukuda, acting coordinator of WHO's Global Influenza Program. "There is no one today who has her combined breadth and depth of knowledge about influenza." That's why she's frequently called on to consult with foreign governments. This past year, for example, she was the lone American on an international team of experts that traveled to China, where there were suspected cases of avian influenza. The team reviewed the data and the safety precautions the Chinese had put in place. "It was very gratifying to see the enormous progress they had made and the fact that they were able to very carefully and accurately diagnose these cases of bird flu," says Cox, who has been working with the Chinese authorities since the late 1980s.

But while avian flu makes headlines, it's only one part of her job; seasonal influenza kills thousands of Americans each year. Cox helps update the vaccines twice a year, and her innovations in this area have saved countless lives. And despite the fact that Cox works on high-level health policy and management issues, "she's still very much in touch with the science that goes on," Katz says. "She always sheds light on an issue other people may not consider."

Cox's greatest accomplishment, according to both Katz and Fukuda, has been building the CDC influenza team, which Fukuda calls "the strongest combined laboratory and epidemiology influenza program in the world." That achievement helped pave the way for the decision earlier this year to elevate the influenza group from a branch to a division. "My goal," says Cox, "is that when I retire, they will carry on and not miss a beat."

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More Than a Clock Watcher

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

A Nobel Prize winner in physics, William D. Phillips has done more than just improve the accuracy of clocks-he's an ambassador for public service.

For a world-renowned scientist, William D. Phillips is surprisingly easy to talk to. In 1997, he became the first government employee to receive the Nobel Prize in physics (which he shared with two other scientists) for research conducted in pursuit of an agency mission-namely, using lasers to cool atoms and improve the accuracy of clocks-at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Ask Phillips, who leads NIST's laser cooling and trapping group, to explain his work (How, for example, do lasers cool atoms? And what do chilled atoms have to do with clocks?), and he cheerfully launches into an explanation that starts, quite literally, at the most basic level. "Everything is made of atoms and molecules," he says in a patient tone that implies there are no stupid questions, and that nothing could be more important to him than helping you understand. "The temperature of anything is related to how fast those atoms and molecules are moving."

The velocity of atoms is important in measuring time because the international definition of a second is based on the frequency of cesium atoms, which at normal temperatures bounce around at approximately the speed of sound, making them difficult to observe and measure.

In the late 1970s, Phillips set out to slow atoms down. How and why he did so is a much more complicated story involving Einstein's theory of relativity, lasers tuned to a frequency that creates an "optical molasses," a fountain that sprays atoms, and many years of hard work. Suffice to say that Phillips and his collaborators managed to slow cesium atoms from the speed of sound to the comparatively glacial pace of less than one centi- meter per second. The temperature? Within one-millionth of a degree of absolute zero-about 100 times colder than anyone had predicted-or, as Phillips says, "more than a million times colder than outer space."

His work transcends the realm of time measurement, opening new ways to study the interaction between radiation and matter. And one emerging application, called quantum computing, could prove invaluable for national security. "What he has done is to introduce a whole new field of physics," says Katharine B. Gebbie, director of NIST's physics laboratory. Gebbie received the Service to America Medal for Career Achievement in 2002.

But that's not why she nominated Phillips for the Career Achievement Medal. Since receiving the Nobel Prize, he has made it his mission to give as many public talks as possible-not just before elite scientific societies and promising graduate students, but also at elementary schools, senior centers, churches, science fairs and Girl Scout gatherings. "I just don't see how in good conscience you can refuse to do that," Phillips says. His willingness to accept invitations to speak has required nearly constant travel. "It has changed his whole life," Gebbie says. "He is an ambassador not only for science and physics, but also for government."

Receiving the Nobel Prize was "an almost unimaginable honor," says Phillips, who spent much of his childhood experimenting with household chemicals and putting anything and everything under a microscope his parents gave him. He felt that the award came with a responsibility. "People will come to listen to you simply because they want to hear a Nobel laureate," he says. "As scientists, it's very important for us to try to interpret science to the general public and to convey to young people how exciting science is."

Indeed, Phillips-who was a member of his high school debate team-can pack a room even in bad weather. "His audiences are always excited," says Gebbie, who has observed many of his talks. "He has the ability to make people feel they understand." And the fact that Phillips performed his groundbreaking work at NIST flies in the face of a common academic prejudice-that curiosity-driven research is more interesting than practical research. "All of his research has been in support of the NIST mission," Gebbie says.

"I get a chance to be an example of what public servants do," Phillips says. "We watch the clock-to make it better." So how accurate are the clocks that make use of Phillips' research? They're off by less than one second every 60 million years. As Phillips says: "That's what we call close enough for government work."

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Legal Eagle

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Heading up the legal office at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Christina Sanford helped craft a plan for replacing Iraq's interim government.

When Christina Sanford turned 30 in August 2004, she celebrated the milestone by going out with friends and colleagues. The gathering was far from your typical birthday party, though. Sanford had arrived in Baghdad a month earlier to head the U.S. Embassy's legal office in Iraq, and she toasted her new decade at the Green Zone's finest establishment, the famous Al-Rashid Hotel.

Sanford's position normally would have been filled by someone with much more experience. But not many people were jumping at the chance to spend time in Iraq, and Sanford had earned the respect of her superiors early on at the State Department. She started her career there on Sept. 10, 2001. When terrorists attacked New York and Washington the next day, she threw herself into helping facilitate evacuations of embassies in countries where Americans might be in danger. "Immediately, I felt like I was working on something important," she says. Her efforts didn't go unnoticed; Sanford was asked to serve as special assistant to the department's chief legal adviser.

In Baghdad, Ambassador James Jeffrey, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq policy, was prepared to intervene if Sanford got in over her head. Instead, she exceeded everyone's expectations-taking a lead role in Iraq's transition from an appointed government to an elected one, and in securing property for a new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. "I know of nobody who, in such a junior position, did so extraordinarily well at the highest levels of the U.S. government," Jeffrey says.

Sanford's "shining moment," says Jeffrey, occurred after the Iraqi elections in January 2005, when she helped craft a plan for replacing the interim government. She reviewed other countries' constitutions and parliamentary systems, then worked with Iraq's deputy prime minister to develop several options-including a rolling transition, in which elected officials would gradually replace the interim government, and a "big bang" transition, in which the transfer of power would occur all at once.

Sanford then sat down with Iraq's chief justice and reviewed the relevant legal and political factors. She had favored the big bang approach, but together they crafted a two-part plan where the legislative branch would take power before the executive arm. "We had an idea, and the Iraqis took it as their own and shaped it to fit their political means," she says.

Sanford also served as the lead U.S. attorney in negotiations for a new embassy in Baghdad-a process complicated by a typographical error that raised questions about whether the interim government had authority to assign property to foreign governments. Sanford had to convince the attorney for the prime minister that the Iraqis could come to the table. "Here's this 30-year-old lawyer saying 'No, no, your government does have the authority to do this,' " she says.

The security situation didn't make her work any easier. Sanford often had to travel outside the Green Zone, and yet even within its relative protection, the area where she lived was shelled regularly-at 6:30 in the morning and 8:30 at night. On many days, she and her team had to put on flak vests and helmets while working at their desks as mortars landed nearby. "You just keep working because there's a lot to do," Sanford says. "We felt like we had a purpose."

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Preparing For the Worst

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Despite not knowing much about bird flu at the start, Nancy Powell led a U.S. initiative to establish a worldwide protocol for response to the virus.

Nancy Powell didn't know much about avian influenza beyond what she'd read in newspapers. During her nearly 30 years at the State Department, Powell had focused on Africa and South Asia and served as ambassador to Uganda, Ghana and Pakistan. But when President Bush announced last year that the State Department would lead the United States in creating an international partnership to combat the virus and prepare for a possible pandemic, Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky asked Powell to direct the initiative.

Powell dove into her new role as senior coordinator for avian influenza and infectious diseases. "She's someone who learns her subject very, very well," Dobriansky says. In just four months, Powell coordinated the expertise that was scattered across federal agencies and established an interagency task force at the State Department. She worked with the United Nations' coordinator for avian influenza and the World Health Organization to develop a preliminary global containment strategy. She oversaw the international sections of the national strategy for bird flu, which outlines the concrete steps people must take to avoid being caught unprepared. She played a key role in securing $1.9 billion in pledges to help affected countries improve surveillance and develop response plans.

By achieving so much in such a short span, Powell exceeded even Dobriansky's expectations. What kept her going was the urgency of the task. "In about a three-week span, we had outbreaks in 10 countries," Powell says. "That spurred us on, and we had to move much more quickly." Health issues such as HIV/AIDS and avian flu are relatively new terrain for State. Yet helping other nations prepare for a pandemic isn't merely a humanitarian mission-it's also critical to national security. Viruses, after all, don't recognize human-made national borders, and neither do the migratory birds that carry them.

Just over a month into the assignment, Turkey confirmed its first two human cases of avian flu. Ten more cases quickly followed. Powell helped coordinate the international team that assisted the Turkish government in its response. She also sent experts to consult with neighboring countries to emphasize the importance of preparing for bird flu and to provide expertise on designing a response strategy. "Most of them had not done any real planning on avian influenza," Powell says. "This outbreak was a shock to their system."

That same month, Powell led the delegation to the International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Pandemic Influenza in Beijing, where she announced that the United States would commit $334 million for the global campaign against bird flu. The challenge was to encourage other countries to make the initiative a priority and to remain open to more effective methods of response. That's where Powell's skill as a negotiator proved critical. "She represented the United States very well in articulating what we were doing," Dobriansky says.

After completing her work on bird flu in March, Powell moved on to fighting another international threat: terrorism. As the first national intelligence officer for South Asia, she has brought the same tenacity and determination to leading the National Intelligence Council's expanded coverage of the region.

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Seeing the Big Picture

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Mark S. Ward was the go-to guy for allocating federal aid after the Asian tsunami and the earthquake in Pakistan.

It was one of the worst natural disasters on record. On Dec. 26, 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a series of tsunamis that devastated coastal areas in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and other countries. More than 200,000 people would be reported missing or dead, and many more lost homes and jobs. As the international community prepared for a massive relief effort, the U.S. Agency for International Development turned to Mark S. Ward to lead its long-term response.

Ward, USAID senior deputy assistant administrator, knew the region well. He was a natural choice to lead this enormous endeavor. "He brings years of experience, a calm and reassuring demeanor, an incredible work ethic, and deep commitment to the issues," says Daniel F. Runde, director of USAID's Office of Global Development Alliances. So when another major disaster struck less than a year later-the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan that killed tens of thousands and left millions homeless-Ward again took charge of USAID's recovery and reconstruction efforts.

After both disasters, the U.S. government quickly moved in to provide food, water, medical care and shelter. But in Ward's domain, speed isn't the most important element. In deciding how best to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid for the two disasters, it was critical to devise a big-picture strategy before taking on such projects as reconstructing roads and water systems, providing business loans and job training, and opening schools and health clinics.

His efforts are paying off. "The greatest sign of success in In-donesia and the thing I'm most proud of," Ward says, "is that there are now hundreds of young people building a first-class highway from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh. It kills me to go out there and see the money that hasn't been very effectively spent."

That's why he has added to his already formidable responsibilities the task of advising two private aid initiatives: the Bush-Clinton Houston Tsunami Relief Fund, spearheaded by the former presidents, and the South Asia Earthquake Relief Fund, led by executives of five large U.S. corporations. Ward toured the affected regions with the former presidents and the business leaders, and has spent countless hours advising them on how to ensure the money goes to the right places.

"We lean on him very heavily," says Mike Conway, chief of staff to Citigroup's chairman emeritus Sandy Weill. This summer, Ward helped broker a $12 million grant from the earthquake relief fund to an organization in Pakistan that is going to build schools. "The challenge was to convince the business leaders to rely on a Pakistani organization that they had never heard of," he says. "I knew from my work in Pakistan that this organization could do the kind of construction they were talking about."

Ward has since taken on a new task: guiding long-term recovery in Lebanon. He hopes to forge more public-private connections in the future. "If we know that we can't do it all, and we know there is a lot of private money that is going to go to the effort, how does the U.S. government somehow influence decision-making in a way that is not overbearing but is helpful?"

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Justice Served

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Martin Harrell, a prosecutor at EPA, fights to ensure America stays green.

The warehouse was, quite literally, a disaster waiting to happen. Located near a hotel and community college in downtown Pottstown, Pa., it served as a storage facility for Pyramid Chemical Sales Co. Pyramid's owner, Joel Udell, had been keeping chemicals in the warehouse since the mid-1980s. By 1998, it was crammed with thousands of corroded metal drums, damaged boxes and poorly labeled containers filled with toxins, poisonous chemicals, flammable substances and other hazardous waste.

For years, Udell ignored orders to address numerous violations at the site. And when he finally took action, he still skirted the law. He sold unusable chemicals at a steep discount to unwitting companies across the United States and shipped 29 containers holding roughly 300 tons of waste to an alleged Nigerian buyer via the Port of Rotterdam, where they sat for three years before the Dutch government had to pay for incineration.

When the Justice Department brought felony charges against Udell, Martin Harrell, a senior counsel for EPA's Region 3, led the prosecution. It was an unusual role for an EPA lawyer-Justice Department prosecutors normally try cases on behalf of their client agencies-but no one was surprised by Harrell's success. Udell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay more than $2 million in restitution and fines, serve six months of house confinement and perform 500 hours of community service in Pottstown.

Harrell "has a national reputation as one of the leading experts in environmental criminal prosecution," says Cecil Rodrigues, EPA's acting deputy regional counsel for Region 3. In addition to training other EPA lawyers and investigators on criminal enforcement issues, teaching an environmental enforcement course at Villanova University, and serving on an international team that has trained police, prosecutors and regulators in Eastern Europe and South Africa, Harrell has expanded the role of EPA attorneys in the prosecution process. "It makes a tremendous difference to have the agency counsel at the table," Rodrigues says.

In a case against the city of Roanoke, Va., for example, Harrell introduced an innovative punishment. Rather than simply pay a fine, the city would develop a waste compliance program and then host three-day training seminars for city attorneys, public works directors and other senior officials from 100 Virginia municipalities. "The thing we wanted to get out of that case, more than punishment, was corrective behavior," Harrell says.

One key to Harrell's success has been his willingness to fail. "He doesn't look for the easy cases," Rodrigues says. Though he wins a lot, Harrell doesn't worry about achieving a perfect record. "If you don't lose cases, you're not being aggressive enough," he says.

Even his choice of profession has required him to overcome significant obstacles; prosecuting federal cases and speaking before large groups are sometimes still difficult for Harrell, who says he was once a painfully shy boy from rural eastern North Carolina. Soft-spoken and barely 5-foot-7, he doesn't match the TV image of a prosecutor, but he's been able to rely on his intelligence and willingness to see shades of gray. "You can't remake yourself," Harrell says. "You just have to be open to the risk and the possibility of falling on your face."

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The Mastermind

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

When American service members and civilians are captured or missing in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's the work of Ron McNeal that guides their safe return.

Some of them-like Jessica Lynch and Jill Carroll-have become household names. But there have been many others: American service members and civilians missing or captured in Iraq and Afghanistan who were successfully rescued by the U.S. military. And while each recovery is, of course, a team effort, much of the credit for their safe return belongs to Ron McNeal, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency's representative to the Tampa, Fla.-based U.S. Central Command.

McNeal, a logistical mastermind who works behind the scenes, was one of the chief architects of America's personnel recovery strategy for the region. That in-depth plan, which McNeal has sculpted over several years, serves as a sort of playbook for personnel recovery, outlining the exact steps to take in order to retrieve someone who has been "isolated" (meaning that he or she must "survive, evade, resist or escape") without needlessly disrupting the battle plan.

"We're not as effective as we want to be as long as there is anyone missing," says James Roberts, JPRA's director for operations and plans. Past wars, especially Vietnam, serve as reminders of the importance of bringing Americans home. And while the recovery mission in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't have a perfect record, Roberts says, it has been far more effective-thanks to new technologies and to McNeal's skill and dedication. "He is a strategic thinker," Roberts says. "He is very effective in laying out problem sets and proposed solutions." So effective, in fact, that JPRA asked him to lead a team that analyzed the agency's entire strategy, a project he has been working on for about a year.

"You can find me at all levels of the command," McNeal says. "Wherever the tasks are identified that need to be improved, that's where you'll find me." He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan twice in 2005 and once this year to train troops and provide personnel recovery guidance and operations support. He also serves as a trusted adviser on personnel recovery to high-ranking officers. "I have one mission only," McNeal says. "I provide a very clean assessment of the personnel recovery operations."

The elements put in place long before an individual is isolated are key, McNeal says. "We have three dimensions: preventing, proactive and reactive," he says. "Reactive is the lowest form of the art." Ask him what aspect of his job he finds most satisfying, and McNeal won't give you the obvious answer-watching as his carefully crafted plan unfolds in a heroic recovery mission or seeing the tears of joy as an American is rescued from captors. Instead, McNeal points to the ongoing education and training he conducts to advance the expertise of the constantly rotating forces. "That's very, very satisfying to me," he says.

While those around him offer high praise, McNeal, who served for 20 years in the Army before beginning his civilian service, refuses to accept recognition. Working with the military "is a very selfless service," he says. "It is first and foremost a team effort." "McNeal is driven by one thing," says John Jagielski, JPRA's chief of staff: "He's a good American doing what he has to do to make sure-at least in the current war in Iraq and the war on terrorism-American soldiers, airmen and marines will all come home."

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A Lucky Mistake

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

A mathematical error proved fruitful for Norden Huang-and other scientists trying to interpret data.

Norden E. Huang considers himself a lucky man. In 1995, he wrote a paper for Advances in Applied Mechanics in which he used-incorrectly, as it turned out-a set of mathematical formulations called the Hilbert Transform, named for David Hilbert, one of the 20th century's most important mathematicians. Huang had already submitted his paper when a colleague pointed out his error. He called the editors and asked for his paper back, but they found his conclusions intriguing, and instead gave him a two-month extension for revision.

"In trying to correct my mistakes, I stumbled upon this matter," says Huang, who retired in September as chief scientist for oceanography at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to teach at Taiwan's National Central University. By "this matter," he means a whole new way to analyze data-a set of algorithms he developed and later named the Hilbert-Huang Transform. When Huang presented his findings, a Johns Hopkins University professor who had been his graduate school adviser many years earlier pointed out its significance. "He said, 'This thing you happened upon happens once every 100 years,' " says Huang, his voice still full of wonder.

Of course, it wasn't just luck. Huang has since been recognized by a host of awards, and HHT is described as "one of the most important discoveries in the field of applied mathematics in NASA history." Huang-who decided to study fluid mechanics at Johns Hopkins be-cause the cargo ship on which he traveled from Taiwan broke down, and by the time he arrived on campus the research positions in solid and structural mechanics all were taken-originally used his method to analyze ocean waves. It has since proved useful at NASA in looking for planets and black holes, testing insulation tiles for the Space Shuttle Return to Flight project, and designing the next generation of aircraft.

Huang also helps scientists from universities and other government agencies-including, recently, researchers from Harvard Medical School-to answer previously impenetrable questions by using HHT. The method has been applied to climate change, bridge safety, submarine design, speech patterns, blood pressure, heartbeats and many other subjects. "I'm no expert of any field, I just help them interpret the data," says Huang with characteristic modesty.

So what-exactly-does HHT do?

The computer-simulated method is a tool for analyzing data from nonlinear and nonstationary processes with much greater precision and flexibility than was previously possible. "Once you write down a [mathematical] formula, everything is concrete," Huang explains. "It is no longer changeable." But few phenomena-natural or man-made-fit neatly into those constraints. When you measure something that changes at varying rates or is not uniform across space and time, things become much more complex. "HHT is trying to get over this kind of limitation to get meaning out of the data," Huang says.

Pondering how Earth's orbit determines climate cycles, what the placement of black holes tells us about the creation of the universe and how heartbeats resemble ocean waves-these diverse questions keep life interesting for Huang.

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Insider Advantage

Denise Kersten Wills — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Thomas Casadevall and quick-thinking U.S. Geological Survey regional managers launched boats and rescue teams in New Orleans in the hours following Hurricane Katrina.

The events of late August and early September of 2005 are now painfully familiar: Hurricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast, the devastating winds and storm surge, the breached levees, the looting and violence and-most of all-the catastrophically slow and inadequate federal response. But amid all the bad news, there's one Katrina story you might not have heard.

Early in the morning after the hurricane hit Louisiana, Thomas Casadevall, the U.S. Geological Survey's central region director, received a phone call from Greg Smith and Charles Demas, who lead USGS centers in Lafayette and Baton Rouge, respectively. The state of Louisiana had put out a call for help to all government agencies. Much of New Orleans was flooded and thousands of people were trapped in attics and on rooftops.

"They needed small, flat boats that could be launched from portions of interstate highways that were flooded," Casadevall says. "They also needed people who were somewhat familiar with New Orleans." Smith and Demas called Casadevall, their supervisor, because they wanted to help with search-and-rescue operations. USGS happened to have the right kind of boats and licensed boat operators who could find their way around the city. "They're Louisiana natives," Casadevall says. "They know those waters better than anyone."

Search and rescue falls far outside the USGS mission to provide scientific information about the Earth. The safe choice for Casadevall would have been to tell the teams in Louisiana to stay put, at least until he could get official clearance from Washington. But that's not what he did. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, and the desire of the Louisiana scientists to respond to the desperate need so close by, he gave Smith and Demas the green light. "He wasn't awaiting word from headquarters," says Patrick Leahy, acting director of USGS. "He informed me, and I supported him."

From Aug. 31 to Sept. 5, about 25 USGS scientists worked from before dawn to after dark with an interagency team that helped save hundreds of people and brought food and water to many more. Some of the scientists had their own worries-relatives in New Orleans or damage to their homes-yet they stopped only when so much help had arrived from across the country that search-and-rescue logistics became overwhelming.

"At that time we still had our other missions to accomplish," says Casadevall. The scientists refocused on monitoring water levels, installing stream gauges and testing the water that had flooded New Orleans as it was pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain.

USGS also helped rescue workers overcome a major obstacle. "Because of the extent of the flooding, maps were useless," says Robert Doyle, USGS deputy director. "Street signs were underwater and house numbers were underwater." The USGS scientists were able to take the electronically recorded origination points of cell phone calls to 911 centers and translate them into latitude and longitude coordinates that helicopter pilots and boat drivers could plug into GPS systems. "I'm very proud of them," Leahy says. "They are in the best traditions of the Geological Survey."

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I'm OK, You're Outstanding

Denise Kersten Wills — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Under new performance-management systems, not everyone gets to be a star.

The e-mail is of dubious origin and has likely circled the Internet multiple times. It claims to contain "actual quotes" from federal employee performance evaluations. Among the zingers: "This young lady has delusions of adequacy," "He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room" and "Works well under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."

The comments are amusing, but far from typical. In past years, supervisors have rated more than 99 percent of federal employees fully successful or better, according to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Experts say performance ratings in certain agencies are so inflated that they no longer carry much meaning. "It's like Lake Wobegon-everybody's above average," says Hannah Sistare, vice president for academy affairs at the National Academy of Public Administration.

Why? Human nature, for one thing, as well as a lack of support from above. "The easy thing to do is to make folks happy, so you give them a higher rating," says John Palguta, vice president for public policy and research at the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington-based nonprofit. "There are no consequences, so why not give them a good rating?" says Howard Risher, a consultant and author on performance-based pay issues.

That's starting to change, according to Doris Hausser, senior policy adviser at the Office of Personnel Management. OPM has taken aim at performance evaluations that fail to distinguish between adequate workers and real stars-including pass/fail ratings and multilevel rating systems in which most employees are clustered at the top of the scale. Says Palguta: "Managers are being told, 'You've got to take this seriously now.' "

Meaningful Distinctions

Accurate appraisals are key to pay for performance. If an agency can't identify its high achievers, then it can't reward their superior work. And if it gives too many top marks, it either has to spread rewards thin or swallow a large payroll increase. Such problems have plagued earlier attempts at instituting performance pay, including a merit pay plan for General Schedule grades 13 to 15, which was created by the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The majority of employees under that system received ratings of "outstanding" or "exceeds fully successful." By the mid-1990s, ratings had become so skewed that agencies were allowed to use a pass/fail evaluation, with a third category of "minimally successful" for the Senior Executive Service.

Current regulations still allow such simplified evaluations, but the Bush administration is using the traffic-light-style President's Management Agenda score card to push for greater differentiation. "If you want to be green, you can't have a pass/fail system," Hausser says. And in early May, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, announced that he would introduce legislation requiring more thorough appraisals for all employees. His bill, which would ban pass/fail reviews, is intended to beef up evaluations in preparation for governmentwide pay for performance.

Senior executives already have pay for performance, and OPM must certify each agency's evaluation system before they receive performance-based raises. To get certified, the agency must show that it makes "meaningful distinctions" among levels of performance. The number of career SES members receiving the highest available rating (in some agencies, "fully successful") fell from 83.7 percent in fiscal 2001 to 59.4 percent in fiscal 2004, according to OPM. "Agencies are getting much more disciplined about letting 'outstanding' mean something," Hausser says.

The impression that OPM is forcing agencies to lower their ratings has raised some concerns. Agencies shouldn't assume that a disproportionate number of senior executives getting high scores means the evaluations are inaccurate, argues Carol A. Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, a professional advocacy group. "Do you expect a normal distribution of height among the basketball team? We don't think this is a randomly selected group," she says.

OPM is looking for accurate ratings, not a bell curve, says Hausser. If an agency has a large proportion of top ratings, "We will then look and see, does that reflect the performance of the agency," she says. High scores aren't automatic grounds for denying certification. The National Science Foundation gave "exceptional" ratings to 66 percent of its senior executives for fiscal 2005. When OPM and Office of Management and Budget officials compared the ratings to NSF's results on the President's Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool, they found the ratings justified. "If you've got evidence that you've had an outstanding performance year, that's OK," Hausser says.

Falling Ratings

Enforcing accuracy "requires a tough culture change," Palguta says. "Many managers are finding it's not as easy as it used to be, and they're getting more push back from their employees." At the Energy Department, Chief Human Capital Officer Claudia Cross has emphasized that only those who "have done some extraordinary, next-to-impossible thing" should earn the top rating in Energy's five-tier system. "The people who had the hardest time with this were not the executives themselves, but the people who had to rate the executives," Cross says. "We had a culture where we didn't want to offend anybody by saying they were less than spectacular."

The Government Accountability Office, which has a pay-for-performance system, had "very serious rating inflation" before Comptroller General David M. Walker arrived and made accurate appraisals a priority, says Susan Kladiva, special assistant to the comptroller general for performance management systems. On a five-point scale, the agency average peaked at 4.62 in 1998. GAO began enforcing performance standards as they were written while it developed a system that gives employees scores in multiple areas. The average of those scores is weighted to adjust for harder or easier raters, and then converted into a rating.

In 2002, the first year under the system, average ratings fell to 2.19. "We were faced with the fact that it's very difficult for people who had a 4.62 rating to get 'meets expectations,' " Kladiva says. Walker met with staff and held chats that were broadcast to all employees' computer monitors to convey the message that "If you're meeting expectations, you're doing just fine," Kladiva says.

Putting all the Labor Department's agencies on the same five-tier system has allowed for better oversight, says Suzy Barker, director of human resources, policy and accountability. The department tied standards for employees at each level to overall organizational goals. "The message is really clear . . . we're here for a reason, and here's where you fit in," Barker says. "It's easier for managers to say, 'Look, here was what was expected and here is how you performed, and so here is your rating.' "

Frequent Tinkering

Agencies that pioneered pay for performance tried a number of approaches. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which went to pay for performance in 1999, used to give each employee a summary score that translated directly to pay, but that caused employees to fixate on numbers. "That's really not what you want to be focused on," says Chris Aiello, FDIC's associate director for human resources. "Employees and managers should be identifying areas for possible improvement." Now FDIC grades employees in five areas. Employees are grouped according to how well they did relative to their peers, and those groupings determine pay raises.

The National Credit Union Administration, which instituted pay for performance in the early 1990s, took the opposite approach when it revamped its performance management system in 2001: NCUA tied pay decisions more directly to ratings. Since then, the number of employees scoring in the "exceptional" category has hovered around 15 percent. "We don't focus on inflation," says Sherry D. Turpenoff, NCUA's director of human resources. "We focus on documenting performance." NCUA continually updates its standards so "exceptional" employees will have to do even better the following year.

The Internal Revenue Service, which launched a paybanding system for managers in 2001, emphasizes concrete, measurable standards, but also takes a more direct approach to preventing inflated ratings. It assigns each of its 10 business units a total number of points based on past rating patterns and on how successful the unit was that year. The units then distribute those points-and no more-to managers. This system holds ratings to the distribution pattern from previous years (an average of "exceeds expectations") unless the business unit's overall results justify higher scores.

"You do have to draw those very hard distinctions in performance," says IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Beverly Ortega Babers. "It causes people to have to take an honest look at themselves and the performance of their employees." But, Babers notes, the process hasn't been popular with managers. "We're looking to see what [other agencies] are doing in that area now," she says.

In that regard, the IRS is not alone. Human resources executives across government say performance management systems need frequent tinkering to keep appraisal inflation in check and ensure that performance standards match up with organization goals. Many are keeping an eye out to see what works at other agencies. "I think we have morphed our system one way or another every year," says Energy's Cross. But, she adds, technical details are less important than training supervisors to communicate expectations, provide ongoing feedback and give grades that match the standards. "If we focus on it as a system or a form, then we're missing most of it," Cross says.

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You're Fired

Denise Kersten Wills — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Managers say terminating problem employees is one of their most distasteful responsibilities. It's also among the most important.

First, the myth: You can't fire a federal employee. In fact, more than 10,000 were involuntarily removed from their jobs in fiscal 2005. Even more resigned in lieu of termination. The Office of Personnel Management and agency human resources offices provide step-by-step guidance on how to terminate problem employees. The draft Working for America Act, which would revamp personnel systems at most agencies, proposes holding managers accountable for subordinates' job performance and streamlining processes for dealing with workers who don't do their jobs or who break important rules. Proposed Homeland Security and Defense department regulations include similar provisions.

But while it isn't impossible to get rid of a federal worker, it isn't easy, either. Managers describe it as among their worst professional experiences: a time-consuming, emotional and potentially litigious confrontation. Some avoid firing all but the most problematic employees; they weigh their options and decide to retain marginal workers rather than tackle the obstacles to removing them.

In the Merit Systems Protection Board's 1996 Merit Principles Survey, 59 percent of supervisors said they had overseen employees with performance or conduct problems (or both) in the previous two years. While just 8 percent of these managers reported taking no action at all, most took informal steps, such as working with employees to help them improve or referring them to a counseling service. Only 17 percent took formal actions, including removals, demotions and denial of pay raises.

Employees at all levels of government have noticed this reluctance to act. OPM's 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey showed that out of 80 categories, satisfaction with how managers deal with "a poor performer who cannot or will not improve" was lower than all but two other areas: telework opportunities and child-care subsidies.

As managers contemplate firing an employee, they face disincentives that can make the task seem impossible, or can eclipse its benefits. These may include time constraints, confusion about the process, lack of support from superiors, the possibility of an appeal or complaint, burdensome agency policies, uncertainty about whether the resulting vacancy will be filled, unpleasant emotional confrontations, and a host of other factors.

'A Dirty Job'

As a federal human resources executive, Joe Maas had to fire quite a few people. Looking back, one case stands out in his memory. Maas, now retired from government, was director of personnel and an assistant administrator at the Small Business Administration in the late 1970s when he had to notify a peer that the agency was taking actions to remove him for misconduct-namely, falsifying letterhead to claim fraudulent travel expenses.

Before that day, "We got along very well," Maas says. "He often brought his breakfast into my office." Maas arranged a morning meeting to present a letter of removal and explain the basis for the decision. Maas had to mask his own emotions as his former colleague and friend resigned amidst tearful remonstrations that the job loss would ruin his life. "He went out a shattered person," Maas says. "I sat down at my desk and I felt completely worn out-very sad for him and for the agency because he was a high-level official. I tried to concentrate on my work at that point, but I realized this had affected me sufficiently that I went on sick leave the rest of the day." In retrospect, Maas, who has been active in public service professional associations in the Washington area since his 1995 retirement, is glad the experience shook him. "People who like to terminate shouldn't be managers," he says. "It should be a difficult process."

Other current and former federal supervisors have similar stories. The problems that led them to fire people seem extreme: an executive who never completed a single assignment, a military civilian who took unauthorized leave from his overseas post, and workers whose addictions rendered them incapable of doing their jobs. Yet managers describe the task of removing these people as "gut wrenching," "extremely stressful" and "the most difficult experience I ever had in my 30 years [of federal service]."

The knowledge that job loss causes financial distress and can crush self-esteem weighs heavily. "It's a really, really tough thing to do," says Ruth Ann Killion, chief of the planning, research and evaluation division for the Census Bureau. "Typically, you're dealing with really young people, and often they've just gotten married or just had kids. For most of them, it's their first professional job." Killion says people who know her are shocked when she reveals that she has had to fire more than 10 employees: "They see it as incompatible with being nice."

Daniel Michels fired four people during his 37 years at the Food and Drug Administration. "I found it difficult to not either get angry or fearful or emotionally engaged in the other person's problems," he says. Though he felt confident in his decisions, he says, "doing a dirty job of that nature, you don't go home feeling good." But the emotional drain isn't the worst part, says Michels, who left government in 2000 as director of FDA's Office of Enforcement and now works as a regulatory consultant in Silver Spring, Md. "The most difficult thing is the time it takes away from managing the organization in order to document the case," he says.

The exact amount of time varies with the nature of the case-performance problems are tougher to document than misconduct, and extreme offenders are easier to re-move-as well as the agency's policies, which often are more stringent than OPM requires. Front-line supervisors must spend a hugely disproportionate amount of time on a single problem employee. "If you've got 15 employees, you might be spending 50 percent of your time on this one," says Rob Wilkerson, an Internal Revenue Service senior executive based in St. Louis. Terminations also are time-consuming for higher- level managers. Killion estimates she spent a total of two full weeks helping one of her subordinates remove a poor performer. The direct manager spent far more.

This is time that managers who have their own work on top of their supervisory duties can ill afford. "Most of us are already taxed," says John "Jay" Gowens, who heads the Army's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate. And after the employee departs, managers face the task of finding a replacement-assuming they're allowed to fill the spot.

'A Cancer in the Organization'

If firing someone is so time-consuming and unpleasant, why go through with it?

Because an employee whose bad behavior or attitude goes unchecked can have a disproportionate affect on the organization. "It tends to amplify in people's minds," says William L. Bransford, general counsel for the nonprofit Senior Executives Association. "You develop a practice of mediocrity at best," he says. Good workers resent seeing a colleague get away with putting in less than a full day's work-especially if they have to pick up the slack. Noting that a manager doesn't enforce expectations, some may let their own work slide, lose respect for the manager and feel less pride in their work group. "It's like a cancer in the organization," says Wilkerson.

Another reason: Steps leading up to removal-including counseling and, typically, a performance improvement plan-lead about 40 percent of poor performers to shape up, according to the Merit Systems Protection Board. "If that happens, everyone wins," says Timothy Dirks, a former Energy Department director of human resources who now serves as president and chief executive office of GRA Inc., an HR and management consulting firm in Silver Spring, Md.

Some poor performers are transformed by changing jobs within the agency-either moving into a new role that better matches their skills and personality, or going back to a prior position in which they did well. Those who don't improve and haven't been effective in previous roles may not belong in the civil service. "Some people just can't work in a bureaucracy," Killion says. "You don't do them or the government any favors by keeping them." While it is probably a rare occurrence, several managers report having terminated employees come back later to thank them; getting fired spurred them to find jobs where they could succeed.

MSPB and OPM both estimate that "poor performers" constitute just 3 percent to 4 percent of the federal workforce. It's unclear exactly what that term means, however. Is a poor performer someone who coasts by, not achieving much but also not causing harm? Or does the term refer only to the most egregious cases-those who bring an organization down with their bad attitudes or incompetence? In a 2000 MSPB survey, employees said 3.7 percent of their co-workers deserved to be fired, but reported an additional 10.6 percent were operating below reasonable expectations.

The case for removing members of the less harmful group is harder to make because their faults are less obvious, and there's not as much incentive to take difficult action against them because they do less harm. As a result, managers are more likely to let underachievers coast. "It's much more effort to deal with that kind of situation," Maas says. "There were people on my staff that I tolerated, and it cost the organization." Ultimately, he says, "It is generally not worth the effort."

There is no evidence to support the perception-especially popular among people unfamiliar with the inner workings of federal agencies-that less-than-stellar workers plague government more than the private sector. More relevant is a different issue: Government agencies lack the private sector's flexibility in shedding workers who no longer are really needed.

Gowens, who spent 25 years in the private sector before going to work for the Army, says federal regulations hamper his agency's ability to match employees' skills with fast-changing technology. "Let's suppose that you're making widgets in the commercial world and you want to build thingamajigs. I call in the widget group and say, 'It's been really nice. Pick up your severance check on the way out,' " Gowens says. "That's almost impossible for us to do."

As a result, he has some employees whose skills are obsolete-for example, computer programmers who specialize in the outdated computer language COBOL and haven't learned in-demand languages such as Java-and who won't go through training to keep pace with technology. They don't cause disruptions at work, but they also don't perform the tasks the agency needs most.

Gowens says he could, in theory, put retraining into their performance plans, counsel them and remove those who don't modernize. But that would be prohibitively time-consuming. Instead he assigns them work that requires less skill. "I'll create a testing protocol and have those people sit at their desks and perform a relatively boring job," he says. "I get something done, but I'm probably paying more for that task than I should."

There is a plus side to this problem, of course: The job security federal work offers is a powerful recruiting tool, especially alluring to some IT workers who were burned by the dot-com bust. "This idea of a job for life, though we don't really have a job for life, is a double-edged sword," Gowens says.

'A Doomsday Process'

If firing problem employees is unpleasant and time-consuming for supervisors, yet critical for an agency's success, top executives and personnel offices should do everything they can to support front-line managers, right? Unfortunately, that's not always how it works.

"When we ask managers 'Why don't you get rid of the poor performers?' " says Steve Nelson, MSPB's director of policy and evaluation, "a lot of them say that they didn't think they would be supported up the line by managers." A lack of support from above can take a subtle form, says SEA's Bransford. He remembers from his own tenure at the IRS what he calls a "deafening silence," which he occasionally encountered when he would ask his superiors for input. "I would try to get a sense of how people felt about an issue and nothing would come back," he says. "The signal that most federal managers get when they hear that is 'I better be careful.' "

Sometimes the message isn't so subtle. One former Interior Department public affairs official oversaw a woman who struggled with severe alcoholism. He sought advice from the personnel office, counseled her on her performance and tried to get her to seek treatment. "You could make [her] go one or two times, but you couldn't make [her] take the extra effort," he says. "This strung out over a year. Finally people said there has to be a life consequence before [she] will be jarred into action." The public affairs official began preparing a case for her removal. He was one signature away from finishing the process when a new boss arrived who wanted to give her a fresh start. "He wouldn't sign it," the official says. "Six months later, she died."

Another problem: Some agencies' personnel offices layer so many requirements on top of OPM regulations that documenting a case for removal becomes daunting. "Managers have cornered me at conferences to tell me about the employee they tried to remove, and the general counsel said they needed a box-load of information," says John M. Palguta, vice president for policy and research at the Washington-based nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. General counsels want to make sure that if a case is appealed, they have enough proof to support the decision. Some might lose sight of the fact that setting a high bar deters managers from taking the action in the first place.

Even during the probationary period-which usually lasts one year and was designed to allow managers to easily remove employees who don't measure up-some agencies add procedures that treat the probationer like a full-fledged federal employee. A 2005 report by MSPB found that certain agencies require managers to put subpar probationary employees on performance improvement plans. Such plans were designed to give employees training and counseling before a formal action, yet are not required by law even for post-probation employees. Not surprisingly, MSPB found that managers often do not use the probationary period to weed out workers who aren't up to the job.

Why would senior executives and personnel offices make removing problem workers harder than it needs to be? Though agencies lose only a fraction of discrimination complaints, union grievances, whistleblower reprisal claims and appeals on the merits, the possibility of having to defend a termination looms as a powerful deterrent.

The appeals and complaint procedures serve an extremely important function-ensuring that federal personnel decisions are fair and do not target whistleblowers or minorities. But they have unfortunate side-effects. Jilted employees can make life difficult for agencies by appealing a removal. There is no process to weed out frivolous complaints, and workers often can appeal to multiple authorities.

Defending a termination is "a doomsday process," says William N. Rudman, a federal employment attorney and former deputy undersecretary of Defense. It is time-consuming, and discrimination and whistleblower complaints make for especially bad public relations for the agency and individual supervisors. "In effect, the manager is being put on trial," GRA's Dirks says. Because of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission backlogs, it can take years for innocent managers accused of discrimination to clear their names (or for wronged employees to get justice).

Both SEA's Bransford and MSPB's Nelson say they know of instances in which managers have been passed over for Presidential Rank Awards because of discrimination complaints. This guilty-until-proven-innocent approach punishes front-line managers who fulfill their responsibility to remove problem employees. "Managers often draw EEO complaints precisely because they're good managers," Rudman says.

The problem is exacerbated, Rudman says, when agencies settle with employees who probably would not win their cases before MSPB or the EEOC. "It's a short-term gratification issue," he says. Offering a settlement-which can be a reduction in the punishment or a monetary payment-makes the problem go away, but establishes a precedent that gives other workers an incentive to appeal.

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