Government Executive - Authors - Edward Goldstein

Sun Spotters

Edward Goldstein — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Federal scientists are on the lookout for an unpleasant solar surprise.

As if earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the ever-present dangers of this year's hurricane season were not enough, government scientists and emergency planners are increasingly concerned about the need to predict and mitigate the impact of another force of nature: bursts of fury by our nurturing sun. With the sun coming out of one of its 11-year minimum cycles of activity, eruptions of solar flares, coronal mass ejection activity-discharges of plasma from the solar corona-and geomagnetic storms that disturb the Earth's upper atmosphere and the near-Earth space environment, all are expected to increase. These "space weather" events can severely damage electric power grids and oil and gas pipelines, as well as disturb the HF radio communications airlines use on polar routes and the navigation signals from Global Positioning System satellites. The Earth's vulnerability to space weather was demonstrated in March 1989, when a geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection knocked out northeast Canada's Hydro-Québec power grid in 90 seconds, leaving millions of people without electricity for up to nine hours. A 2000 study by Thomas Teisberg and Rodney Weiher in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management estimated that taking steps to avoid a similar outage would not only potentially save lives, but $20 billion worth of damage as well.

The job of ensuring we don't fall victim to a solar calamity rests with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. The center keeps a constant watch on the sun's activity with the help of ground-based observers and NOAA, NASA and Defense Department satellites. It sends out forecasts and warnings as events dictate. Depending on the nature of a solar outburst, warning times can range from just a few minutes to days. The center uses computer models to enhance longer lead-time predictions of severe space weather conditions.

In February, the Space Weather Prediction Center hosted a two-day tabletop exercise simulating a solar storm similar to a 1921 event that disrupted telephone, telegraph and cable traffic in Europe and New York Central Railroad operations. Exercise participants included Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; Helena Lindberg, director general of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency; and representatives from the European Commission, Energy Department and North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

In the first stages of the exercise, notes Thomas Bogdan, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center, radiation from a flare and a coronal mass ejection began disrupting radio signals and GPS devices. Later, it knocked out commercial satellites that transmit telephone conversations, television broadcasts and other data. Roughly a day later in the scenario, says Joseph Kunches, a scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, the coronal mass ejection caused "induced current in power grids to the extent that the grids were brought to their knees."

The scenario in the exercise "is not far-fetched," says Kunches. "There is a strong suggestion from historical evidence and even in 1989 with Hydro-Québec that a 100-year storm can cause a blow to critical infrastructure. So you could imagine how bad the consequences would be if there was a prolonged blackout that would deprive people of critical infrastructure and health and safety services-for example hospital services."

Scientists have some idea of how powerful such a storm could be. The 1859 Carrington Event, a series of solar magnetic storms, caused the failure of telegraph systems all over Europe and North America, and created auroras that were seen as far south as Hawaii and the Caribbean.

Could a future solar eruption be even more devastating? "There's no reason for us to think that the sun has only produced one Carrington event," says Kunches. "We've seen a small sample of what it can produce as we've been looking closely since World War II, and it begs the question of what an event of that magnitude can do." NASA has a program devoted to this question called Living With a Star. Its flagship spacecraft, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February, "will hopefully give us the data we need to figure out how bad these solar storms can be, and how often they occur," says program scientist Madhulika Guhathakurta.

So what happens if scientists find out a big solar event is imminent? Bogdan says prudence would dictate that power grid operators create temporary blackouts in their systems while the storm passes over, rather than risk losing their entire infrastructure for months or years.

A 2008 report by the American Meteorological Society also concludes that with timely and accurate forecasts, "airlines may reroute flights to avoid high radiation levels and communications blackout areas; spacecraft operators may put satellites in safe mode or reschedule critical maneuvers; and survey and drilling companies reliant on precise GPS measurements may cease or delay operations."

Given the importance of early warnings, Bogdan says it's vital to maintain continuity of observations from satellites such as NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer, which has operated since 1997. A potential backup for ACE is the Deep Space Climate Observatory, also slated to observe space weather as well as aspects of climate change on Earth following a scheduled launch in late 2013. The program began its life as Vice President Al Gore's concept for a satellite providing a near-continuous view of the entire Earth. The association with Gore made the satellite, even with a revised science mission, a low priority for the Bush administration.

As we move into a peak solar activity period, Paul Kintner, a science fellow at the State Department and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University, says it's critical to make users of technological systems aware of what a major solar storm can do so they can plan accordingly. "It's somewhat like saying several years ago that it's possible a hurricane can strike New Orleans," he says. "The probability was low. The probability of an individual flare or solar outburst hitting Earth is also low, but there will be enough of them that it will eventually happen."

Edward Goldstein was lead writer at NASA from 2002 to 2009.

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Mission: Save Earth

Edward Goldstein — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

NASA scientist guards the planet from dangerous stowaways on space flights.

Among the many impressive government power titles-admiral, ambassador, Cabinet secretary-the weightiest of all might belong to an unassuming NASA scientist. As planetary protection officer, Catharine Conley has the awesome responsibility of shielding planet Earth from an alien invasion.

The invaders Conley worries about are not the vicious extraterrestrial beasts depicted on the silver screen in Independence Day or War of the Worlds. Rather, they are dangerous microorganisms brought back to Earth on a spacecraft, like the ones in the 1971 movie The Andromeda Strain.

Some might call Conley's role as planetary guardian an unusual extension of her wide-ranging research on proteins involved in muscle contraction and muscle function in extreme environments. Six years ago, while at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, the plant biologist had an experiment on the shuttle Columbia's ill-fated mission. In her experiment, Conley studied how microgravity affects tiny worms called nematodes. Despite Columbia's catastrophic explosion upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere, five of six canisters from the experiment were retrieved intact, and most still had live nematodes inside. The nematodes' survival gave weight to a hypothesis known as panspermia, asserting life on Earth could have originated elsewhere in the solar system and arrived on the planet as a passenger on an asteroid.

After NASA's incumbent planetary protection officer, John Rummel, prodded Conley to consider the implications of her experiment's results, she started to think more broadly about life forms beyond Earth. When Rummel moved on and recruited Conley for his job, he jokingly handed over a pair of sunglasses to signify the fearless feds in the movie Men in Black, entrusted to save Earth from marauding aliens.

NASA's missions must "follow the [1967] Outer Space Treaty, which specifies that when we go to explore other planets we shouldn't cause any contamination that would interfere with future activities, and that when we are going to bring back things from other places, we should not cause harmful contamination to the Earth," says Conley, who is working with the international Committee on Space Research to develop safety precautions. She also consults with colleagues from the Agriculture, Energy and Homeland Security departments, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Geological Survey. When a NASA mission involves bringing a soil sample from Mars, for example, Conley expects the DHS Customs and Border Protection directorate to be involved.

Protecting Earth from potential extraterrestrial pathogens became a priority 40 years ago when American astronauts landed on the moon. As a precaution, the Apollo 11, 12 and 14 lunar exploration crews were quarantined upon their splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean. Some at NASA didn't think it was necessary to isolate astronauts, considering the moon's temperature extremes, harsh radiation and lack of life support, but the National Academy of Sciences was more cautious. Dr. Charles Berry, the Apollo astronauts' physician, sat in a meeting when President Lyndon Johnson approved the quarantine, remarking that he did not want to be held responsible "for bringing lunar plague back to the Earth." But history proved NASA correct, at least about the moon's equatorial regions.

Conley sees no need for quarantines when NASA starts sending crews to lunar polar areas around 2020. "The Earth and the moon are basically one system," she says. "For a long time, material has been transferred back and forth between the Earth and moon. . . . We do not anticipate that there ever would have been or could be now life on the moon, and therefore it is extremely unlikely that there would be any biological hazard from which we would need to protect the Earth."

Mars is a different story. Because it is the most Earthlike body in the solar system, with a thin atmosphere and relatively warm temperatures, and evidence of water sources, many scientists see a credible possibility that if Martian microorganisms exist, they could be carried to Earth.

Conley says the planned Mars sample return mission, likely decades away, will require a biosafety containment facility, the "kind of facility you would have when you are studying the Ebola virus, or when you are studying smallpox."

According to Conley, Earth's natural history demonstrates the reasons for such precautions. "We know here on Earth we have done a significant amount of damage by transferring organisms from one place to another-rabbits being imported to Australia and Dutch elm disease in the U.S. being examples. Since we really have absolutely no idea what there might be on Mars, the precautionary principle dictates that if you don't know, you should take reasonable steps to make sure that you don't do something you aren't unaware of until after it happens, and you can't fix it," she says. "[We also] have to make sure the Mars samples don't get contaminated with Earth life."

As for the first human mission to Mars, any possible quarantine would be needed only to "keep the astronauts safe, because they wouldn't have been exposed to smallpox, and they wouldn't have been exposed to any new bacteria or viruses like swine flu," she says.

Conley does worry about one scenario discussed in The Andromeda Strain novel, in which a killer organism unleashed by a returning satellite had originated on Earth and mutated into a virulent form in space. "That's why we want any human missions [to Mars] to monitor the types of microbial populations that they have on the spacecraft," she says. These are the concerns of a scientist who never expected to have the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Edward Goldstein was lead writer at NASA from 2002 to 2009.

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Hidden Treasures

Edward Goldstein — Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

es, there are feeding frenzies in government. Really vicious ones. Just show up at 2 p.m. on a Monday, Wednesday or Saturday at the Commerce Department, and you can watch wide-eyed as a bunch of hammerhead and lemon sharks dive ravenously after and gulp up processed squid appetizers. Although it's not a sight for the faint of heart, it is one enjoyed by thousands of tourists who probably never suspected the federal government could be so educational and entertaining.

In fact, the Commerce Department's privately run National Aquarium exemplifies one of the federal government's least noted functions-educating the public about agency missions and activities. In the Washington area, tours and museums provide the public a mostly upbeat story about the work of government employees. It's a sort of low-key selling of the feds. And unlike the capital city's packed and sometimes expensive tourist attractions, agency exhibits are often uncrowded and mostly free of charge (an exception is the National Aquarium, which is run by the nonprofit National Aquarium Society). Some of the museums and tours even deal with government secrets and may themselves be Washington's best-kept secret.

As a service to Government Executive readers who may have business in the nation's capital, we sampled some of the exhibits.

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Avoiding Armageddon

Edward Goldstein — Tue, 01 Jun 1999 00:00:00 -0400

In the hopes of averting a nuclear apocalypse, U.S. agencies are putting scientists in the former Soviet Union on the federal payroll.

By Edward Goldstein

ownsizing may be the norm at most federal agencies in the 1990s, but in an ironic twist of history, thousands of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons scientists and engineers from Russia and states of the former Soviet Union have jumped onto Uncle Sam's payroll.

These scientists are the beneficiaries of a set of federal programs aimed at keeping them involved in peaceful and productive civilian research and to discourage them from selling their knowledge of the arts of Armageddon to Iran, Iraq and other U.S. adversaries. Although these programs have a mixed performance record, the Clinton administration wants to accelerate them to help address the insecurity resulting from Russia's August 1998 economic meltdown.

In his 1999 State of the Union address, President Clinton emphasized the importance of proliferation prevention. "We must expand our work with Russia, Ukraine and the other former Soviet nations to safeguard nuclear materials and technology so they never fall into the wrong hands,"
Clinton said.

The Clinton administration's fiscal 2000 budget calls for spending $4.2 billion-an additional $1.7 billion above current budget projections-over the next five years on a range of threat-reduction programs. Of that spending, $535 million would be targeted for jobs-for-scientists programs, a significant increase over previous plans to spend $324 million on such efforts.

The budget proposal, says Ann Harrington, deputy director of the State Department's Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction, "is essentially a recognition that a lot of what we have gained over the last five years we are at risk of losing-due to [Russia's economic breakdown] last August-if we can't be more aggressive over the near term. The general assessment is we have an extremely high proliferation risk right now in Russia and the newly independent states."

Transforming 'Nuclear Cities'

The State and Energy departments are the primary managers of federal employment programs for scientists in the former Soviet bloc. Participating scientists work in technical institutes, weapons laboratories and formerly closed "nuclear cities"- isolated sites in the Urals, Siberia and Central Russia, surrounded by fences and barricades, where nuclear weapons were designed and produced.

The Energy Department, through its national laboratories, runs the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program, a cooperative venture that pays labs and institutes in Russia and the former Soviet states to redirect the work of more than 6,100 scientists away from weapons development projects. IPP, which is slated to get $30 million in fiscal 2000 funding under the administration's budget, also has signed up U.S. firms to partner with labs in the former Soviet Union on commercial ventures and eventually take over project funding. About 75 companies participating in the U.S.-industry coalition have already provided $38 million in cost-shared resources to the program over the past four years.

DOE's 1998 Nuclear Cities Initiative, also slated for $30 million in fiscal 2000 funding, attempts to find peaceful research, marketing and business opportunities for scientists and other support personnel in 10 Russian nuclear cities. The program began with an initial focus on three sites: Sarov, Snezhinsk and Zheleznogorsk.

The State Department is the lead coordinator of the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), a 5-year-old, Moscow-based institution that serves as a clearinghouse for small research grants. The grants are forwarded to individual researchers formerly employed in weapons programs. The ISTC, with proposed fiscal 2000 funding of $95 million, is a multilateral initiative, with assistance also supplied by the European Union, Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden and South Korea.

The State Department also supports a Science and Technology Center in Kiev, Ukraine. The centers are credited with effectively coordinating interagency resources, and the administration has proposed to increase their budgets significantly over time.

Other agencies, such as the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency, run programs to help Russian biological and chemical weapons scientists translate their skills into civilian research related to health and environmental problems.

And the National Science Foundation has created a private institution, the Civilian Research and Development Foundation, which funds projects, with some government seed money, private-sector support, and the early generosity of international financier George Soros, that link American and Russian scientists on promising joint research projects.

These jobs programs are an important complement to the Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction program, created in 1991 to address the fear of nuclear chaos following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Under that program, DoD has spent more than $2 billion assisting Russia, Belarus, Kazhakstan and Ukraine in controlling, safely storing, and dismantling nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

Jobs in Moscow and Kiev

Russia has a history of strong support of scientific research that dates back to Peter the Great's creation of the Imperial Academy of Science in 1725. During the Soviet period, some scientific disciplines, such as cybernetics, the predecessor of computer science, fell into disfavor, but others, including aeronautics, mathematics and physics, received strong support.

"After the first American atomic bomb, Stalin was very impressed," says Dr. Roald Z. Sagdeev, the former director of the Institute for Space Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences, who now runs the East-West Center at the University of Maryland. "So that year [1945] he signed legislation . . . to make scientists the highest-paid professionals in the state."

Now the situation is reversed. The Russian government can't afford to pay all its scientists and openly seeks U.S. help to shrink the size of its military-industrial complex. U.S. officials note that even while the annual pay of many Russian scientists is a modest $7,000, it is critically important to present American assistance in a way that doesn't injure Russian pride.

"We need to show that we have professional respect for their science, that they aren't some Third World country," says Harrington. "The psychological effect is enormous. But of course, we can't just go to Capitol Hill and say we're making them feel better."

Why not simply bring the scientists here, as the United States did with anti-Nazi nuclear physicists prior to World War II and Werner von Braun's German rocket scientists following that conflict? While the United States did modestly increase the number of entry visas for scientists after the Soviet Union imploded, officials say it made better sense from both a cost and policy standpoint to keep them employed in their homelands.

Bringing the scientists to the United States "was an unworkable idea for a simple reason," says Sagdeev. "They [the Russian government] would never allow people in such sensitive areas to work for the United States." Another factor, underscored by allegations earlier this year of Chinese espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is the fear that bringing Russian scientists over here would lead to counterintelligence problems.

There are no such concerns on Eurasian soil. The Moscow- and Kiev-based science and technology centers currently pay for the work of more than 17,500 research scientists, who receive quarterly payments wired from London after they turn in required financial and technical progress reports.

Based on an agreement with the Russian and Ukrainian governments, none of the funding is subject to direct taxation or customs duties. "We can save 40 to 50 cents on the research dollar, and that can amount to real money," says Harrington. In contrast, payments made to Russian laboratories under DOE's IPP program are subject to Russian taxation.

While observers applaud the ability of the science and technology centers to directly reach their target populations, they point out that the program needs a mechanism to eventually move the scientists off their funding dependency.

Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes the program can move to a new level. "The trick is to use the money that we now have available during the crisis for a quick fix, to give people jobs-however temporary-and then to use these funds to help make commercially viable activities," he says. "In the commercial areas of computer software, advanced ceramics, metallurgy and advanced electronics, there are things these people are able to do."

Harrington agrees her program needs a greater long-term commercialization focus. "What's missing is business management training and more English language training," she says. But Harrington says that "we aren't even close" to addressing the immediate threat. "A wide-net estimate of the number of scientists we need to reach is 60,000."

Red Flags

The commercialization challenge has also vexed DOE's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention and Nuclear Cities Initiative programs. In a February report (RCED-99-54), General Accounting Office investigators highlighted IPP's lack of commercial progress and other operational problems. GAO criticized the American national labs for lax supervision of the IPP program. The report charged that some Russian laboratories receiving American funds continue to work on weapons of mass destruction or are exploiting the dual-use potential of certain technologies.

GAO also took DOE to task on the aid taxation issue and for wasting funds by allowing high IPP overhead charges at the national labs. According to GAO, only $23.7 million of the $63.5 million spent for IPP through June 1998 went to scientific institutes in Russia. GAO recommended that DOE increase program oversight, address the taxation issue, work harder to commercialize laboratory research and go slow on expanding the Nuclear Cities Initiative.

DOE officials responded to the report, which was ordered by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., a critic of U.S. aid programs for Russia, by pledging to enact significant reforms to the IPP program. "We will accept many of GAO's recommendations," says Leonard Spector, director of DOE's Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation. "We will provide more money directly to the scientists and reduce the monies going to the [U.S.] labs."

Spector also says DOE headquarters will follow up on recent guidance to the national labs with a new directive requiring principal investigators who are the first line of contact with their counterparts in the former Soviet Union to keep better track of their work activities. "We have had a lot of oversight, but we don't have 100 percent," he said. "I think people at the laboratories know we need to do a better job." Helms said in a prepared statement that failure of DOE to make good on reform would "jeopardize continued support" of the program as well as congressional support for any budget increases for nonproliferation programs.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., also a critic of the administration's Russia policy, says Congress must provide more oversight of these and similar assistance programs.
"I think we need to have more involvement of the legislative branch in monitoring the dollars that are going into Russia," says Weldon. "The [Russian] Duma has concerns too. They agree that we should establish a bilateral commission . . . to monitor the money going into Russia to ensure it is going to the intended recipients and for the right purposes."

Congress is also certain to be paying more attention to the national labs' role in nonproliferation programs in light of the Los Alamos Chinese espionage matter. But DOE officials argue that even if some personnel from partner institutes and laboratories continue to work for the Russian defense complex, our success in engaging bureaucracies known for their Cold War hostility to U.S. interests makes it worthwhile to continue the effort.

"You can't occupy every scientist 24 hours a day, you just can't afford it," says Spector. "We can still tolerate the fact that some scientists [not on the U.S. payroll] will still be in their institutes doing their old work." As for allegations that some institutes use American funding to develop potential military applications of various technologies, DOE promises to involve the Pentagon in future advanced reviews before funding for projects is approved.

Federal officials say they are very concerned about the possibility that some Russian organizations may be allowing their scientists to travel to and work for rogue countries. Last year, the State Department declared several institutes ineligible to receive U.S. assistance. "We have to insist that any people who work with Iran are cut off at the knees [in terms of subsidies]," says Rose Gottemoeller, director of DOE's Office of Nonproliferation and National Security. Spector insists that with respect to the institutes the United States is working with, "we are not seeing any evidence that they are engaged in improper activities. If any technology transfer is happening, a red light will go on."

GAO investigators and other observers acknowledge the difficulty involved in altering the organizational cultures of Russian laboratories so they have a more commercial focus, especially when the country's economic chaos is factored in. "Everybody recognizes you will have difficulty doing certain kinds of commercialization in Russia today," says Spector. "But on the other hand, they have great technologies, such as software and pharmaceuticals, that can be marketed throughout the world without huge capital investment."

Spector notes that while in the IPP program's early years two-thirds of program funding was for basic research aimed at eventual commercialization, now two-thirds of funding is for moving promising research to the market. "We haven't gotten many [projects] up to the top, but we have sure rolled a lot up the ramp," he says. To date, GAO reports that of more than 400 DOE-funded projects with potential commercial applications, 79 are categorized as being in an intermediate phase on the road to commercialization-in which industry partners take over a greater share of program costs-and three are fully ready to commercialize.

Soldiering On

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, a major architect of America's Russia policy, told an audience at Stanford University last fall that when thinking about Russia's future, "gloom and doom are no more justified now than was euphoria a few short years ago." That also seems to be the attitude of federal officials who direct the jobs-for-scientists programs. "The key to a healthy post-Soviet economy is a healthy high-tech sector," says Gottemoeller. "We are helping to stabilize their high-tech engine."

Another long-term justification for continuing to subsidize Russian scientists-one not usually mentioned by those who run the programs-is that people trained to question orthodox ideas through the scientific method traditionally have also helped promote democratic thinking. "Scientists like Yuri Orlov and Andrei Sakharov were great advocates of democratic values," says Gerson Sher, director of the Civilian Research and Development Foundation.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., whose district includes the Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, says that both the scientific and political factors make it imperative that the United States support programs to aid scientists in the former Soviet Union.

"This is a must-do as opposed to a nice-to-do," Tauscher says. "And I frankly haven't heard anyone tell me a better way to do it."

Edward Goldstein is a Washington freelance writer.

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To Russia With Bird Band

Edward Goldstein — Tue, 01 Jun 1999 00:00:00 -0400

The work of Kohl and others in assisting nonmilitary Russian scientists has never received much publicity, even though their patient efforts have long demonstrated the advantages of routine government-to-government cooperation.

These days, Kohl is doing his part to help Russian naturalists, who, like their weapons-research colleagues, have been dramatically affected by the Russian economic downturn. Russian parks and nature preserves are currently receiving just 20 percent of their normal funding, and professional staffs are hard-pressed to protect these areas from poachers and other exploiters. While the United States can't make up the funding shortfall, Kohl and his colleagues are overseeing a U.S.-funded $200,000 grant competition that provides seed money to keep Russian park and wildlife scientists afloat.

Kohl is proud of the work that past grants have enabled. "The bird banding lab in Russia had no money to buy any bands at all," he explains. "All they needed to operate was $4,000 a year. And for that amount, the information that's returned is amazing. These small sums of money can really do a lot of good if they are applied in the right place."

Each summer, the Fish and Wildlife Service sponsors a program that sends several Russian preserve managers to the United States to learn how American wildlife refuges are managed. "We know very much that the Russians value their relationships with us," Kohl says. "They tell us that the ability to come over here on exchanges helps keep them going."

The relationship isn't entirely one-sided, Kohl notes. American scientists recently traveled to Siberia to learn useful ideas for
restoring wild salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest. "We have also learned from their scientific method of doing wildlife surveys," he adds.

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Building a Better Cockroach Toxin

Edward Goldstein — Tue, 01 Jun 1999 00:00:00 -0400

GAO reported that nearly $300,000 was spent on a project to study a cockroach toxin developed by Russian biological warfare institutes. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory official who supervised the project told GAO that the Russians believed they had developed a protein-based toxin to kill cockroaches without using a harmful dust, thus allowing its use in sensitive machinery and equipment, such as computers and submarines. Alas, reported GAO, U.S. researchers were unable to replicate the toxin.

DOE believes, however, that a number of its sponsored research projects do have great promise. Among the 23 projects funded as initial activities under the Nuclear Cities Initiative:

Scientists at Snezhinsk are working with Sandia National Laboratory to improve the design of a U.S.-manufactured prosthetic foot device.
The Sarov site is working with Brookhaven National Laboratory on a project to use electron beam technology to assess precious minerals in ore rubble.
Zheleznogorsk and Ozersk are teaming up with Sandia to design a treatment for high-level radioactive tank waste.
Snezhinsk and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are partnering on the development of new generation X-ray tubes.

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Back to School

Edward Goldstein — Sun, 01 Nov 1998 00:00:00 -0500

isten up, class. The subject of today's exercise is the ambush television interview. Any volunteers? Great. Come on up. Your assignment is to walk through a dark space, be accosted by bright television camera lights, and face as best you can rapid-fire questioning about an embarrassing incident involving your agency that won't show up on any year-end list of government accomplishments. Good luck and have a great career."

As this scenario unfolded, about 200 pairs of eyes carefully watched every bead of sweat form on the poor volunteer. Under the circumstances, he actually did an admirable job addressing the questions offered by his inquisitor, fending off some of the more combustible queries and ending the interview at an appropriate time, as suggested by instructor Chris Davala, a media coach and speech consultant.

No doubt, many of the 'students' watching this exercise in a media relations class at the Federal Executive Institute (FEI) in Charlottesville, Va., were offering silent thanks that they weren't the star of this bit of theater. And a few of the middle-aged professionals may have been thinking, 'Gee, I don't remember school being like this.'

School is indeed like this for thousands of government managers each year. FEI, brought into life 30 years ago last month by President Johnson, is one of a number of institutions that are aggressively marketing short (six weeks or less) education programs to help high-level federal managers develop their executive skills. Managers who have attended courses at FEI and other institutions say the programs have tangibly helped their careers beyond being just a ticket they had to punch on their way up the career ladder.

One motivation for agencies to send senior managers back to school is to provide them a means to brush up on the broad executive management competencies that the Office of Personnel Management has listed as vital to organizational success. Many agencies send their employees to programs offered by institutions with long track records, such as FEI, the Brookings Institution, Carnegie-Mellon University, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The Defense Department offers a wide variety of educational programs at its own facilities, such as the National War College in Washington, and the Office of Personnel Management provides training at its Management Development Centers in Shepherdstown, W. Va., and Denver, Colo.

Typically, participants in these programs are asked to go back to school by their bosses as a condition for management advancement. But other factors can also play a role. As FEI instructor Robert Maranto noted in an article on the institution's history, "Since attendance is a mark of status, and is usually on the whole enjoyable, some are selected as a reward for good service in tough jobs. Still others are chosen because, while basically successful, they have notable problems which need attention (e.g. burnout, reluctance to accept organizational change, poor communications skills)."

The programs are designed for members of the Senior Executive Service, senior military officers and other high-level managers in government. To facilitate the learning process, many of the programs do not offer letter grades, and in the spirit of academic freedom, students are encouraged to speak freely in class without fear of being punished for criticizing an agency's position on an issue. Tuition, room and board, and travel expenses, which range from just under $1,000 per class to more than $11,000, are usually covered through agencies' training budgets.

Tossed Salads and Chef's Specials

Even in these tight budgetary times, anecdotal evidence suggests agencies are making executive training a priority. Michael Froman, chief of staff at the Treasury Department, says that at a recent meeting, senior Treasury officials decided "to spend a lot more effort to develop our Senior Executive Service as a core group of managers through education programs."

"We want to build on existing programs to enhance certain synergies and certain experiences our managers have so that they develop into an effective and unified cadre," Froman says. "As a class, they form an important asset for the department and these programs can really help their development."

Diane Disney, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy, says the recent wave of Defense downsizing makes training more important than ever. "We are decreasing the size of our department from 1.5 million to 750,000 civil servants," she says. "Our people have to be educated to do more. Narrow specialization will no longer do. We have to broaden our managers' skills to incorporate conceptual and strategic skills."

Responding to increased demand for short-term training programs, Harvard's Kennedy School recently opened a Washington office, which will offer short courses on "Essentials of Decision Making" and "Strategies of Persuasion."

In September, Kennedy School officials also announced they had streamlined their Senior Executive Fellows program on the Harvard campus, designed for people of high potential at the GS-14 and GS-15 levels. The course, which teaches subjects required for SES certification, has been cut from eight weeks to four weeks in length. The 1999 program, which is scheduled for next March 15 through April 9, costs $11,100.

Whatever their length and cost, federal executive training programs usually follow one of two standard recipes. The "tossed salad" approach seeks to mix senior managers from various agencies together and let them learn from each other as well as from their assigned faculty. Such programs provide "a fascinating and rich interagency mix from a number of perspectives," says Terry Newell, faculty coordinator for the Center for Executive Leadership at FEI. "A problem I may have in my agency may not be an insoluble problem in another agency. And you can learn from that."

Other agencies, though, use a "chef's selection" approach, designing customized programs for their employees. "The biggest trend I have seen recently is the extent to which federal agencies and private companies want customized programs," says Nanette Blandin, acting director of Brookings' Center for Public Policy Education. "With tight budgets and with training being highly scrutinized, agencies are saying, 'How can we have the most impact for each training dollar spent? Let's focus on this department or this unit.' "

Once agencies know what they want in the "chef's selection" scheme, they often ask various institutions to bid for the right to provide the program. The struggle to win such bids can be as intense as the competition between some schools to recruit blue-chip football prospects.

Recently, a consortium of Johns Hopkins and Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs wrested from the Kennedy School the right to conduct training sessions for top DoD managers. "We had a screening board that looked at the various proposals," says David O. "Doc" Cooke, DoD's director for administration and management. "The decision was based not so much on cost as it was on what was proposed under the program to meet our objectives. There was a little more emphasis on games and actual role playing [in the winning proposal]."

The Road to Charlottesville

Appropriately, some of the most intriguing executive training programs are offered in Charlottesville, the home of Mr. Jefferson's university. Not only is FEI in town, but Brookings offers a week-long course at the Boar's Head Inn on "Executive Leadership in a Changing Environment." Tuition and housing for the course is $3,500.

"We are trying to get managers to broaden their perspective," says Blandin. Recent courses have featured a range of speakers from Brookings scholars to Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair Alice Rivlin.

Brookings also offers courses in Washington on Congress and the national policy-making process. And in several locations around the country, it now presents a weeklong course called "Benchmarking: Innovative Processes in American Business." The class is increasingly popular with government managers who are seeking to "learn from innovative practices in business as they strive to deliver more services with fewer resources," says Blandin.

Meanwhile, FEI's course offerings under its "Leadership for a Democratic Society" program are increasingly focused on personal development. First, says FEI Director Curt Smith, students are given Myers-Briggs personality assessments in an effort to help them understand themselves better. Then they study 360-degree performance evaluations they have gathered from their bosses, peers and subordinates. "We hope that their working hard on the information in the assessments translates into better organizational performance," says Smith.

"We are asking the students to pay attention to themselves as leaders," says Newell. "If you can't change yourself, you can't change your organization."

Students who attend FEI's four-week program, which costs $8,900 to $9,600, are organized into eight-person teams balanced by agency and gender. Attendees can either attend the program four weeks at a time, or attend split two-week sessions. In the first two weeks of the split sessions, participants take courses and develop strategies that are relevant to their self-assessment and 360-degree assessment results. Then they return to their agencies for three months and attempt to implement a plan for change. Afterward, they return to FEI for another two weeks, to reflect upon their experiences and gear up for future challenges back at their departments. One participant said the self-assessment process was "very intense" and helped him to better understand "how I relate to my staff."

FEI's focus on personal development also extends to wellness programs, which emphasize physical exercise and healthy eating. Recess periods are as much a part of the program as the class sessions, and participants are discouraged from using them to make stress-inducing phone calls back to the office.

FEI courses also encourage spirited academic debate about the nature of public service at the turn of the century. "It is disconcerting that a fair number of students are disillusioned and say they wouldn't recommend federal service for their kids," says John Irving, an FEI instructor and former dean of the Seton Hall University law school. But Newell says FEI's follow-up surveys show most participants in the "Leadership for a Democratic Society" program leave with a renewed sense of faith in public service.

"The last thing people do before they walk out the door is to retake their oath of office," he says.

On the Banks of the Charles

Along the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., Harvard's Kennedy School strives to give federal executives a broad-based learning experience in its Senior Managers in Government program. The program runs for three weeks in late summer and costs $8,900. "I would characterize the school as standing astride the fast-moving tides of history and literally sticking our toes in the water and making a small contribution in a number of areas," says program director Peter Zimmerman.

"It was the best program I've been to," says Sidney Saucier, associate director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "What made it so great are the caliber of the instructors, who are real-life people sharing their experiences at a high level of government. The case study-based curriculum is very broad. It addressed a lot of issues that we are facing at Marshall, such as privatization and the effects of downsizing. And besides having outstanding instructors and guest speakers, you can couple that with the diversity of the class attendees. They were from all kinds of agencies and 30 were from foreign nations."

Art Bryant, U.S. Forest Service staff director for watershed and air programs, also says the opportunity to interact with a broad cross-section of government executives from around the world was a highlight of the Kennedy School experience.

"Listening to people from France and South Africa about their experiences in privatization gave us insights into the struggles that they had and the strategies they had to employ," he says. "And from the whole experience you come back with a different attitude. You want to be more strategic in the delivery of your programs, more attentive to employees' suggestions and more receptive to trying new ideas and concepts. You have a new sense of energy and enthusiasm, a genuine aspiration to be a better senior executive."

Likewise, foreign students appreciate the opportunity to interact with their American counterparts. "It was good at a high, broad-brush level to better understand how Washington really works--to understand the sort of people and sort of departments you need to informally start off with to understand where the minefields are," says Geoffrey Bailey, a British civil aviation official.

More Competition

Can a government that is constantly beset by domestic and international crises and pressures to get better results with smaller budgets still afford the luxury of high-profile education programs?

"Increasingly in these times of drawdown, it's hard for some managers to say, 'Hey, I can afford to be away for awhile,' " says DoD's Cooke. But, he adds, "not once in these days of declining budgets have the [military] services said, 'We won't support your programs at Harvard and Syracuse.' And when you compare what we do in senior executive programs for managers to what corporations like Mobil and Motorola do, it's not enough."

Brookings' Blandin says there's a growing market for government executive education. "The fact that there's competition [to deliver these programs] is certainly more apparent," she says. "But there's a great big pond out there that we are all in and it seems there's more than enough room for everyone."

Blandin also sees opportunities in the future for "strategic alliances" between the various institutions that serve the federal market. For example, Brookings has allied with George Washington University in Washington to allow government students who take Brookings short courses to get course credit in GWU's Master's in Public Administration program.

"Many SESers are isolated in not knowing what's available out there to help them upgrade their capabilities," says Treasury's Froman. "To the extent that we can continue to use these education programs to help them find the tools to help make them better managers, that's all to the good."

Edward Goldstein is a Washington freelance writer.

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Waterworld

Edward Goldstein — Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 -0500

ast winter, the El Nino ocean-induced weather phenomenon turned federal marine experts into media celebrities. D. James Baker, head of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even turned up on the Larry King Live show.

The United Nations has declared 1998 the International Year of the Ocean, to "focus the attention of the public, governments and decision-makers on the importance of the ocean and marine environment." The White House will host a National Oceans Summit in June.

In February, Baker told a meeting of scientists that NOAA was launching a project called the State of the Coast report to identify problems in coastal and marine ecosystems. He said the 20 agencies that oversee oceans will try to develop a comprehensive research and management policy.

Ocean resources and coastal areas are increasingly important to the U.S. economy, representing directly or indirectly over-fishing, pollution, oil spills, coastal growth and the prospect of rising sea levels. At the same time, new technologies, many resulting from Cold War efforts to track Soviet submarines and recover sunken ships, are making deep-sea mining, oil exploration and even biological prospecting feasible within U.S. waters.

Marine scientists, federal officials and some lawmakers are hoping that the new focus on the seas will bring major changes to the federal government's approach to marine management. Some policy makers are even talking of creating an independent Oceans and Atmosphere Agency in the hopes that it would become a "wet NASA," mobilizing public interest and drawing federal dollars the way the space agency did three decades ago.

Who's in Charge?

The Senate got a jump on ocean fever last year, passing the National Oceans Act, sponsored by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., which would create a presidential Commission on Oceans Policy with a two-year charter to study coastal and ocean issues and make policy recommendations. The bill also would create an interagency National Ocean Council to advise the President on marine issues. A companion House bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., has strong backing among both Democrats and Republicans.

In proposing his legislation, Hollings pointed out that it has been almost 30 years since the last presidentially commissioned broad-based review of this nation's relationship with the oceans. That review, headed by Ford Foundation chairman and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Julius A. Stratton, is legend in the oceans community, as it led to the creation of NOAA in 1970 and the enactment of the 1972 Coastal Zone Management Act.

The Stratton Commission strongly advocated consolidating and elevating oceanic research efforts. But today it's still not clear who's in charge of those efforts. NOAA, the National Science Foundation, the Navy and the Interior Department's U.S. Geological Survey share oceanographic research and mapping duties. The Coast Guard has a number of interdiction, enforcement, patrol and scientific responsibilities. The Army Corps of Engineers has a hand in near-coastal navigation. The Environmental Protection Agency has a primary role in protecting estuaries. The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service regulates offshore mineral, oil and gas development. And the State Department holds sway over international issues, such as adherence to the still unratified Law of the Sea Treaty.

"There are a lot of disjointed agencies operating out there who are not cooperating with each other," says Roger McManus, president of the Center for Marine Conservation. "There is fundamentally a bunch of little fiefdoms out there."

In one example of the turf wars, a dispute between NOAA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on one hand, and the State and Defense departments, on the other, over who would have greater influence in the proposed National Ocean Council reportedly held up action last year on the Hollings bill. Ultimately a provision designating the Commerce Secretary as the council's chair was dropped from the bill.

"The Navy has gone way overboard in claiming jurisdiction on these issues," argues McManus. "It is comparable to the Air Force saying they should be in control of civilian air traffic instead of the [Federal Aviation Administration] and clean air enforcement instead of EPA."

Expanding U.S. Territory

Adding to the complexity of the intergovernmental relations issue is the fact that under U.S. law, coastal states control the three nautical miles that extend from the shoreline into the sea, and the federal government takes jurisdiction from that point on to a boundary 200 nautical miles from shore. The federal boundary came into existence in March 1983, when President Reagan signed a proclamation declaring that the United States would adopt an "exclusive economic zone" extending into the seas beyond their coasts.

Reagan acted to assert U.S. sovereign rights over the fisheries, minerals and other potential wealth of the seas in the face of potential exploitation by foreign fleets. He also effectively doubled the size of the United States, an act potentially as important as the Louisiana Purchase. Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, certainly thinks so. "We are in the Lewis and Clark phase of undersea exploration," Ballard said in recent CBS News interview.

NOAA's Baker, whose office is filled with paintings of famous oceanographic vessels from years gone by, agrees. Pointing to the unexpected discovery of deep sea volcanic vents that are teeming with life forms, Baker said, "They are a great example of what you can find if you have a device that actually scoots along the ocean floor and looks for things, as opposed to [examining] a fixed habitat."

"This issue of how you protect [habitats] and what's going to happen is really important," Baker says. "In fact, the mining of organic materials from deep sea vents may be the next big thing in deep sea mining. It may be where you really find new kinds of compounds for drugs, new ways of looking at chemistry."

The federal government isn't prepared for such a situation, argues the Center for Marine Conservation's McManus. "There is no regulatory regime for harvesting pharmaceuticals from the sea and protecting the habitats they come from," he says. "Right now someone could scoop up as many invertebrates as they wanted in the Gulf of Mexico to find out what is out there, and no agency would have any say over it."

Such issues wouldn't have come to the fore if it were not for decades of unpublicized Navy ocean research designed to guarantee that we maintained an advantage over the Soviet Union on-and underneath-the seas.

Retired Adm. James Watkins, a former Secretary of Energy who now heads up the Consortium for Oceanic Research and Education, says these efforts "helped win the Cold War, because the Soviet Union could not match our ocean research. It was that vital."

But the end of the Cold War changed everything, Watkins says. "In the early 1980s oceans sciences represented 7 percent of the total federal basic research budget. Today it's down to 3.5 percent," and yet with the end of the Cold War, we are finding now that research in the oceans is every bit as important to mankind as it was in the contest between the two super-powers.

One effort to address that situation is the National Ocean Partnership Act of 1996, sponsored by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., chairman of the House National Security Subcommittee on Military Research and Development. The objective of the legislation is to establish formal coordinating and leveraging mechanisms for U.S. federal, private sector and academic oceanographic research efforts. In last year's Defense bill, $7.5 million was funneled into the National Oceanography Partnership Program to allow Navy contracting with the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System to help reduce a backlog in obtaining oceanographic survey data. For fiscal 1999, the President is requesting $10 million for the partnership program.

"I found out in my committee work that there were nine separate agencies doing work on the oceans and none of these agencies were coordinating their work," Weldon says. "I thought, 'Why don't we provide some coordination in what they are doing and encourage partnerships between the agencies and the academic community?' "

Ocean Commerce Issues

As the government's ocean agencies begin to work more closely together, they face a series of ongoing challenges.

First of all, even in this era of pinpoint satellite-aided surface navigation, NOAA has significant catching up to do in providing users with accurate maps of the ocean's bottom. "We are probably about 50 years behind in mapping," Baker acknowledges. "As marine transport increases, you have a move towards bigger and bigger ships. And bigger ships hang lower in the water. . . . So we are trying to map all around the U.S. in the critical areas where the actual transport is and where the ships tend to sit."

In the fiscal 1998 budget, Congress gave NOAA $14 million for additional work in measuring the shape of the ocean bottom. But Baker says that even with improved sonar equipment, it will probably take 20 to 30 years to get all the areas critical to shippers surveyed.

Related to the mapping issue is the state of American ports. Charles Bookman of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, located in Washington, who is conducting a series of Year of the Oceans policy studies, says there is a huge need for modernizing our port infrastructure. A ship that sails into Singapore, he notes, enters a completely integrated traffic management system after scheduling its arrival days in advance. In the United States, on the other hand, Bookman says, "our ports are shallow-the channels, the depths, the dimensions are not in keeping with latest generational vessels. The land-side access to the intermodal rail and highway system needs lots of attention."

Another longtime marine management issue is management of America's coastal fisheries. The predecessor of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the U.S. Commission on Fish and Fisheries, was created in 1871 to deal with declining fish stocks. Today, nearly one-third of marine species in U.S. waters are still designated as "over-fished" or approaching an over-fished condition. Last Dec. 31, Commerce Secretary William Daley, acting to halt an ominous decline in cod, ocean perch, rockfish and other popular species on the Pacific Coast, slashed catch limits on eight commercially valuable species by as much as 65 percent.

Regional fishery management councils set up under a 1976 law proved unable to protect domestic fisheries, so revisions to the law two years ago required councils in over-fished areas to come up with management plans to restore fish populations to sustainable levels.

The process is working, Baker argues. In Alaska, he says, a council has "put together a plan where every day the commercial fishermen call in and say, 'Are we doing OK? What should we be doing?' And NMFS will say 'Slow down, speed up' or whatever, and they work very well together." But Hollings says disgruntled fishermen tell him they now "need a law degree to go fishing."

Baker says fisheries face several other problems besides over-fishing. The Chesapeake Bay, for example, is threatened by air pollution deposits and waste from agricultural operations. These wastes are possible sources of pfiesteria piscicida, the "cell from hell" that has killed millions of fish and caused illnesses in fishermen on the East Coast. Agricultural runoff from farms in the Mississippi River watershed is also blamed for a "dead zone" filled with oxygen-consuming algae in the Gulf of Mexico.

Baker argues that the pressing need to deal with these and other inland sources of ocean problems underscores how a reorganization of the government's ocean agencies may not in itself solve all the ills of the seas. "I wouldn't see restructuring as the highest priority" for a new presidential commission on oceans, he says.

A 'Wet NASA'

Whether or not such a commission undertakes to reorganize the federal marine management structure, many ocean experts think it would serve to raise the visibility of ocean issues.

"NOAA is probably one of the lesser-known government entities," Rep. Farr says. "If you ask members of Congress what department it is in, probably nine out of 10 don't know it is in Commerce, and that it has the biggest budget in Commerce."

Weldon says the answer may simply be turning NOAA into an independent agency. "I think NOAA's status would probably be enhanced if it is independent," he says. "NOAA has a much broader objective than just to function as a part of Commerce."

But others, such as Law of the Sea Treaty negotiator John Moore, who now teaches at the University of Virginia, argue for a broader restructuring of organizational roles. "I have favored the idea of an Oceans and Atmosphere Agency," Moore says. "I could imagine something that brings together NOAA, the Coast Guard and the Maritime Administration, so you would in essence have a real oceans agency. It would not be a small agency. It would be about the size of NASA, if not larger. I think the Navy oceanography department is different in that you have to have within the Navy its own oceanography capability, and I would also not move over the Army Corps of Engineers. But I think most of the other oceans functions should be moved over."

McManus strikes a more cautionary note. "What matters during the Year of the Ocean," he says, "is, will they do anything? There have been a number of commissions since Stratton that haven't done anything."

Whatever the outcome of the current debate, Baker is confident NOAA's work will be critically important in the new millennium. "The really exciting thing about the oceans," he says, "is what we don't know about them and what we can find if we give them the right investment."

Edward Goldstein is a Washington freelance writer.

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The Coastal America Partnership

Edward Goldstein — Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 -0500

In 1992, President Bush began a modest effort called Coastal America to bring federal agencies together in joint programs to address coastal issues such as habitat loss and degradation, water pollution, and contaminated sediments. By 1995, the original partnership of four agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service) had grown to embrace 20 agencies. Recent Coastal America projects include the following:

Wetlands Restoration: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts

In conjunction with the development of a high-speed rail corridor, agencies cooperated to restore tidal flow and wetlands constricted by past road and rail construction.

Right Whale Protection/Vessel Traffic Safety: Florida, Georgia

Cooperative effort to prevent ships from colliding with right whales and safely maintain vessel traffic by real-time monitoring of whale locations during calving season.

Sonoma Baylands Restoration/Dredge Material Disposal: California

Use of dredge material from the Petaluma River and Oakland Harbor to restore wetlands in the Sonoma Baylands, thus increasing the depth of ship channels and enhancing access to ports while improving the bay habitat.

Oyster Reef Creation/Coal Ash Disposal: Texas

Successful establishment of oyster reefs in coastal waters using fly ash waste product from coal-fired plants in the Houston/Galveston area, thus resolving a waste disposal problem and promoting oyster production.

Duwamish River Restoration/Waterfront Development: Washington

Restoration of the inter-tidal habitat important to the salmon fishery along the urbanized Duwamish River in Seattle, thus increasing salmon and other wildlife populations while enhancing public access and improving the quality of life in this active waterfront area.

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Officers Under Siege

Edward Goldstein — Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 -0500

NOAA leaders may believe their organization is critical to addressing key ocean issues in the next century, but they and other Clinton administration officials think the agency can live without its 200-year-old corps of uniformed officers who conduct various oceanographic duties.

Currently, 263 officers serve in the little-known NOAA Corps. "We don't need a uniformed service for the kinds of things we do at NOAA," argues agency administrator D. James Baker. "You do have to have knowledgeable people running your ships, doing your program. That's essential." The agency has stopped hiring new officers and has proposed eliminating the corps altogether.

Members of Congress from coastal states beg to differ with the administration's reasoning. Last December, House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, wrote a letter to Commerce Secretary Richard Daley demanding that he "take immediate action to relieve the hiring freeze on the recruitment of new officers into the NOAA Corps." In a Senate hearing, chaired by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Senators Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, John Kerry, D-Mass., and John Breaux, D-La., also expressed displeasure with the administration's proposal.

Baker says he hopes Congress will approve a buyout plan that will allow the remaining uniformed officers to make the transition to civilian life.

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High Rent, Low Rent

Edward Goldstein — Sun, 01 Feb 1998 00:00:00 -0500

he years-long competition among federal agencies for coveted workspace in the new Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington is now drawing to a close, as employees occupy the massive structure and prepare for the official ribbon-cutting in late April. Some are grumbling about the small working areas they are allotted and about the paucity of window views, but none can dispute that they're in the most modern facility the government owns.

Other federal workers, far more numerous, are not so lucky, for they are stuck with an unsatisfactory status quo. Federal building officials have admitted that poor estimating of rent receipts, and a consequent shortfall in funds, will mean deferred maintenance and curtailment of renovation projects throughout the nation.

There's a certain irony in the two developments. On the one hand, the $738 million Reagan Building set a new record as the government's most expensive office project. On the other hand, the never-plush space occupied by many of the government's 1.6 million full-time workers may get a little seedier during the next year.

Cost overruns and delays in opening the Reagan Building have not contributed much to the latter trend, according to Public Buildings Service officials. Instead, it results from a shortfall in rental revenues collected by the PBS, a unit of the General Services Administration. Receipts will run some $718 million short of estimates for fiscal 1998, PBS says. As a consequence, spending by the service will be cut by 15 percent, in the hope of getting the Public Buildings Fund back into balance in 1999. Public Buildings Commissioner Robert A. Peck says there will be no scrimping on essential safety and security functions, but also no money for many badly needed construction and renovation projects.

Addressing the shortfall and improving the computerized real estate revenue and expenditure tracking system are among Peck's major challenges as he enters his third year as the federal government's chief landlord and building designer. Also high on the Public Buildings Service's agenda are:

Implementing most of the 8,690 security improvements recommended by Attorney General Janet Reno's Vulnerability Assessment of Federal Facilities Committee in response to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
Completing expansion of the federal
courthouse system.
Proving to federal tenants that GSA can provide real estate leasing and building management services that are competitive with the private sector through its "Can't Beat GSA Leasing" and "Can't Beat GSA Space Alterations" initiatives.
Wrapping up the Reagan Building project and moving ahead with other major Washington-area projects to consolidate and modernize agency offices.

If Peck succeeds, he will go a long way toward enhancing PBS' image. The agency has long been seen as bureaucratic and unimaginative. It has had 17 commissioners in the last 20 years, which critics say is a sign of its turnstile approach to management.

Peck, an attorney and graduate of Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, earned his government stripes at the Office of Management and Budget, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Federal Communications Commission. He also served in the Carter White House before becoming counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, overseeing the Public Buildings Service. Peck was chief of staff for the committee chairman, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., who wrote the famous Kennedy administration "white paper" proposing that federal architecture "provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American government."

"I think Peck has done a remarkable job," says Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, ranking minority member on the House Public Buildings and Economic Development Committee. Traficant, an iconoclast who often crosses swords with GSA, adds, "He's at least attempting to honestly deal with the issues, and he's offered reasonable testimony and the flexibility to try to work with the Congress to mitigate some of the problems."

Solving the Shortfall

A year has passed since the Federal Building Fund shortfall was revealed to Congress, but it remains PBS' chief problem. The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jay C. Kim, R-Calif., said at a 1997 hearing, "This kind of mistake we should not tolerate."

Most years, the building fund has been roughly in balance. GSA attributes the current shortfall to three factors:

Slimmed-down federal agencies are using less office space than expected, thus reducing rental income.
GSA's budget planners failed to include in their projections building rent reductions in several cities, cuts that brought rents closer to market rates.
Construction delays on several projects, including the Ronald Reagan Building, slowed rent receipts.

To address its accounting problems, GSA installed in October a new computer system for tracking and administering real property rent and expenditures. The system GSA had been using for 25 years was so bug-ridden it would allow duplicate rents to be assigned to the same building code and failed to alert managers when revenues were dropping, "so that we could start ratcheting down expenses," Peck says. The data collection problem was compounded by the loss of knowledgeable personnel who have taken early retirement, says Ron King, assistant director for federal building issues at the General Accounting Office.

Peck promises the new system, which will allow PBS' real estate professionals in the 11 GSA regions to review rent projections in real time, will help bring accuracy of revenue projections back within a typical 3 percent margin of error. The current discrepancy amounts to 15 percent of the Federal Building Fund's fiscal 1998 budget request of $4.8 billion.

For now, PBS must manage its budget carefully, so that deferred maintenance work will not result in problems down the road. "First, we took out almost the entire capital program. That is the responsible thing to do," Peck says. "So there are no new construction projects funded in FY '98 and no major renovation projections, which is really unfortunate because that will have a future impact, obviously. We even cut back on some of our repair money."

Setting Priorities

GSA's actions are putting a vise on agencies like the Justice Department with immediate space needs. "It's a very difficult issue that we are facing throughout the department, but primarily in the Immigration Service, the FBI, DEA and U.S. Attorneys Office, where we are still expanding," says Benjamin F. Burrell, director of facilities and administrative services at Justice.

"In Sacramento, California, for example, there is a $3.2 million cost for an Immigration Service district sub-office. GSA was supposed to pick up $1.7 million of the cost, but in order for us to do the project, which we desperately need, we had to pay the whole thing," Burrell says.

"Now GSA says it is going to give us a rent credit, which is helpful. But when you are dealing with a zero-sum situation, which GSA is with its Federal Building Fund, if they can't pay for it out of their normal fund, how can they pay it out of their rent account? So somewhere along the line the agency is going to end up footing the bill for this GSA snafu."A more pressing concern for GSA is building security. After the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, GSA obligated $233.8 million for security upgrades in federal buildings. One visible upgrade is an increase in Federal Protective Police, up from 409 five years ago to 637. GSA plans to hire an additional 87 uniformed officers in 1998. The number of privately contracted security guards increased to 4,923, up from 2,300 in 1995. Other prominent security measures include the installation of street-level barriers and protective window glass, and the reinforcement of building structures.

Peck says the ongoing measures involve a complicated process of balancing the democratic value of openness to the public with the need for safety. "There are ways of giving you security while they don't look like they are giving you security. Multilevel building plazas can, if designed right, keep a car or truck from driving in," he says."We think there are ways to protect against the sorts of terrorism incidents that we can reasonably anticipate in a way that doesn't require you to close off the building. . . . Sometimes it might cost a little more."

Federal Courtroom Boom

The Public Buildings Service could get the green light next fiscal year to complete its most capital-intensive activity in this period of federal downsizing-a $7.5 billion federal courthouse construction program-if Congress and the administration deem the Federal Building Fund shortfall solved.

Before being put on hold, work on 80 courthouses was under way or completed, and another 35 to 40 projects were included in PBS' five-year plan. The Judicial Conference of the United States is spearheading the project in response to an increased caseload, which last year included more than 50,000 cases filed with the 167 U.S. Appeals Court judges. The large caseload is attributed to a rising population and more bankruptcy, drug trafficking, tax enforcement, immigration and Social Security cases.

While Congress and the administration have been generally supportive of the court-house construction process, both have bridled about allegations of profligate spending on projects such as the federal courthouses at Boston Pier and at Foley Square in New York City.

GSA's inspector general determined that the agency passively allowed questionable change orders that increased the Foley Square project's $259 million budget by $120 million. Additions made at the behest of federal judges included expensive upgrades for carpets and private kitchenettes.

Courthouse construction standards were revised by the Judicial Conference of the United States in 1994 to guard against such excesses. "We are setting a budget, and are working very hard to keep to the budget," Peck says.

The Reinvention Process

Perhaps the biggest change in the way the PBS does business is the overhaul of its leasing process, part of an agency reinvention effort under the National Performance Review. The new process responds to complaints by federal tenants about GSA's turtle-like pace of 12 to 18 months for securing building leases. The hallmark of the initiative are two programs, "Can't Beat GSA Leasing" and "Can't Beat GSA Space Alterations," that allow tenants to select private-sector contracting arrangements provided by GSA if its own services fall short in quality and cost.

"Can't Beat GSA Leasing" kicked off in July 1996 with a promise of reduced paperwork, streamlined leasing policies and reduced leasing costs. Two of GSA's reinvention labs-Region 3 in Philadelphia and Region 10 in Seattle-have reduced the time for leasing new space from an average of more than a year to around five months.

Under the new competitive leasing arrangements, agencies have been hesitant to choose private brokers for leasing arrangements. Private brokers have handled acquisition of some smaller 2,500- to 5,000-square-foot buildings, according to an administration official who supports the experiment in devolving power away from GSA. "I like very much the [services] menu approach," Justice's Burrell says. "There are areas of GSA, especially in the field, where they have a wonderful customer service focus. There are other areas where they don't deliver quite as well . . . where I'd like to have GSA's contractors available to us."

For example, GSA's National Capital Region staff has been unable to process Justice's space acquisition requests concurrently. "While they have wonderfully expert people, they are so overwhelmed with the workload that they don't have the ability to do concurrent processing," Burrell says. "And that's where the government has to get to."

From the standpoint of federal employee unions, allowing agencies to contract out for building maintenance services under the guise of enhancing GSA's competitive posture is a dubious proposition. "We need to put the 'S' back into GSA," says Carl Yates, head of the GSA Council of the American Federation of Government Employees. "When you are talking about providing service and thrilling your customer, I don't think that can necessarily be provided by an outside vendor." Still, Yates praises Peck for bringing union employees into the process of developing the two competitive initiatives.

Rebuilding in Washington

In this era of government downsizing, the Public Buildings Service is trying to keep its vacancy rates as low as possible. That is a tricky business when agencies lose employees through attrition in dribs and drabs. But in Washington, agencies are eager to modernize offices that often were built haphazardly during construction booms. The demand for office space keeps the capital city in a state of perpetual rebuilding.

The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, in its final stage of construction, is the centerpiece of the long-unfinished Federal Triangle project. The 3 million square feet of space will house employees from the Environmental Protection Agency, Agency for International Development, Customs Service and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The building's showcase will be the 500,000-square-foot International Trade Center, established to bring together federal agencies and private organizations to promote trade. A meeting of the World Trade Organization will help inaugurate the building in April.

The 7.7-acre Reagan building project is second only to the Pentagon in size. Developers hope the building's massive atrium will rival the new Washington National Airport and the renovated Union Station in drawing visitors. Among the amenities are 85 elevators, a 620-seat auditorium, a 950-seat food court, ballrooms and a rotunda with a balcony overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. A key challenge for the buildings service will be to ensure that the Reagan building is fully leased, by enticing private tenants to supplement rent receipts. Rents for some business tenants are being reduced from $44 per square foot to $30 per square foot.

Another major project waiting in the wings is the Southeast Federal Center, a billion-dollar, 55-acre office complex planned along the Anacostia River in an industrial wasteland next to the Washington Navy Yard. Congress, however, has been reluctant to appropriate funds for the project, mostly because prospective federal tenants are put off by the undesirable location.

"The Southeast Federal Center is a terrific piece of waterfront property, which is the way a real estate person would look at it," Peck says. "People forget that 20 years ago the Inner Harbor in Baltimore was a pretty godforsaken area, and it didn't rejuvenate overnight. I think we need to show first that we have a solid plan that turns it into not just a federal enclave but a livelier kind of site." Frustrated by the lack of congressional action on the project, Peck says the buildings service might attempt a partnership with a private developer whereby "the private-sector people lease buildings to us."

Peck is interested in architectural issues and relishes the aesthetic elements of his job. Nonetheless, he says his chief challenge is the bottom line. "When the end of the day comes, people still have a basic question about us. You can measure what we do and people will say, 'Did the government get as good a deal as the private sector would have gotten?' " he says. "However you want to ask that question: Did we build the building in the same amount of time? Did we secure a lease in the same amount of time? Are we paying market rents or less for our buildings or are we above the market? Those are all fair questions, and unless we can answer them, we are going to have a tough time."

Ed Goldstein is a Washington freelance writer.

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Building in Design Excellence

Edward Goldstein — Sun, 01 Feb 1998 00:00:00 -0500

he Public Buildings Service is embarking on an ambitious initiative to emphasize architectural excellence in the design of new government buildings and in the restoration of existing facilities. Edward A. Feiner, the first to hold the title of chief architect at the agency in more than 50 years, is overseeing the process. Feiner revised GSA's competitive architect selection procedures so that government project experience no longer is the primary bid ranking factor. Now world-class architects are lining up to bid for government contracts.

"The culture of the organization has become exceptionally supportive of design," Feiner says. "This is not a program or an effort try to make things excessively expensive. It is really an attempt to try to get the best presence in communities by the government and to build a mutual respect between the citizens and their governmental institutions."

Already the General Services Administration has won several awards, including a Presidential Design Award that Tipper Gore presented in October to GSA Administrator David J. Barram and architect Michael Barber for the restoration of the Byron White Courthouse in Denver.

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Good Neighbor Policy

Edward Goldstein — Sun, 01 Feb 1998 00:00:00 -0500

SA is attempting to use federal resources to enhance inner-city economic and community development with the "Good Neighbor" program. The initiative involves opening up federal buildings to public meetings and offering up federal space for activities like farmers' markets, festivals, exhibits, restaurants and shops. Last year, GSA hosted more than 5,000 community events and activities in federal buildings and plazas.

GSA is also entering into business improvement district contracts with 12 cities to purchase services such as sidewalk cleaning, building maintenance and non-uniformed security through local businesses. Public Buildings Service Commissioner Robert A. Peck says this process is important because "it creates a different attitude about the federal government . . . and a different view on the part of our federal building managers, who are as good or better than any private-sector building managers I've seen, but who often don't think they are part of the community."

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