'Back-Door' Base Closures
Biden Talks Loss With Fallen Troops' Families
Neely Out at GSA
More USPS Buyouts
Gimme My Discount! Deals for Feds
Buyout Watch: Who's Offering What
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
The Human Factor
September 15, 2006 Numbers don't tell much about how well workers perform. In almost 50 years of working for and being associated with the federal government, I've read perhaps 100 articles that say government is finally going to get tough and demand rigorous performance evaluations that fit the statistical "normal distribution curve." Yet ...
Stop Outsourcing Know-How
September 1, 2004 The loss of in-house smarts leaves agencies too weak to effectively oversee contractors. Since World War II, the nature of the private sector and its relationship to government has been changing. During the Cold War, the United States developed a permanent military industrial base with the federal government as the ...
Managers vs. Leaders
July 1, 2003 e often talk of management and leadership as if they are the same thing. They are not. The two are related, but their central functions are different. Managers provide leadership, and leaders perform management functions. But managers don't perform the unique functions of leaders. Here are some key differences: A ...
The Numbers Game
May 1, 2002 Reality is complex and does not lend itself to neat abstract quantification when it comes to relating budgets to agency goals. hat does our use of thermobaric superbombs in Afghanistan have to do with the president's management agenda? The answer is plenty, and two management issues being discussed in Washington ...
Effectiveness vs. efficiency
April 1, 2001 lected and appointed officials have historically lauded the efficiency of businesses and urged government agencies to be more like them. These officials never seem to learn, however, that the private sector and public sector are fundamentally different. Public organizations don't necessarily operate less efficiently than their private sector counterparts, they ...
Restore the Human Touch
January 1, 2000 he huge institutions of American government are often depicted as populated by nameless, faceless bureaucrats. The problem is that there's truth in this characterization-largely as a result of hoary policies that have depersonalized the civil service. These policies have not been good for civil servants, nor for the public they ...
Savings Can Have a High Price
November 1, 1998 he current rage in the federal government is to contract out as many functions as possible to save money. The result might be savings, although that isn't always the case, but the concept ignores government's primary requisites-to be effective and efficient. In war, for example, it's useless to lose at ...
