Agencies run by career execs get better management grades

In the days after political appointee Michael Brown resigned from his perch as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency amid questions about his qualifications, a new report from Princeton University finds that career federal managers do a better job of running their agencies than their politically appointed counterparts.

The study, from David Lewis of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, uses scores from the Bush administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool-a set of 30 questions devised to help budget examiners write formal program evaluations-to determine which managers are achieving best results. He then used biographical data on the 245 bureau chiefs graded by PART to find explanations for differences in results.

Lewis' central finding is that the politically appointed bureau chiefs "get systematically lower management grades than bureau chiefs drawn from the civil service." Two qualities among career executives chiefly account for the discrepancy, he found: more experience within the specific bureau they head, and longer tenures.

The study finds that political appointees on average have more education, more private-sector experience and more varied management experience, but that these factors do not correlate with better performance.

FEMA, Lewis writes, has an "appointee-laden management structure" that "by almost any count…has a large number of appointees for its size." His study found that in agencies run by political appointees, 10 to 33 percent of other executives are appointed, while in offices run by career officials, only 3 percent are appointees.

The PART grades managers in four areas: program purpose and design, strategic planning, program management, and results. Out of a combined possible score of 100, the study found that career managers' programs were on average five to six points higher than those run by appointees. Lewis adds that "these results may underestimate the real differential between appointees and careerists if the Bush administration evaluates programs administered by its appointees more leniently than other programs."

On the White House Web site, President Bush writes that "the success of the Bush-Cheney administration will depend on the quality appointees we choose to join us to lead this nation in the years ahead. I will look for people who are willing to work hard to do what is best for America, who examine the facts and do what is right whether or not it is popular."

Lewis, however, suggests that "one means of improving the management of federal programs is to reduce the number of appointees."

He said he used statistical controls to make up for the fact that many political appointees run programs that are larger and more expensive, therefore harder to manage. He also found that Senate-confirmed, as opposed to Senior Executive Service, appointees have lower management results.