Sharing Your Story

If any of you are taking some time off over the holidays and are so inclined, there's a new project up and running to collect the stories of government workers to combat negative attitudes the public has towards government. Called I Am Public Service, the campaign follows both the Office of Personnel Management and the National Treasury Employees Union in trying to humanize federal department and agencies.

I've often though an apt metaphor for public perception of federal employees might be a kind of reverse Picture of Dorian Gray. Rather than hiding away a portrait that ages and is corrupted while Dorian stays forever young, the public has an image of the federal workforce that fluctuates with the current mood, but that frequently bears little resemblance to the actual lived experience of feds on the job. I don't know how to bridge that divide in perception, but I'm always interested in what individual people's experiences have been. So if you do post over at I Am Public Service, let me know, so I can point our readers there!