Keeping secrets, building nations, hunting bargains and paying back

Pointing Fingers On Hiring

It started on Friday, June 4, when OPM hastily called a press conference to unveil a report that concluded agencies are using few of the tools given to them to improve their hiring efforts. Such tools include on-the-spot hiring, recruitment programs for college scholars and veterans, and incentives for talented recruits.

Marta Brito Perez, OPM's associate director of human capital leadership and merit system accountability, hinted that the report called into question the need for additional personnel reforms. "What else do you need if what you have, you're not using?" she asked.

On Monday, June 7, at a House Government Reform subcommittee field hearing in Chicago, the General Accounting Office unveiled its own survey of federal chief human capital officers, who reported that a lack of OPM guidance is one of the biggest barriers to swifter, more effective hiring.

The studies show there's lots of blame to go around, says Chris Mihm, GAO's managing director of strategic issues. "This isn't an issue where we need to point fingers," Mihm says. "There is plenty for everyone to do."

Top Five: Who's Hiring

• Defense: 35,289
• Veterans Affairs: 14,812
• Treasury: 8,565
• Homeland Security: 5,856
• Justice: 5,749

Whose Reviews?

Waxman insisted that there is already "quite a bit of planning and reviewing" of programs, and the bill had some "significant flaws" that would cause him to vote against it "reluctantly" if they were not fixed.

Waxman offered an amendment requiring the program reviews be done by the agencies rather than OMB. He and other Democrats said OMB in some cases actually knows relatively little about many aspects of the programs and sometimes had a different view from Congress, which created the programs, on how they should be run and their objectives.

In early June, the House Government Reform Committee approved the bill, despite its rocky passage.

The Bush administration already has developed its own tool for rating the performance of federal programs. Administration officials said earlier this year that they were open to formalizing the process in law.

Blame Hollywood

"The nation can hardly succeed in this inevitably long and arduous struggle if our popular culture-our media, our entertainers, and even many politicians at home and abroad-continues to spread the perception that the need for homeland security is a contrivance, a snare and a delusion," Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said in a speech in Washington last month.

Cox singled out a new film by director Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, saying it presents a "warped view" that terrorists would be justified in further attacks because the United States is responding aggressively on all fronts to terrorism. The film received the longest standing ovation in the history of the Cannes International Film Festival last month, according to Entertainment Weekly. The film was released nationally on June 25 by Lions Gate Entertainment and IFC Films.

ON THE RECORD: Lt. Gen. William J. Lennox

On the surge in applications to West Point: From the applications we are receiving, I see a tremendous generation out there that wants to participate in America's war against terrorism. In the last two years, the applications have been up tremendously. We're getting in the neighborhood of 12,000 applications a year for admission to the U.S. Military Academy, of which we can accept only 1,200. Quantity is up, but so is quality. The average SAT scores of applicants over the past two years have gone up 20 points. The average is 1,280.

On new applicants: My psychologists tell me that this generation is a lot like the World War II generation. They're family-based, value-based and they want to participate in the defense of their country. I go out recruiting, and I see children raising their hands and saying, "I want to be a part of this." . . . The one population I'm having trouble with is African-American males. Their numbers have dropped. [Black men are] 5.1 percent of the Class of 2007 compared with 8.3 percent of the Class of 2004. But this is a population with choices. We're starting to see a real struggle to get quality African-American men in here.

On the war's effect on faculty: We have a new concept in sabbaticals. We're sending out our faculty to Iraq and Afghanistan. They've set up military academies in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Col. Mike Meese [of the Social Sciences Department], an economist, went to the 101st Airborne Division to help them stand up capitalism in Mosul, in Northern Iraq. The dean and some faculty members were at Baghdad University helping them open up again.

On graduates leaving the military after fulfilling their minimum commitment: There are corporations out there right now-General Electric, Home Depot and others-that actively recruit West Point graduates. As long as we provide them a challenging lifestyle and are rewarding them professionally, I think we can keep them. I don't think this is a group that is necessarily after cash.

Too Many Tickets

GAO has previously reported widespread abuse of individual employee travel cards, which work like credit cards. But the agency's latest research indicates that problems of waste and abuse extend to travel items, most notably airline tickets, bought using centrally billed Pentagon accounts.

From 1997 to 2003, the Defense Department paid as much as $100 million for plane tickets that went unused, Gregory Kutz, GAO director of financial management and assurance, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. His estimate is based on data provided by five major airlines and the Bank of America, where Defense holds its central credit card accounts.

In fiscal 2001 and 2002 alone, the Pentagon paid at least $21.1 million for nearly 28,000 unused tickets, the data shows. These figures likely under-estimate the true extent of waste, Kutz told lawmakers, because the financially strapped airlines lacked incentives to fully report tickets that were not used.