Letters

Don Williams, a white male with 10 years of service with the Agriculture Department's Cotton Division, complains that he has been passed over for promotion on 30 occasions ("Stuck in Reverse," July). While blaming affirmative action for his alleged misfortune, he provides little details.

Mr. Williams, like many pundits in the media, condemns affirmative action for every imaginable malaise affecting this country. The truth of the matter is that affirmative action did not cause the economic problems confronting the American middle class today. The export of American jobs overseas by multinational companies, together with the signing of international agreements, the decline of labor unions, and downsizing initiatives in the federal government, are the real culprits for the bind that we are all in. Unless we-the women, the minorities, the socially and economically disadvantaged, and, yes, the white males-work together to come up with an economic scheme to offset the decline in wages and growth of poverty, we will all be in trouble in the future.

The President has said that affirmative action, when it is done right, includes the following: no quotas; no discrimination, including reverse discrimination; and no preference for people who are not qualified for any job or other opportunity.

The affirmative action programs that Mr. Williams has in mind would have a negative impact on the careers of many employees. To begin with, Mr. Williams cites his 10-year tenure at the Agriculture Department's Cotton Division as the only justification for getting promoted. Seniority does not make an applicant better qualified for a position, since one could be brain-dead and still be receiving a paycheck. Mr. Williams does not indicate whether he even applied for the 30 positions he claims he was non-selected for, whether he was qualified for them, or, most importantly, what were the selecting officials' reasons for not selecting him. According to Mr. Williams' erroneous interpretation of affirmative action, applicants do not need to put down their qualifications; just their race, ethnicity or gender would suffice. This, of course, is not what affirmative action is all about. The President had the right idea in mind when he said, "When affirmative action is done right, it is flexible, it is fair, and it works."

Moreover, Mr. Williams does not state whether he has filed any discrimination complaints if he felt discriminated against. Clearly, Mr. Williams is not going to get judicial relief by writing a letter to your magazine. His cryptic letter only provides an inkling of Mr. Williams' bias against affirmative action.

Jorge E. Ponce
Burke, Va.

Not So Divided

In the July issue, Government Executive published a letter from Deane H. Zeller, an employee of the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management. Mr. Zeller used his title and the agency's name in his letter. The BLM wants to inform readers that Mr. Zeller was speaking as a private citizen, and that his opinions are not representative of the leadership of the BLM.

As the culture of the public land user has evolved over time, so should the makeup of the BLM's management team. If we are to survive as a society, then the BLM, like other public institutions, must have leaders who reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of modern America.

BLM managers are, in fact, a diverse, energetic group of leaders whose talents and dedication have enabled our agency to fulfill its land management mission. These managers include a woman who was a major contributor in our implementation of the President's Pacific Northwest Forest Plan, which broke the legal gridlock that had virtually halted federal timber harvesting in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Another key manager is a man with nearly 30 years of experience who has helped bring the Alaska Pipeline into compliance with environmental safeguards. And still another is the first African-American deputy director and state director in the BLM's history, who has helped forge a highly successful partnership with a Fortune 500 recreation-oriented corporation.

The BLM conducted a survey last year of more than 7,000 customers to determine how we are doing in providing customer service and what we can do to improve such service. The survey found that our customers think we are doing a good job in responding to their information requests; in maintaining campgrounds, visitor centers, developed trails and other facilities; and in explaining and enforcing the terms and conditions of grazing permits and other authorizations. This is not to say that everything is perfect, but the survey does underscore our agency's commitment to good customer service.

Moreover, the BLM has received several Hammer Awards from Vice President Gore, who recognized federal employees for cutting red tape and making government work better for less cost.

The BLM has succeeded because we appoint only qualified people to fill our positions. We do this while making sure our workforce reflects the ethnic and racial diversity of the American people, on whose behalf we manage the public lands.

Mike Dombeck
Acting Director
Bureau of Land Management
Washington

Profitable Solution

Michael Hammer's description of the modern organization (Reengineering and Reinvention Supplement, September) is certainly believable for the private sector, but it cannot be directly applied to the federal bureaucracy. Primarily the private sector organization must be profitable (productive) or it will die, but who has ever heard of a federal agency that had to make a profit to succeed? Productivity is simply an abstraction in the federal sector.

Perhaps a key to this problem is provided by John Kamensky when he says public sector organizations must distance themselves from traditional accountability to the President and Congress. Mr. Kamensky also cites OMB and GAO but these are simply extensions of the President and Congress, respectively. This distancing can only be done through less reliance on the federal budget, and more reliance on outside income, such as user fees. But Congress is unhappy with the concept of user fees because it makes agencies more independent.

I envision a successful government organization that would rely totally on user fees (no appropriated funds). It is only at this point where the true customers' (taxpayers') wishes can be dominant. It is also at this point that the government organization can realize its ultimate goal of independence by becoming a private sector organization. This is true downsizing of government.

James Champy describes several changed organizations which he cites as evidence of progress toward reinvention. In reality these are examples of stagnation. The government bureaucracy is very adept at defeating change strategies. When forced into "change," the bureaucracy makes peripheral changes which appear to be compliance but instead are a measured type of resistance. David Osborne called them "islands of innovation in a sea of bureaucracy." Like true islands they are isolated from the main organization to assure that their new cultural norms do not infect the organization as a whole. The bureaucratic strategy is to isolate them so that when this exercise is over the organization can remove the "island" and go back to "business as usual."

These examples do not show evidence of organization-wide cultural changes which would be required for long-term change.

David Osborne does not take into consideration the fact that political appointees may want change, but their career managers do not. Why would a careerist want to change a system in which they already succeed and supplant it with an organization in which they may not succeed? The strategy of the career manager is then to create these "islands of innovation" so that when the political appointees leave the organization will operate as it always has.

You may think my analysis of these articles and strategies is cynical, but look at all of the change rhetoric of the past 50 years, and the results. Nothing has changed. Reinvention is seen by the career bureaucrats as just another storm to weather.

Robert E. Rieck
Meteorologist
National Weather Service Forecast Office
Sterling, Va.