Editor's Notebook

oo rarely in our society do women reach the top ranks of major institutions. Yes, there has been progress. But still, the upper echelons remain male-dominated. Even today, only one in five Senior Executive Service members is female.

To its credit, the Clinton administration has made a point of giving women prominent roles. Prominence does not always translate to success and, as in any endeavor, experience counts. Those who have come to their jobs with long records of work and achievement in the public sector have done best. Two women who exemplify that point appear on our cover this month.

Donna Shalala has served more than five years as Secretary of Health and Human Services, giving her the record for tenure in the job. June Gibbs Brown is arguably the most experienced and distinguished inspector general in government, having come to her current IG post at HHS after serving in equivalent jobs at the Interior and Defense departments, NASA and the Navy's Pacific Fleet. Together they have overcome obstacles inherent in the relationship to cooperate in developing strong programs to curb the fraud that pervades Medicare and other HHS programs.

With justifiable pride, Shalala likes to say she is an institution-builder. Her partnership with Brown has produced innovative ways of funding the battle against scandalous fraud that saps people's faith in government's ability to administer programs. As this suggests, Shalala cares about management. She has built a strong team at the top of the department, and has taken care to replenish the ranks below as well, as government's largest employer of Presidential Management Interns. She has a finely honed sense of the desirable and the practical in large institutions, having served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, and as assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration, among other posts in the public sector.

Energetic and passionate about everything she does, Shalala has championed the new Children's Health Insurance plan, worked to bring child immunization rates up to record levels, led the fight to curb young people's use of tobacco and fought for more resources to combat AIDS. She was relegated to an advisory role in the administration's first-term health care reform debacle, and was on the losing side in the debate on a welfare reform bill she thought should be vetoed. But she easily casts off such setbacks, confident in the knowledge that she is in a position to fight and win another battle another day.

Shalala in 1993 insisted that the White House let her choose her own IG, and then recruited Brown. In a profile four years ago, this magazine characterized Brown's life as a "Horatio Alger story for late-20th century women." A single mother who worked in subsistence jobs while raising four children and earning college and graduate degrees, Brown did not qualify for a professional government job until her late 30s. Deeply experienced in government, and devoted to public service, she has proved at HHS to be an exceptional IG by dint of her willingness to go beyond her law enforcement duties to help design systems that prevent fraud. These two women set the standard for cooperation between the Secretary and the IG in government today.