Why Wait?

Since August, a large part of Scarlett's job as Interior's assistant secretary for policy, management and budget has focused on aligning the President's management agenda with her department's goals. In December, she briefed the President's Management Council on Interior's progress. The council, made up of the deputy secretaries at Cabinet departments, is designed to provide a forum for sharing ideas and addressing governmentwide initiatives.

One area Scarlett discussed with the council is integrating performance and budget. The first step, she says, is to adopt activity-based costing, a budgeting technique used to identify the full costs of an organization's activities. Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which already has a system in place, is training the department's seven other bureaus in the technique. At the same time, the bureaus are developing meaningful performance goals.

For example, Interior has worked on improving the goals for its program to encourage organizations to adopt wild horses and burros. "You have to have the accounting tools that don't just answer the question of 'Did I get 20 horses adopted?' which is the goal, but 'What was my cost of getting those 20 horses adopted?' " Scarlett says. "We can then start comparing field offices and start implementing best practices."

There are several keys to getting career employees to buy into the initiatives, says Scarlett. First and foremost is leadership. In an Aug. 3 memo to staff, Interior Secretary Gale Norton made the President's agenda a top priority. Scarlett created a deputy assistant position solely dedicated to implementing the initiative. Communication is another key. The department has a management council that meets regularly to share information.

It's also important to create incentives. The Secretary has increased budgets for activities that were well planned, Scarlett says, and considered scrapping funding for those that weren't. "What happened was people came back with well thought-out plans," she says.