The Buzz

John Kerry's Re-Reinvention

John Kerry and John Edwards took a trip down memory lane after the Democratic National Convention this summer to come up with a series of proposals to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.

In early August, Kerry released a government reform plan in which he pledged to "thin out the top ranks of government by restoring the governmentwide target of no more than one supervisor per 15 subordinates." That target was set under the Clinton administration's Reinventing Government initiative.

At an appearance in Alexandria, La., Edwards talked up the proposal, saying the Bush administration had "layered on a whole crowd of supervisory people in government," according to a report in The Washington Post. "We don't need any more supervisors . . . We got to get rid of these people," said Edwards.

Federal labor union leaders were quick to praise the proposal. National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley said she was "pleased that a presidential candidate is even looking at this." But Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, which represents top career executives in federal government, was less enthusiastic. "Clinton beat them to it," she said of the Kerry-Edwards proposal. Besides, Bono-saro said, "My strong impression is that in a lot of agencies, there is no so-called bench strength. Their executives are reluctant to go on vacation."

The Kerry Plan

• Set a target of one supervisor for every 15 employees.
• Reduce the number of contract workers employed at agencies by 100,000.
• Freeze the federal travel budget.
• Reduce the government's fleet of 387,000 vehicles.
• Eliminate the Office of Thrift Supervision.
• Consolidate 70 different federal statistical agencies into one entity called Statistics USA.
• Merge Commerce Department telecommunications agencies.

FOIA Frenzy

The annual report is compiled based on FOIA reports from 15 federal departments and 73 agencies. The report found that more than half of the record increase was due to an unusually large number of requests received by the Social Security Administration-about 705,000, or more than double those of the previous year. The majority of the increase occurred at Social Security field locations, where FOIA activities have been enhanced by a recently instituted automated system, the report said.

Lights, Camera, Terror!

In one of the more imaginative changes, the CIA is having its analysts meet with science-fiction writers and Hollywood directors and screenwriters-"people who are known for developing the summer blockbusters or hit TV shows that often have a terrorism theme," CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Jami Miscik said. "It was an attempt to see beyond the intelligence report and into a world of plot development."

Intelligence officials also told the committee of the need to foster an environment conducive to analytic risk-tasking within their various agencies. "To truly nurture creativity, you have to cherish your contrarians, and you have to give them the opportunities to run free. Leaders in the analytic community must avoid trying to make everyone meet a preconceived notion of the intelligence community's equivalent of the man in the gray flannel suit," Miscik said.

ON THE RECORD: Michael Styles

On supervisory ratios: I am disappointed to see a recommendation to visit the failed policies of the "reinvention" efforts of the previous administration. We have seen firsthand the detrimental effects of an arbitrary manager-to-employee ratio of 1-to-15. We have real-life examples today of managers at the Social Security Administration supervising upwards of 50 employees as a result of such arbitrary downsizing. This one-size-fits-all approach does not take into account the uniqueness of each agency's mission and program needs.

On contractor cuts: Since the early 1990s, the federal workforce has been reduced by more than 400,000 civil servants in exchange for a much larger shadow government of contractors. I am pleased to see that Sen. Kerry and Sen. Edwards intend to examine the number of contractors doing work for the federal government. This has long been a concern of FMA's-the government's inability to track the contractor workforce, its performance and its promised savings. Public-private competition can be a useful tool in saving taxpayer dollars if utilized properly. However, yet another arbitrary number to reduce the amount of contracted work does not take into account the mission and function of any agency.

On recruitment and retention: With nearly 60 percent of managers and supervisors eligible for retirement in the next three years and 50 percent of all federal employees to become retirement-eligible during that span, the conversation must no longer be shaped by this long-standing misconception that government waste lies in the hands of the employees serving our country and doing the daily work of America. How do we plan on recruiting bright and talented civil servants-and then retaining them-when every knee-jerk reaction to the issue of fiscal discipline revolves around the issue of cutting civilian jobs?

Taxing Victories

First, employees won a contest involving 550 full-time equivalent positions at the agency's three distribution centers, which fill orders for IRS publications and maintain a stock of the agency's products. But to do so, they submitted a plan to close centers in Richmond, Va., and Rancho Cordova, Calif., and to eliminate jobs in Bloomington, Ill. The decision will result in a total loss of about 270 workers.

The in-house team found that the need for IRS paper products is decreasing significantly, says Raymona Stickell, director of the agency's Office of Competitive Sourcing. Work is expected to decline at a rate of 6 percent a year, she says, as citizens pull documents from the Internet and rely more on computer software packages.

In the second contest, employees with IRS' Modernization and Information Technology Services won a competition for 278 technology positions at 10 offices across the country. But to maintain an edge over private sector bidders, the in-house workers proposed cuts of 218 jobs.

Currently, 19 to 36 technology employees work at each of the 10 offices. Under the in-house plan, the IRS will reduce the IT workforce to five per location. The other 10 employees staying on board will work on quality control and program management.