The Buzz

Seeking Success Stories

The Defense Department is enlisting a consulting company's help to plot a fresh strategy for marketing competitive sourcing, the controversial initiative aimed at allowing contractors to bid on government jobs characterized as commercial in nature.

The Pentagon has solicited proposals from companies to design a comprehensive plan for disbursing information about competitive sourcing, says Joe Sikes, Defense's director of competitive sourcing and privatization. In part, the company would provide advice on generating posi-tive publicity for the program, he says.

"Success stories" are vital to Defense's efforts to run job competitions under rules laid out in the May 2003 revised version of the Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-76, Sikes says. Lawmakers prevented the Pentagon from holding contests under the modified rules until officials completed a competitive sourcing report. The department fulfilled that requirement and has announced several contests under the revised rules.

In an Aug. 5 internal Defense Department memorandum, Sikes outlined plans that call on all Defense agencies to obtain permission from Sikes' office before publicly announcing or notifying Congress of A-76 studies, and to allow the Office of the Secretary of Defense to oversee various steps of the contests. Sikes says one goal is to break down resistance in the field to competitive sourcing. "The idea is that A-76 is not received well," he said. "It has a bad reputation sometimes."

But Jacqueline Simon, public policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, questioned Sikes' motives. "They've sort of thrown up their hands and [admitted] that they can't defend the indefensible," she says.

Border Agent Angst

A majority of border and customs officials surveyed this summer by federal labor organizations said they are demoralized and not getting the full support they need to protect the country.

Sixty percent of officials surveyed said they have very low or somewhat low morale, while 64 percent said they are not satisfied, or are only somewhat satisfied with the tools, training and support they have been given by the Homeland Security Department to fight terrorism. The survey, sponsored by the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Border Patrol Council, and the National Homeland Security Council, polled 250 Border Patrol agents and 250 Customs and Border Protection officers.

CBP spokeswoman Christiana Halsey calls the survey misinformed and biased. "It is not representative of the CBP front-line workforce," she says. "It's not a representative sample of the overall workforce."

Conditional Love

Most Americans view the federal government positively, but some enduring stereotypes still must be dispelled, according to a recent study by the Partnership for Public Service.

"Despite long-standing negative stereotypes about government work, the research shows that Americans have a favorable impression of the federal government," the report states. "Our research found that more than 62 percent of the American people we surveyed view the federal government favorably, and 91 percent say that the jobs and duties of federal government workers are 'important' in their lives."

The report also found that future federal recruiting should advertise the opportunity to help others and advance a career. The report called this "idealism that takes you places." Partnership President Max Stier calls the concept "savvy altruism."

"Unfortunately, that is not something that is well known outside of the federal workforce," Stier says. "People often look to the nonprofit sector when they want to make a difference, and not to the federal government."

The report also found that interest in federal employment is nonpartisan: Respondents from all points on the political spectrum indicated a fairly high level of interest. The largest roadblock for prospective employees, how-ever, is the perception that the government is mired in red tape.

Labels Matter

Percentage of people reporting positive impressions of the following:

Job Descriptions

Alienated

For nearly 60 years, federal officials and UFO enthusiasts have been at odds over whether a flying saucer crashed in rural Roswell, N.M. Despite the government's denials, UFO buffs insist that the rumored 1947 crash scattered alien bodies and saucer debris.

Now, according to an August report in the San Francisco Chronicle, New Mexico Governor and former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has written in a foreword to a new book, The Roswell Dig Diaries, that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never been adequately explained-not by independent investigators, and not by the U.S. government." He adds, "The American people can handle the truth-no matter how bizarre or mundane. . . . With full disclosure and our best scientific investigation, we should be able to find out what happened on that fateful day in July 1947."

A Civilian Shift, Too

Service members won't be the only ones affected by the Bush administration's August announcement that tens of thousands of troops would be shifted away from Europe and Asia and back to the United States within the next decade. Hundreds of civilian Defense Department jobs overseas also are likely to be eliminated.

"There probably will be some reductions in the numbers of civilians and contractors on the payroll by virtue of the fact that you will be closing or removing U.S. force structure from up to half, arguably, of the installations where we currently have force structure," a senior Defense Department official told reporters after the announcement.

The administration's plan would in-volve the largest realignment of forces since the end of the Cold War. President Bush said as many as 70,000 troops would be removed from Europe and Asia. The size of military forces will not change, however, only their location, Defense officials stressed.

"Over the coming decade, we'll develop a more agile and more flexible force, which means that more of our troops will be stationed at home," Bush said during a speech at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati. He said the move would mean more time at home for troops and fewer moves throughout their careers.

Defense officials have offered few details about which troops would be pulled or to which U.S. bases they would relocate. The Army is expected to withdraw at least two divisions from Germany, while more than 10,000 troops are expected to leave the Korean peninsula, officials said. Troop withdrawals would not begin until late 2006 at the earliest, and the movements could last a decade, officials added.

The senior Defense official said troops returning home probably would need a similar civilian and contractor staff to support their mission. As a result, the official said, layoffs are not expected because "there are jobs here in the U.S. where this force structure is going to return to."

Executive Raise Issues

Senior federal executives are starting to get a little uneasy about new regulations governing performance management systems at agencies. Under regulations issued by the Office of Personnel Management in July, agencies can use their discretion in determining whether or not to award raises to any executives. For years, the Senior Executives Association has urged Congress to lift the pay cap for senior executives, previously $145,600, because of pay compression in the SES ranks. More than 70 percent earn that salary. Congress did that, raising the cap to $158,100.

But at the same time, the law eliminated locality pay for senior executives and annual cost-of-living adjustments. And now, in order to raise base salaries above the old cap, agencies must demonstrate to OPM that they have performance management systems that make meaningful distinctions between executives.

Senior Executives Association President Carol Bonosaro is pleased that OPM did not set quotas on the number of executives who can earn top rankings and that the new regulations do not require agencies to tie executive performance rankings exclusively to agency performance. But she worries about a provision allowing agencies to reduce an executive's pay by as much as 10 percent annually. Now, agencies can only reduce pay for underperforming executives by 5 percent a year.

Most of all, Bonosaro says, she fears that agencies will decide not to fund raises: "Technically speaking, there is no requirement on them to give anyone a pay raise."