Search

Byline: Brian Friel Collaboration-minded feds discover that getting agencies to work together is easier said than done. Earlier this year, a human resources specialist at a federal agency put out [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Formal classroom training isn't the best route for many federal workers. Let's say your boss has given you the job of setting up your office's Facebook page [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Career civil servants can't be expected to make all the hard decisions. Civil servants can make decisions that are better for the long-term good of the country [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Opening the book on government operations could cause major headaches for federal managers. Earl Devaney has launched a revolution. A transparency revolution. Devaney has spent his career [...]

Byline: Brian Friel For many, the age-old jokes about government work are no laughing matter. Twentieth-century humorist and actor Will Rogers spent a good part of his career poking fun [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Four tried-and-true ways to trim fat from your office budget - and avoid being asked to cut from the bone. The general budget freeze President Obama proposed [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Don't pick a number, any number, when setting goals for your office. Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration announced a goal of reducing the ranks of [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Why are the happiest workers in government so happy? Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, has been on something of a one-man mission during the past decade to give [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Good managers don't just listen, they respond and act. In 2004, a Justice Department section chief went to the head of her division, an assistant attorney general, [...]

Byline: Brian Friel There are good and bad ways to recognize employees. In December 2001, Federal Aviation Administration chief Jane Garvey announced that the agency would not be issuing executive [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Oversight is a necessary evil, but only when it helps managers do their jobs better. In 1916, a bit of public administration history was made. The Bureau [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Here's a new way of thinking about government programs. People make bad decisions all the time. They make unhealthy food selections, choices that hurt their wallets and [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Assessing program performance is harder than one might think. It's been 15 years since Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act, a law whose sponsors hoped [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Many of the problems that the federal bureaucracy has created or found itself embroiled in could have been avoided or fixed had key agencies collaborated in advance. [...]

Byline: Brian Friel The next generation of federal executives has begun its ascent. The nonprofit sector has boomed over the past three decades, growing faster than either the government or [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Are lawmakers better at dishing out accountability than taking it? Two former U.S. representatives were locked up in federal prisons in the last 18 months for corruption. [...]

Byline: Brian Friel What happens when a manager does it all his way. Bill Proenza was the National Hurricane Center director who never dealt with a hurricane - at least [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Some say mobility would make senior executives better leaders. The government encourages but does not require senior executives to move among agencies to gain leadership experience. Most [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Low faith in government can make managers' jobs harder. On June 28, a bill promoted by President Bush and a bipartisan group of senators to deal with [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Justice officials learned the hard way why blindsiding employees is a bad idea. On Dec. 7, 2006, a subordinate of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Michael Battle, executive [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Serious bureaucracy needs a good kick in the funny bone. Ten years ago, Vice President Al Gore issued an annual report on his reinventing government project. It [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Federal workers answer to the Constitution. Every morning on the way to work, I walk across a section of a university campus. On a black metallic fence [...]

Byline: Brian Friel To compete, agencies must collaborate all over the map. More than a year and a half after its publication, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's book, The [...]

Byline: Brian Friel How much should federal managers let faith be their guide? Many leaders say faith plays a central role in their decisions. In a debate three weeks before [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Systems thinking gets planners to consider the downstream effects of decisions. Systems thinking is becoming more and more commonplace across government. One convert is the Army Corps [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Rating schools under the No Child Left Behind Act has produced mixed results. Now it's time to grade the law itself. Joel Klein likes the 2002 No [...]

Byline: Brian Friel It's not only what you say, but how you say it that makes a strong leader. Watching the retrospective coverage of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Little fixes can make a big difference in public satisfaction with government services. A manager at the Defense Commissary Agency - the military's supermarket chain - once [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Even the smallest choices can have huge effects. The recent ceiling collapse that killed a motorist in Boston's Big Dig and the failure of New Orleans levees [...]

Byline: Brian Friel If a call for change comes from the ranks, does it really make a sound? Mid-level managers have many ideas for improving their agencies. They have been [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Agencies should put themselves in their clients' shoes. The University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index has dispelled many myths about how well federal employees serve the [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Good leaders know when to crack down. The recent public showdown between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and some retired generals cast light on Rumsfeld's tough-guy management style. [...]

Byline: Brian Friel It's all right to be wrong. The FBI Laboratory's Latent Print Unit is a jewel of the American criminal justice system, contributing to the identification and convictions [...]

Byline: Brian Friel At 70, the Federal Register really could use a makeover. The Federal Register turned 70 this year. It even got a birthday cake at the Government Printing [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Intelligence and law enforcement agencies topple the information barrier. The failure of the federal government to catch the 9/11 hijackers before they could carry out their attacks [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Attorney General Alberto Gonzales balances tough action with an amiable management style. In his first year in office, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has provoked controversy by advocating [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Pentagon change agent's legacy sets Defense leaders on a new course. In one of his final interviews before his death last fall, Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Employees who are kept out of the loop feel betrayed and become less productive. One strength of many federal workplaces is the camaraderie - and even sense [...]

Byline: Brian Friel We've got a plan for planning. Now let's make a plan for doing. When then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge announced in January that the department had completed [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Some agencies shined under the federal cloud of Hurricane Katrina. Two federal agencies seemed to burn brightest in their roles dealing with Hurricane Katrina: the Coast Guard [...]

Byline: Brian Friel The first step in disaster teamwork is having someone you can depend on. When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in 1989, then-Police Chief Frank Jordan [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Defense John G. Grimes Chief Information Officer (Designate) Assuming some pension-related concerns are worked out and the Senate confirms him, John G. Grimes will become assistant secretary [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Office of Personnel and Management Janet L. Barnes Chief Information Officer Of the two dozen original chief information officers who were appointed in 1996, only Janet L. [...]

Byline: Brian Friel State W. Robert Pearson Director General of the Foreign Service, Chief Human Resources Officer What W. Robert Pearson is not is as interesting as what he is. [...]

Byline: Brian Friel State Sidney Kaplan Acting Chief Financial Officer Once the subject of numerous reports decrying it as a management backwater, the State Department has in the past five [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Office of Personnel Management Clarence C. Crawford Chief Financial Officer He's worked at the Office of Management and Budget, the old General Accounting Office, the Patent and [...]

Byline: Brian Friel General Services Administration Emily W. Murphy Chief Acquisition Officer Emily W. Murphy became the government's central buying agency's central buyer at a time of great upheaval. The [...]

Byline: Brian Friel After the work is done, reviews are crucial to a team's success. Think of your work as a four-part process. First, you plan what you're going to [...]

Byline: Brian Friel When the power of suggestion sets off a series of unfortunate events. In March 2003, radio personality Armstrong Williams gave a business proposal for promoting the 2002 [...]

Byline: Brian Friel Why feds tolerate bad behavior from the boss. Blowing the whistle or challenging a boss' actions is always a tough call. Many federal managers and employees might [...]