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Many things collapsed on September 11 — among them,
Americans’ indifference to government. As if the earth
had opened at our feet, we were shaken into seeing that our
daily safety and well-being rest on a foundation of government
workers: police and firefighters, airport and other transportation
officials, translators at the CIA, epidemiologists at the
CDC, postal workers, and so many more. “During times
of peace and prosperity, unless you’re getting a Social
Security check or filing your taxes, you don’t see the
government doing anything,” says Elaine Kamarck, Kennedy
School lecturer in public policy. “Ironically enough,
that has the perverse effect of making people feel government
isn’t that important when it’s functioning well.
But in a time of war, you see what the federal government
does; you can see the Marines on the ground around Kandahar
and the FBI tracking down anthrax.”
Will this renewed respect for government — after decades
of being attacked by ambitious pundits and politicians —
help end what’s being called its “human capital
crisis?” As was covered in this magazine’s Spring
2001 issue, government faces the imminent retirement of the
Kennedy generation of civil servants: over the next four years,
53 percent of today’s federal government workers and
71 percent of senior managers become eligible for retirement.
Will September 11 inspire young people to come to the aid
of their country…by signing up for civil service careers?
Maybe — but maybe not, if the government doesn’t
remake itself into a better employer. Fortunately, at the
Kennedy School and elsewhere, concerned observers both inside
and outside government are tackling red tape, arcane rules
and regulations, and stifling management practices in the
hopes of welcoming new talent and revitalizing government.
September 11: young people respond
with patriotism and service
Young people, like all of us, were shaken and moved
by the events of September 11. This fall, when the Institute
of Politics surveyed American college students, 71 percent
said they had donated blood, given money, or volunteered in
relief efforts; when asked what kinds of jobs they were considering,
more than 50 percent said they were looking at careers in
government and nonprofit organizations. Perhaps that’s
not surprising: in 2000 and 2001, 60 percent and 69 percent
respectively reported that they had volunteered in their communities
in some way. This generation has been training since childhood
to give, with community service requirements for high school
graduation and a belief that college admissions offices look
for volunteer work. Many stay involved after discovering the
satisfactions and friendships that come from organized good-deed-doing.
Says Harvard undergraduate Trevor Dryer, a co-chair of the
IOP survey project, “Community service starts young:
you’re doing canyon cleanups in elementary school. It’s
very satisfying to do something direct and tangible.”
What’s new is that, since September 11, this desire
to be involved is being channeled into an interest in politics
and government. According to the IOP survey, trust in government
jumped dramatically, from 36 percent in 2000 to 60 percent
in 2001. “Just here in the IOP, since September 11, we
have seen a major increase in attendance for study groups,
forums, suppers, and all our other gatherings,” said
David Pryor, former senator from Arkansas and the institute’s
director. And according to Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye,
Jr., compared with this time last year, applications to the
Kennedy School’s MPP graduate program have increased
by 50 percent.
For many, this is the first time politics has come to seem
personal and urgent, rather than cynical and meaningless.
“I was surprised that Congress could actually work together
to pass a relief bill so quickly,” admitted Dryer. “My
parents said, ‘Of course, in times of real crisis the
country pulls together.’ But I hadn’t seen that
before in my life. Our generation had only seen gridlock and
scandal, lots of ideas and nothing getting done. Now we’ve
seen a small window of bipartisan effort that has shown that
government can be very effective. This makes young people
much more eager to be involved.”
Harvard undergraduate Erin Ashwell, the IOP survey project’s
other co-chair, was surprised to find that she and her friends
are now considering careers in government. “Some friends
I would never have expected it from are now looking at jobs
in the FBI, CIA, NSA,” she says. Was this shift due to
the economic downturn or to September 11? Both, Ashwell believes.
Dryer adds that, because of the slowing economy, his friends
had already planned to apply to graduate or professional schools
rather than look immediately for jobs in business, as they’d
expected as freshman — but, since September 11, they
are closely considering entering either “government or
nonprofit public service.”
Can idealism be channeled into
government careers?
The “or” in that last sentence is crucial. Far more
than was true in the Kennedy era, the MP3 generation’s
talented idealists can select from a long menu of public service
employers: nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, university projects,
media organizations, and even innovative businesses. Angela
Calman MPA 2001 explained that when she came into the Kennedy
School Mid-Career Program from broadcast journalism, “I
wasn’t necessarily looking to go into a government job;
I was looking at the broader idea of public service. I was
thinking: What kind of contribution can I make in my career?”
While Calman published a passionate Boston Globe op-ed
this summer lauding public servants, she has since taken a
job as chief communications officer with the Cleveland Clinic
Foundation.
That array of opportunities for the high-minded may be good
for the world, but it’s bad for government recruiting.
During a recent panel discussion at the Kennedy School, “Look,
Ma, I’m a Bureaucrat,” Dean Nye reported that the
proportion of Kennedy School graduates going into government
has dropped precipitously. “In 1980, three-fourths of
the MPP class went into government at various levels,”
he said. “By the 1990s, that had declined to one-third.
If bright young people, good and able, aren’t going into
government service, we suspect we won’t have a government
as good as we need. There’s been some improvement since
9/11, but not enough.”
One serious roadblock has been government’s image. Passionate
and dedicated young people might be willing to forego money
for meaning, taking lower salaries to enter to do good rather
than sell goods — but not if they have to spend their
lives under a flickering bank of fluorescent lights, stifled
by layers of seniority, dully punching time cards until retirement.
Unfortunately, that’s precisely the image government
has as an employer, according to Carol Chetkovich, an assistant
professor of public policy and author of Winning the Best
and Brightest: Increasing the Attraction of Public Service.
They think that taking a government job means, Chetkovich
says, that “they would spend their lives in a cubicle
represented by the lower left-hand square on an enormous organization
chart, where they would be digesting information, writing
memos, and passing them along to someone else.” Can you
imagine a less attractive prospect for what student Erin Ashwell
calls “the instant gratification generation” —
instant-messaging, MTV’d young people who like community
service “because if you pick up trash in a park, you
can see the results?”
Updating government
HR practices
How can the paper-pusher image be changed — especially
since it is occasionally (perhaps more than occasionally)
accurate? Jane Fountain, associate professor of public policy,
explains. “Civil service rules and regulations were built
in a time when the assumption was that someone would get a
job after college and graduate school and would stay with
that organization, whether a private firm or a federal agency,
for most of his or her career. Careers don’t work that
way any more. We need to change the rules and regulations
built for that era. The way pensions and benefits are crafted,
the ways that people are vested, the formulas for advancement
and promotion — all these things have to be reexamined.”
And so the Kennedy School is hosting initiatives designed
to change both the image and reality of government as an employer.
One is the Partnership for Public Service, founded by a major
gift of $25 million from Connecticut businessman Sam Heyman.
Another is an Executive Session on the Human Capital Crisis,
convened by Kennedy School Professors Elaine Kamarck and Steve
Kelman. Its members from government include Senator George
Voinovich (R-OH), who is making the “human capital crisis”
his personal mission; congressional representatives Danny
Davis (D-IL) and Connie Morella (R-MD); key federal personnel
managers from such agencies as the Office of Management and
Budget; and the heads of the two major civil service unions.
Also involved are innovative personnel executives from the
private sector, including Jeff Taylor of Monster.com and academics
such as Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School, Rosabeth Moss
Kanter of the Harvard Business School, and Paul Light of the
Brookings Institution.
Both the partnership and the executive session are asking:
What would have to change to make government the employer
of choice and to entice eager young job seekers to start banging
down the doors of, say, the FDA or the Department of Transportation?
The first answer is: better marketing. “The difference
between the way business sells jobs and the way government
sells jobs is night and day,” said Kamarck. “Business
competes for talent fiercely.”
Executive session member Moss Kanter of the Harvard Business
School notes, “When the private sector feels there’s
a competition for talent, they put a lot of resources into
going after people, including ways to make the job fun and
exciting.” Those foosball tables and caches of foam toys
really did (and still do) exist in many high-tech offices.
Then come personal meetings with the company’s top dogs,
signing bonuses, fast-track training programs, and so on.
Government agencies can’t offer all of the above —
but they could recruit at public policy and law schools as
early and aggressively as do private firms. As a first step,
the Partnership for Public Service is posting all government
jobs on its Web site (www.ourpublicservice.org), so
that they’re easily searched. The partnership is also
hoping to offset the vision of civil servants as paper pushers
by finding those who’ve made a difference in the world
and trumpeting their stories.
Meanwhile, instead of business’s black T-shirts and
groovy Aeron chairs, what government agencies can sell is
the importance of the work — potentially as awe-inspiring
as standing in the Lincoln Memorial or under the Capitol dome.
Said Chetkovich, “For people who want to make a social
contribution, I can’t imagine anything more important
than solving public problems. If you compare the challenge
of helping some firm sell more of its product to the challenge
of, for instance, reforming the post-apartheid South African
police force into an appropriate institution for a democratic
society, which would be more challenging, interesting, and
rewarding?”
Erica Swift, a State Department fellow in the Mid-Career
MPA Program, seconded that idea in her remarks on the “Look,
Ma, I’m a Bureaucrat” panel. “You’re working
in an atmosphere where the news is created; you’re helping
to shape the news; you’re standing in the midst of history.
No other sector can give you that. I didn’t realize this
until September 11. Being here in Boston, I didn’t know
what was going on; it made me long for Washington even more.”
While working as a foreign service officer in the U.S. embassy
in Gambia, Swift discovered that “people in other countries
see diplomats as the president’s representative. That’s
an awesome responsibility, and it’s amazing for someone
my age to have that.”
But marketing government as a meaningful career choice won’t
help if candidates’ first encounters snarl them in spiderwebs
of red tape. For too many job seekers, just applying for a
position takes months. Chetkovich reports on “exceptionally
talented” candidates who wait so long for the right paperwork
to come through that they finally give up and take private
sector jobs.
And, observers agree, mid-level civil service jobs need to
be opened to job seekers who’ve been in nonprofits or
business. Calman, like many public policy students and graduates,
says that while it’s not in her immediate future, “I
can absolutely see myself working in the government. I could
imagine going back in after 10 or 15 years and contributing
what I’ve learned in the private sector. That would be
my test: Could I really contribute something significant?”
But civil service regulations don’t make it easy to come
in and out of jobs at the middle levels. Says Fountain, “We
need to build a more permeable membrane into and out of the
government.”
Recruiting and hiring are just the beginning; future meetings
of the executive session will concentrate on how to develop
and reward talented employees. “I want to work in a place
where I feel I am being invested in, that they’re interested
in me as a person, not just as an employee,” said Mike
Jung MPP 2003 on the “Look, Ma, I’m a Bureaucrat”
panel. “If I can feel a strong cultural commitment for
the organization with which I work, I can give my best work
and best energy.” Public policy students, reports Chetkovich,
overwhelmingly believe they’ll get more chances to learn,
do, grow, and lead outside of government.
And sometimes they’re right. As Fountain observes, “At
Ford or General Electric, an HR staff quickly identifies high-potential
managers and makes sure they get the exposure and tools they
need to be prepared to step up when the company has openings
or needs at the next level. There’s very little of that
in government; it just hasn’t been done.” Members
of the executive session, the Partnership for Public Service,
and others are researching “oases of best practices”
in government management, and thinking about how to reward
innovative, hard-working civil servants.
Change is on its way
The good news: attention is being paid. This year, for instance,
the General Accounting Office put the “human capital
crisis” at the top of its annual list of high-risk issues
facing the federal government. Various agencies have ordered
hundreds of copies of Chetkovich’s report. Senator Voinovich
and Representative Morella have introduced legislation to
reform and streamline civil service regulations. Those bills
were examined in great technical detail by a variety of government
representatives, union and management and legislative alike,
at the first meeting of the executive session.
“September 11 has given us a window of opportunity to
change the way the government recruits, hires, and holds onto
its talent,” concludes Kamarck. “If we can make
these changes quickly enough, we can really take advantage
of this patriotism to build the next generation — a fantastic
generation — in the government.”
E.J. Graff is author of What Is Marriage For? The
Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution and
a contributing editor at The American Prospect.
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