3: Administrative Leadership

Achieve a better balance between political responsiveness and competence in leading public organizations.

Other Information:

This set of memoranda will discuss whether effective public administration can occur in such a highly politicized environment, and whether the “giants” of public administration will continue to exist. Specific recommendations will be given to try and achieve a better balance between political responsiveness and competence in leading public organizations. Memo Overview: A President is elected every four years, but he or she does not run the government alone. Thousands of political appointees must be appointed to lead the departments and agencies of the executive branch. These appointments depend on an elaborate process of recruitment, confirmation, mastering their offices, and working with career executives to implement the president’s priorities and execute the law. But the political appointee system that developed over the course of the 20th century is broken in several important ways. From 1984 to 1999 only 15% of the top appointees of the new President were in place within two months of inauguration. In the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, about 50% of the top 75 national security appointments remained vacant on May 1, and 85% of the top sub-cabinet positions in legislative, legal, management, and budget officials remained empty. These months are of crucial importance for formulating and launching presidential initiatives at the beginning of a term. Causes for these delays in filling positions, include inadequate pre-election planning, inadequate human resources devoted to personnel, slow recruitment and vetting, multiple information forms to be filled out by candidates, and the flood of applications for jobs after each election. Once filled, these positions often empty out before the end of a President’s term, leading to agency inaction, confusion of civil servants, and lack of accountability. In addition, the expanding role of political appointees, combined with their increasing numbers, has led to the underutilization of the career services, with serious program delivery consequences. The memos below make a number of recommendations to alleviate the above problems. If the President and Congress put these recommendations in place, we will see significant improvements in the management of the government and the delivery of services to the American people.

Stakeholder(s):

• James Pfiffner: Chair & Co-author -- James P. Pfiffner is a University Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He is the author or editor of twelve books on the presidency and American Government, including The Strategic Presidency: Hitting the Ground Running and Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution. He has worked in the Director's Office at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and is a NAPA Fellow.


• Dwight Ink: Co-author


• David Lewis: Co-author


• Anne O'Connell: Co-author

Objective(s):

3.1: Political Appointees

3.1.1: Planning

3.1.2: OPP Director

3.1.3: National Security Posts

3.1.4: Background Material

3.1.5: Background Information

3.1.6: OPP

3.1.7: Confirmation Unit

3.1.8: Political Appointees

3.2: Interaction

3.2.1: Political Appointee Practices

3.2.2: Political Appointments

3.2.3: Career Development

3.2.4: Mobility

3.3: Political Appointees

3.3.1: Senate-Confirmed Positions

3.3.2: Focus

3.3.3: Schedule C Positions

3.4: Vacancies

3.4.1: Holds

3.4.2: Fast Tracking

3.4.3: Deference

3.4.4: Tenure

3.4.5: Orientation & Training

Content