I listened to an interview Bob Edwards had with someone (I didn’t catch his name) who was once a deputy director in the CIA, and also worked in the FBI. The topic, of course, was the 9/11 Commission, and what changes need to take place. Edwards asked about structural changes, which seems to be the concensus opinion for solution. The man disagreed. He said there needed to be cultural changes, and praised the FBI as an excellent law enforcement agency. The problem is that they are not attuned to intelligence issues.
I don’t know that structural changes aren’t also necessary, but a culture change is needed throughout the government civil service system. And it’s a bit different than this man probably envisions.
I never expected to ever work for the government again once I retired from the Air Force. When I was promoted to captain, I also received a Regular commission. I was admonished that accepting would mean fiscal drawbacks if I ever took a civil service job. I didn’t care. I didn’t intend to be a civil “servant.” Now I are one. It came about simply because I was doing contract work at a military facility, and they opened an engineering slot and offered it to me. I took the job with some trepidation because I had already been working in the facility, and had seen how work went.
I also worked closely with the FAA for the last seven years. If you’ve never dealt with a Federal agency, you would be appalled. Prescription drugs aren’t expensive because the drug companies are gouging us. Prices are high because of the overhead necessary to deal with the FDA, and the difficult, time-consuming effort required to get FDA approval. Aircraft parts are expensive for the same reason.
When a company decides it needs to purchase equipment or services, they analyze the up-front costs, expected benefits, and payback. Then they buy what they need. They tend to build relationships with vendors they trust, and go to that company regularly. The government does the up-front analysis. Then the real process begins. As an example, I put through purchase paperwork six weeks ago on a “hot” project. I’m still waiting for Legal and Contracting to finish their part.
And that’s not a slam on individuals. But the system is broken. Although if I were a lawyer, I might think otherwise. The intent is to avoid lawsuits from someone who didn’t get the contract. And in that culture, anyone in the loop can stop things from happening. For any reason. For no reason. It just stops.
I sat in on a phone conference meeting yesterday for 90 minutes. It drug on and on as people asked questions which nobody wanted to commit an answer to. Frustration. I ran a 350-man aircraft maintenance operation with 27 aircraft and their support personnel scattered around the world on various missions and training, and did it with a 30 minute meeting each day. Each day, we all walked out of that meeting with an understanding of the current status, and a plan for meeting the requirements for the next day and beyond. Yesterday, nothing was really resolved in an hour and a half.
Culture. In the corporate world, production and profit/loss drive decisions. In the military, production and mission drive decisions. In the civil service system, I haven’t yet figured out what really drives decisions. There seems to be an inordinate aversion to making wrong decisions, as if lives were on the line. But in the real lives-on-the-line world of the military, I never saw this reluctance. And there’s no fear of being fired for a wrong decision, because people don’t get fired in civil service. It’s a lifetime job.
I’m not sure this culture can be changed. It isn’t an issue of talent or competence. The engineers I work with are some of the smartest people I’ve ever known. Others around seem to be sincere and willing to work hard to get things done. The cultural change is going to have to come through the Congress and laws which make everything so difficult to do. That means the potential for making constituents mad. Someone doesn’t get a contract they wanted, and they call their representative. Someone files a suit, and it becomes the little guy versus the Big Bad Government. Some advocacy group gets the ACLU to file a suit. Everything is done to prevent that kind of thing from happening. Ann Coulter talks about this in a recent article as regards airport security. We don’t want to take the chance of being insensitive:
Last week, 9-11 commissioner John Lehman revealed that “it was the policy (before 9-11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory.” Hmmm … Is 19 more than two? Why, yes, I believe it is. So if two Jordanian cab drivers are searched before boarding a flight out of Newark, Osama bin Laden could then board that plane without being questioned. I’m no security expert, but I’m pretty sure this gives terrorists an opening for an attack.
Teddy Roosevelt was once the Civil Service Commissioner. He cleaned house. He made a lot of people mad. But, the average American loved him for it. Today he would have to fight the courts as well as politicians. I just don’t know that even Teddy could handle that.