Good morning. And thank you, Kathleen [Keeney], for that kind introduction. I would also like to thank Joe Stix, Director of our Philadelphia Service Center, for his outstanding efforts and contributions to the PMI program's success.

Over the past five years, we have reached out to more and more schools every year to find the individuals who will make the Federal government a truer reflection of the rich diversity of American society than ever before in our history.

Because of your varied backgrounds and experiences, I know you will bring different ideas and new insights, more and improved means of dealing with the many challenges we face as a nation, and as a leading member of the global community.

We have great women and men here, who will lead our Federal community well into the 21st century. But, part of greatness is recognizing what we owe to the efforts of others, and you will only succeed by energizing and mobilizing the power of the people who serve with you in the Federal government.

When he took office in 1993, President Clinton charged Vice President Gore to fulfill his vision of creating a government that works better and costs less.

One of the Vice President's efforts is the Blair House Papers, which contains three great principles for better government, which I'm sure all of you have been practicing during your tenure as PMI's: Deliver great service; foster partnership and community solutions; and reinvent to get the job done with less.

And it contains real-world advice for how to succeed.

Advice such as: "Front line workers know more about the work and how to improve efficiency than managers in Washington." In other words, go to the people who get it done every day to find out how to get it done better.

Eight years after the Clinton/Gore Administration began, we have the smallest Federal workforce in more than three decades we have trimmed down by more than 330,000 positions. And, we have balanced the Federal budget for the first time in almost three decades.

It is essential to all of us to keep that momentum going. That is our task. If we are to continue to make our government better, and that has been the great task of our nation since its creation, we must improve our service to the American people.

We have always worked to attract to Federal service the most outstanding graduate students, from a wide variety of academic disciplines. Students who expressed an interest in, and a commitment to, a career in the analysis and management of public policies and programs.

Your assignments as PMIs involved domestic and international issues, technological changes, criminal justice, health research, financial management, and many other fields in support of public service programs.

Our various Federal departments and agencies provided each of you with challenging and innovative assignments. You worked hard. And I know your work has been noticed and appreciated. I also know it will not be forgotten.

In fact, as the Director of the Federal government's human resources agency, I can say, with certainty, that every single cabinet department and more than 50 federal agencies have hired Presidential Management Interns in recent years, to some really great jobs. Of the nearly 5,000 people who have participated as PMIs since the program's inception, more than 60 percent have chosen to remain in public service.

Why are you so sought out? The answer is simple. In a downsized and increasingly more complex and constantly evolving government, it is ever more important that we have the best leaders, the best workers, the best team we can possibly assemble. In other words, we want -- we need -- YOU, the best and brightest, to be a part of our public service team.

Assembling that team -- and taking proper care of it -- is one of OPM's core purposes.

As you know, we at OPM are committed to protecting the integrity of the Federal workforce. We work very hard to insure our workforce is competent and professional through adherence to an open, and merit-based, recruiting, hiring and promotion system.

Today, we oversee 1.8 million Federal executive branch employees, and more importantly, from your perspective, we help recruit new Federal employees around the world.

Right now, one of our major concerns is how to build upon the lessons of the past in regard to Federal human resources, and make the changes necessary to achieve the President's and Vice President's goals of making public service better fit the needs of the 21st century.

And, what will the 21^st century workforce look like? The workforce that you will help us lead?

The plain and simple fact is that the world of work has changed significantly in recent years.

The "information revolution" is not just a catchy term that sounds nice in a marketing brochure. It is a reality, and it the Federal government and Federal employees have to live with it as a reality. And it will shape what our Federal workforce looks like, but more importantly, how it works.

More and more information is becoming available to an ever-expanding number of people around the world at an ever-increasing pace. New technologies, new work environments, new needs for skills and learning, all these changes are having a deep impact, at work and at home, in societies around the globe.

Rest assured, the demands of the Information Revolution will make it pretty much impossibly for those organizations that cannot, or will not, adapt to the new global realities of the 21^st century to survive, let alone thrive.

Organizations are already learning that they must adapt to changing missions and become more diverse and more flexible.

In the years ahead, organizations will no longer have a permanent workforce, or even a temporary workforce, instead they will have what I call a "situational workforce." Needed work will be done by a blend of core employees in cross-functional teams and by temporary employees, consultants, and contractors, when necessary.

Full-time, lifelong jobs doing the same things over and over are already disappearing, and instead, employees are increasingly being called upon to be generalists, with a wide variety of skills and with the tools to survive and flourish at many different tasks and in many different environments.

Fewer jobs will fit into a neat job description, that is very narrow and specific in scope. And our core government employees will be called upon to perform one role today and another tomorrow.

Obviously, this has significant implications for how skills and competencies are valued, how salaries are set, how performance is evaluated, and how learning needs are assessed and met.

Organizations will have to look at the bottom line and weigh how they invest in their people. They will have to create a workforce where people have specialized knowledge, but not to the point where they are not adaptable. All employees must be capable of adapting to changing organizational needs.

The way work is organized is also being affected by the speed of change. Work processes are increasingly driven by what employees know -- that is to say, how the work is done is increasingly dependent upon the level of knowledge the employee brings to the job. And employees are constantly improving on how they do their jobs for the American people because they are constantly learning.

The more knowledgeable an employee is across disciplines, the better job she or he can do, and the more valuable she or he becomes.

The result of this trend is that the distinction between working and learning is becoming blurred. Part of every employee's job is to keep learning about the ever-changing work to be performed. The Clinton/Gore Administration realizes this, and has made lifelong learning a priority in its efforts to improve the Federal workplace.

Another trend we see is that Federal government operations and decision-making authority will continue to be decentralized.

For example, we are constantly working to promote partnership to empower front-line employees and give them a greater say in problem-solving and workforce improvements. I know this seems obvious given what we know about how the world of work is, but it has not always been the case. We simply must work in partnership to be successful.

We must also find ways to promote the potential of our employees. Making them more knowledgeable, more adaptable, and better able to meet changing needs

The fact is, I remain committed to developing the full potential of our current workforce. It is good for the employees, good for morale, and good for the bottom line. . I believe we have a tremendously capable workforce that--if given the tools--is capable of true greatness.

Another change we will see is that Federal agencies will shift from the hierarchical, Industrial Era structures that we are familiar with to "inter-networked" structures that improve and integrate service delivery and improve the design of government.

Where and when work is accomplished will increasingly be driven by customer and employee needs. The growth in telecommuting and working from home will continue. As well as expanding traditional work hours to meet the needs of our customers -- customers who have their own work schedules and family obligations.

Middle management will continue to experience shrinking ranks and changing roles. The manager's role will become more that of a leader, a coach, an enabler, and a teacher rather than a giver of assignments and evaluator of performance.

But, through all of this, we must ensure that we never as an organization lose sight of the people involved. The business of government is still the business of people helping people, after all.

With that said, let me offer some words of caution:

We have to guard against work being divided into smart jobs and dumb jobs, thus dividing the workforce and society into "haves" and "have nots." If there is one thing I know, it is that all of our employees are valuable, and must be treated that way.

We will have to cope with skill obsolescence that leads to job displacement and organizational restructuring.

Technology literacy is now required in almost all occupations, and this constitutes a special challenge for us in keeping employees up-to-date on current applications.

In fact, for the individual, survival and success in the distributed, high tech workplace depends on her or his ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn.

That, in and of itself, is quite different from past workplace learning and development challenges.

Workers' values are also changing in America. Workers may be loyal to their profession, but as their employers become less loyal to them, they are also becoming far less loyal to the organizations they work in than they were a generation ago.

One element of this phenomenon is that workers have come to expect that their employer should address their learning needs. And, they will choose those employers that provide them with the most educational opportunities.

Learning has become an economic and pocketbook issue for employees. The fact that unions are increasingly interested in the training needs of employees shows that there is broad acceptance that training and learning are vital to success for all employees.

These trends in the nature of work and in the workforce constitute significant challenges. We are changing to meet the ever-shifting environment of the new, leaner, more efficient Federal government and giving agencies the personnel tools necessary to meet the challenges of a new millennium while respecting the hard-learned lessons of the past.

We have been working hard to provide those tools over the last decade. We have introduced many changes that have made a real difference in these areas. For example, the delegation of examining to agencies, an automated data base of all government jobs that is open around the clock, and a flexible framework for performance appraisal that supports individuals and teams.

But, as with most things, our job is not done. We need more tools and strategies that meet the challenges of today's workplace. And we need people to take advantage of the tools that are already there.

There are two essential components to improving what is already a pretty darn good civil service.

First, we must have flexible performance and pay systems that support high performance, and encourage employees to do their best;

And, second, we have to be able to create flexible recruitment and hiring systems that permit alternative selection procedures, authorize agencies to make direct job offers in critical areas -- like information technology -- and permit use of non-permanent employees, with appropriate benefits, to expedite adapting to workload and mission shifts.

All stakeholders have an equal stake in embracing these changes in the civil service. The merit system will -- as it absolutely must -- remain the basis of all improvements to our civil service, but we cannot be afraid to try new things and experiment with new processes.

One of our challenges is to assist each stakeholder to confront their apprehensions and embrace the opportunities that some changes will bring. It is up to us to change the way we do business, and reap the improvements in service that will follow.

Our mission is too important, our opportunities to great, to accept anything less than constructive engagement and cooperation.

And thats where each of you comes in. You must be part of the team. As the old saying goes, "Be part of the solution, not part of the problem"

In order to lay the foundation for what I am certain will be illustrious careers in public service, you need to understand why and how the current systems have evolved. As PMI graduates, you have already been given a great opportunity to gain the background understanding that many public servants never have an opportunity to obtain. You are extraordinary people who have shown that you can excel in virtually any situation.

But remember: to those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Right now, we expect you to be agents of change. We need innovation. We need improvement. We need you to lead it.

Remember the wheel has already been invented. If you dont know the status of what has come before and why things are the way they are, you could waste a lot of time rebuilding something that those who came before you already finished. So take advantage of the opportunities in front of you. Well all benefit from the new and improved Federal government you help us create.

You enter public service in the early days of the 21st century. You will soon be leading our government in ways now unimagined except, perhaps, in your own imaginations.

Your contributions, large or small, count individually and collectively, in determining the direction we will take as a nation. So remember, working both harder and smarter is imperative as we face the challenges of today and tomorrow. On behalf of the President and Vice President of the United States, and the American people, I thank you for joining us.

You are the future of our Federal government. I know the American people can count on you to help make that future government into the best, most efficient, hardest working government ever. Thank you and congratulations.

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