U.S.
Office of Personnel Management
Speech by Director James B. King
FEMA Leadership Excellence Program
May 9, 1997
|
U.S.
Office of Personnel Management
|
Thank you, Kay, and good afternoon to all of you. It is a great pleasure and privilege to be with you today. Let me tell you three reasons why I am so pleased to be part of this ceremony.
The first is my great admiration not only for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but for your director, James Lee Witt.
Director Witt has taken an agency that had lost public confidence and in four years has made it a model of reinvented government, rejuvenated leadership, and outstanding customer service.
I doubt that any other Presidential appointee has done more to win respect and trust at the state and local level than James Lee Witt -- and the men and women who work with him.
President Clinton of course did something quite daring when he appointed James Lee Witt.
He took someone who had extensive experience in business and local government, and then had served for four years as head of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services, and put him in charge of a federal emergency management program that had never before been led by someone with emergency-management experience.
In short, he found probably the best-qualified person in America for a job that is crucial to millions of Americans in times of their most urgent need.
Qualifications -- what a concept!
Isn’t it amazing that no one thought of it before?
Of course, Director Witt knew there was nothing wrong with FEMA’s employees. But like a lot of agencies, you had suffered from what the Vice President calls “good people in a bad system.” That’s what reinvention is all about, improving systems and in particular improving leadership -- and by such innovations as your Leadership Excellence Program.
A second reason I’m glad to be here is that we at OPM played a role in the development of your Leadership Excellence Program, in that it focuses on the five leadership competencies that were developed and tested by OPM, based on our survey of more than ten thousand government mangers and executives.
Quite frankly, we’re delighted to see our work put to such good use -- this is a model of how we want to help improve leadership training all across government. Moreover, programs like this, as they are evaluated, will help us further refine the competencies in light of the real-life experiences of reinvention.
Finally, I’m proud to be here because your Leadership Excellence Program is such an excellent example of what the Clinton Administration’s reinvention of government is all about. We should view it that context, not only as an example of Director Witt’s leadership, but as an example of a broader, governmentwide pattern of change that President Clinton and Vice President Gore have brought about.
The President and Vice President set out four years ago to create a government that was smaller, worked better and cost less.
The Vice President directed the National Performance Review, calling to a great degree on federal employees for advice, and it provided a blueprint for change.
The most dramatic element of reinvention has been downsizing.
Between January of 1993, when the President took office, and January of this year, the most recent month for which we have complete figures, the federal workforce declined by about 308,000 positions, or by more than 14 percent.
These are impressive figures -- historic, I believe -- but just as important as the magnitude of the downsizing is the way it has been carried out.
By that I mean with concern for every employee involved.
A decision was made at the outset to use involuntary separations -- RIFs -- only as a last resort.
Instead, attrition was used as much as possible.
Beyond that, we used buyouts, more than 128,000 of them -- because in most cases they are less expensive than RIFs, because they are obviously better for the departing employees, and because they are also better for the morale of those who remain in the workforce.
Privatization has also been used as a downsizing tool. We at OPM are proud to have helped seven hundred members of our investigations unit start their own, employee-owned, private-sector investigations company. This was the first time a federal agency had used an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, to help its employees start their own company, and it can be a model for future privatizations.
To sum up, only ten percent of the recent downsizing was achieved by RIFs, and I think that was a major accomplishment.
Equally important is the fact that, despite a smaller workforce, efficiency and customer service have increased.
I believe we can attribute that paradox -- more results with fewer employees -- in part to the increased use of technology. And I don’t have to tell you at FEMA about that, since you’ve been pioneers in using computers to provide faster, better customer service.
But, as important as automation is, improved leadership is the key to reinvention. Automation is a tool, but leadership is the heart and soul of good government.
There is a saying that “Less is more.” That can be true in government too.
A smaller government can be a better government if we have leaders who are creative, determined to bring out the best in their employees, and employees who will respond to that opportunity -- as I believe they always will, and have in the past four years.
Just as FEMA’s reputation has dramatically improved in the past four years, so has that of government as a whole.
The Vice President recently cited a Roper poll which shows that public confidence in government, which had been in free-fall since the mid-1960s, has since 1993 rebounded by nearly ten percent.
One reason for this rising public support is that people understand that the government is smaller now and they also are starting to feel the impact of improved services.
Yet public opinion was also influenced by two events over which we had no control.
The first, a little more than two years ago, was the cowardly and criminal bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, which took 168 innocent lives and injured thousands more.
The news coverage that focused on the victims and the survivors became a indelible reminder to America that federal employees are not the faceless, feckless bureaucrats of political campaign fantasy, but are real people with real lives, real families, real blood to shed -- and important work to perform.
Then, the winter after the bombing, came two partial shutdowns of the federal government.
For some time, in some circles, it had been considered a good joke: We’ll close the government and no one will notice. Well, they closed the government and people did notice, because Americans received a blunt reminder of how many essential services they expect of their government every day of their lives.
Belatedly, the people who closed the government learned that the joke was on them.
For all these reasons, today’s federal government enjoys rising levels of public support -- and that is as it should be.
For whatever the ups and downs of political fashion or public opinion, one fact remains:There is no higher calling than to truly serve one’s country.
This is Public Service Recognition Week, and I cannot imagine an agency whose service is more deserving of recognition and respect than yours.You must deal with individuals, and entire communities, at moments of great stress, under intense scrutiny, realizing that any mistakes you make will be magnified many times by the pressures of an emergency situation.
The stakes are high, the risks are many, but many of us whose battles are fought in conference rooms and via e-mail must envy the front-line challenges you face.
I speak not only for myself, but for many others in our federal civil service, when I say that I am grateful to you for your service and proud to be your colleague.
You are what reinvention is all about.
You are the leaders of the government of the future.
Let me close with some words from John Kennedy’s Inaugural Address that I think are fitting for us and for this ceremony: “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His Blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”
Thank you.
###
The risk was if the new director did not do the outstanding job the American people wanted done. In that case, he would have been denounced as the President’s old pal from Arkansas -- they would have had no place to hide.
Web page created 8 July 1997.