Author: David S. Reed

Dear Bureaucrat, my boss doesn’t reward me

Dear Bureaucrat,

I’ve been doing the same job for three years, and I’ve learned how to keep everything running smoothly so no problems reach the higher-ups. If it wasn’t for me, there would be some train wrecks that would look bad for our agency. But my boss doesn’t appreciate me. I get basically the same treatment as everybody else who isn’t a problem employee. Meanwhile, the people who work on senior executives’ pet projects get awards, first pick of travel and training, etc., even though they’re not accomplishing much. How can I get the recognition I deserve?

Signed,
Ms. Cellophane

 

Dear Cellophane,

You’re right, employees who work on the pet projects of the most powerful people in an organization are treated better. One reason is that their efforts are more visible to the people who decide who gets what. Another reason is that senior officials are disproportionately concerned with their signature projects, compared to the regular work of the organization. Their egos and their future job prospects depend on whether the projects they are personally identified with are seen as successful. So they lavish the organization’s resources on their pet projects, including bonuses and other recognition to recruit, retain and motivate the people working on them. The official also benefits from a “halo effect”—by rewarding employees who work on the pet project, the official helps spread the story that the project is successful and important.

One strategy for getting more recognition is… Read the rest at   https://www.federaltimes.com/opinions/2019/04/04/dear-bureaucrat-how-can-i-get-the-recognition-i-deserve/

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Dear Bureaucrat, Should I Get an MPA?

Dear Bureaucrat,

I’ve been working as an assistant investigator in a public defender office for nearly two years. I like it, and I want to continue a career helping people caught up in the criminal justice system, but there is no room to promote me in my agency. Should I go back to school for a Master in Public Administration so I can move ahead in my career?

Signed,
Woodrow W.

 

Dear Woodrow,

It makes sense to get a graduate degree. Other ways to learn can be more efficient, such as books, web courses, or classes outside a degree program. But the degree will make employers more comfortable with hiring or promoting you. You face three decisions; which degree, which school, and full time in-person classes versus a different format.

An MPA or an MPP (Master in Public Policy) is not necessarily better than [Click here to read the rest in Federal Times]

Dear Bureaucrat, My Job Wants me to Lie

Dear Bureaucrat,

I supervise a procurement team. Every month, I’m supposed to sign a form acknowledging “responsibility to authorize and approve only essential obligations and expenditures.” But I can’t know whether each item we purchase is essential. Many of them are highly technical. I told the person in finance who collects the forms that I can’t judge whether any purchase is essential, but she said every account manager needs to sign the form and that includes me. I talked to my boss, and he told me to work it out with finance. I don’t like making these false certifications. It’s not ethical and I’m afraid it sets me up to catch the blame if it turns out one of the technical managers is requisitioning things we don’t need.

Signed,
George “Cannot Tell a Lie” W.

 

Dear George,

You are not alone. Government work often pressures us to make certifications that we cannot know the truth of, or that we know are false. Wong and Gerras did a frightening study of the need for Army officers to lie routinely. For example, they found commanders were required to certify their troops completed 297 days of mandatory training, when only 256 days were available for training.

The pressure to certify something you cannot know is more than an affront to your personal ethics. It is an excuse for your agency to not apply real controls that would prevent unnecessary purchases. It is also one more brick in building an agency culture where dishonesty is viewed as normal and necessary.

So what can you do? There’s the idealistic way, the popular way, or the subversive way…

Read the rest of the answer in Federal Times at https://www.federaltimes.com/your-career/the-bureaucrat/2019/03/07/dear-bureaucrat-my-job-wants-me-to-lie/

Send your question to DearBureaucrat@PubAdmin.org

Dear Bureaucrat: An advice column for people who work in the public sector

Dear Bureaucrat, My job wants me to lie.
Dear Bureaucrat, Should I get an MPA?
Dear Bureaucrat, My boss doesn’t reward me.

These are some of the problems the new advice column Dear Bureaucrat will answer. The answers are based on practical experience and peer-reviewed research, and sometimes they will be controversial. Who else would advise, “consider letting a little crap hit the fan”?

I’m looking for questions to answer in the first few columns, so send yours to DearBureaucrat@PubAdmin.org  Anonymous questions are fine, and we won’t print your name even it you give it.

New Movies about Government Workers’ Side Projects

New documentaries from the U.S. and Canada show government workers with creative careers on the side.

Some government jobs offer so much opportunity for accomplishment that they are worth more-than-full-time effort. But more often the opportunity of a government job is to put in a modest level of effort, leaving time for family responsibilities or side projects. Filmmakers in the U.S. and Canada have just released documentaries about the creative side projects of government workers.

The American production is Creative Feds, which features two government workers who are musicians on the side. It shows each performing with their bands at festivals, dances, and in one case a National Public Radio show, demonstrating that these side projects are not mere hobbies, but serious commitments that have met with some success. (Screenings of Creative Feds are listed at http://creativefeds.com/screenings/ )
jeniffer-playing-300x199
Jennifer Cutting in Creative Feds

The Canadian production is a web series entitled The Secret Lives of Public Servants. Three episodes have been released so far, featuring government workers who on the side are an artist, a comic book creator and a cosplayer. All the episodes touch on the tension between the workers’ creative side projects and the conformity expected in their government jobs. This is particularly the case for the artist, Marc Adornato, whose art is explicitly political and triggered a police investigation of one of his public performance projects. (The police report concluded that performance art is not a crime.) The episodes are available at http://amenjafri.com/2017/11/19/the-secret-lives-of-public-servants/
marc-adornato-300x1691
Marc Adornato in The Secret Lives of Public Servants

The filmmakers for both of these projects said part of their motivation was to show the public that government employees are full human beings, rather than the stereotype of faceless bureaucrats. But there is a more important message for public sector workers ourselves. We do not need to wait until we can afford to leave secure government jobs before seriously pursuing our ambitions, whether they are artistic careers like the people portrayed in these documentaries or any other aspirations. A government job puts some constraints on our side projects, in terms of time, conformity and otherwise, but the documentaries show that we can work around those constraints.

Case Reports and Open Source Work Products in Public Administration

Public administration practitioners can be more successful if we learn from each others’ experience and inventions. We can look to medical doctors and to software developers for two ways practitioners can learn from each other.

The first way is case reports, as are published in medical journals. A case report is a description by a practitioner of a situation she encountered, what she did about it, and the results. Case reports are different than the case studies used in public administration teaching and scholarship. Case studies focus on the information about a case that illuminates a technique being taught or a theory being considered, but one value of case reports is presenting specifics that do not fit any existing framework. For example, AIDS research started with a case report of an inexplicable case of Kaposi’s sarcoma. Another difference is that case studies are typically by a researcher who was not involved in the events, while a case report is by a practitioner who handled the case.

A second way is open source work products. The narrowest definition of open source is disclosing the human-readable “source code” of a computer program. But open source has evolved a broader meaning, in which any type of work product is shared publicly, so that any interested person can contribute improvements to it. The work products that public administrators could make available to each other for open source collaboration include procedures, position descriptions for personnel, statements of work for contracting, and any number of other artifacts we produce and use in our practice. Center for Public Administrators is experimenting with open source collaboration on “annotated work instructions” as an alternative to ISO 9000. (See Project on Annotated Work Instructions.)

For more about case reports and open source work products in public administration, see my article in Public Administration Review (paywalled) or the open access version.

Increasing Citizen Engagement and Access to Information, Part 3

3. Don’t Panic about Guerrilla Government

Among the citizens who are most knowledgeable about an agency’s issues, and likely to care about them, are the agency’s own employees. In the past, government employees engaging as private citizens were viewed as a problem, so-called “guerrilla government”.[1] But technology is making off-the-clock engagement by government employees both inevitable and productive.

It is inevitable because technology makes it easy for government workers to engage across the silos of agency hierarchies. Email lists and on-line forums link workers across government who specialize in accessibility for disabled persons, data science, and any number of other functions.[2] This encourages workers to identify with the mission of their professional specialty, not only the wishes of their supervisors. Technology also facilitates engagement among geographically dispersed workers. In June 2016, 51 State Department diplomats stationed around the world issued a joint memo dissenting from U.S. policy in Syria. While dissent memos in the State Department are not new, the number of employees who collaborated on this one was unprecedented, and gave it more influence.[3]

Engagement by government workers outside their jobs is productive in several ways. They can create innovations on their own time that official channels won’t. For example, the database that allows searching Inspector General reports across federal agencies is not a government project. It is a volunteer project led by a government employee on his own time.[4]

Workers engaging outside their jobs can make an agency more attractive to employees, potential employees, and constituencies. The General Services Administration’s “18F” innovation office is noted for its employees’ copious interactions with the broader technology community through both official and personal blogs, tweets, conference participation, etc. Not all the unofficial communication will be on-message from the agency’s standpoint, but the overall result is to encourage talented workers to join and stay, and to improve the public’s perception of the office.

A government leader observing engagement outside the job by her agency’s employees has some necessary concerns. Employees’ obligation to protect legitimately secret information must be made clear and enforced for their outside engagement just as when they are working. Employees should not give the impression they are speaking for the agency when they are not. But a government leader should not fight a doomed rear-guard action trying to suppress the fact that some citizens have different views than her agency’s official position, even some citizens who work at the agency.

Conclusion

Technology is making the walls between government and citizens more porous. Information flows both ways through the countless channels that the internet enables. For a government official, this is an opportunity to overcome entrenched practices and make her agency more effective and efficient. The risky strategy is to try to hold off disruptive improvement, like taxi monopolies trying to hold off Uber. That strategy would have a government leader sacrifice performance improvements for an illusion of control.

Footnotes

[1] Rosemary O’Leary, The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government (CQ Press, 2006).

[2] An incomplete list is at digitalgov, “Communities,” DigitalGov, November 17, 2013, https://www.digitalgov.gov/communities/.

[3] Mark Landler, “51 U.S. Diplomats Urge Strikes Against Assad in Syria,” The New York Times, June 16, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/syria-assad-obama-airstrikes-diplomats-memo.html.

[4] Eric Mill, “Opening up Government Reports through Teamwork and Open Data,” OpenGov Voices, November 7, 2014, http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/11/07/opengov-voices-opening-up-government-reports-through-teamwork-and-open-data/.

[You can find the complete paper from which this excerpt was drawn at https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hws4f/ ]