WASHINGTON — A few relatively modest tweaks to the vetting and confirmation process would make public service more appealing to experienced private sector professionals and help attract top talent, a new report concludes.
The report, “Making Senior Government Service More Attractive,” by Business Executives for National Security (BENS), encourages presidential hopefuls to identify their desired candidates earlier during the campaign process so that critical national security positions don’t languish during the tumultuous transition between administrations.
The report focuses on four areas:
- Improving the efficiency of the selection process.
- Streamlining the vetting and confirmation process.
- Reducing the financial burden of public service.
- Codifying best practices so that institutional knowledge can be smoothly passed along to new appointees.
It produced 31 recommendations, including many that could be implemented rather simply via presidential directive or changes in Senate policy.
“BENS undertook this inquiry having observed the process from within government and because a number of BENS’ members considered serving but ultimately declined for personal and professional reasons,” the report states. “At the same time, BENS members have extensive managerial experience in the vetting and hiring of corporate executives and the constitution of boards of directors, corporate governance issues and business ethics.”
BENS President and CEO Norton Schwartz, a retired general and former Air Force chief of staff, who served as Chief of Staff of the Air Force and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed staffing problems firsthand during his time at the Pentagon.
“It became apparent that there were vacancies in senior civilian positions at the Department of Defense,” he told Defense News on May 1. “Even more pressing were the vacancies in the Department of Homeland Security.”
Schwartz wondered why, given the number of accomplished Americans who could serve in positions of trust, there wasn’t a deeper bench of candidates who could quickly be called upon to fill senior vacancies. The report, produced by a panel of defense industry executives, grew out of BENS’ efforts to identify the deterrents to public service.
Writ large, the recommendations urge presidential campaigns to prioritize the identification and vetting of candidates for the top 50 national security positions before winning the election, and to focus on filling key slots early during a new administration.
The report also urges the executive and legislative branches to streamline the vetting process by collecting information in a more uniform way to avoid duplicated effort.
“They can’t come to agreement on which kind of background data each wants,” said Paul Taibl, BENS’ vice president of policy. “It should be something that the government does and should make standard across the process.”
The report also recommends reconsidering a reconsideration of the remedies to potential conflicts of interest, and encourages the executive and legislative branches to produce a coordinated set of criteria, including more widespread approval and use of blind trusts. Forced divestiture can be a financial penalty for many candidates, creating a significant disincentive for mid-career executives to consider public service.
“It’s not that people don’t want to serve, it’s that we’ve made it very difficult for them to actually get to the position where they can accept the appointment,” Taibl said.
Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said the current system is hurting the public interest by discouraging many top applicants.
“We are creating a system that dissuades so much talent, there’s no question that we are hurting our ability to bring in the best and brightest,” he said. “What’s at stake is our national security, literally our physical security.”
Stier said he approves of BENS’ recommendations, calling them very concrete and doable.
“These are all things that are common sense,” he said. Adopting them “would make a consequential difference.”
Understandably, cCampaigns have shied away from picking potential candidates for top positions, not wanting to be viewed as presumptuous. picking out new curtains for the Oval Office before winning an election. But the Presidential Transition Act of 2010 now allows campaigns to start transition planning after the conventions instead of after the November election.
Now, the political risk to a campaign will not be appearing to be celebrating prematurely, but whether they can convince the American public that they are ready to govern by responsibly focusing on key positions, Stier said.
Michael Smallberg, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a government watchdog group, said there are already procedures ways in place, including waivers, for cases in which where ethics rules would create an unfair financial burden for potential candidates. Smallberg had not seen the BENS report, so he could not comment specifically on its recommendations. But overall, POGO supports stricter rules governing conflicts of interest and revolving door policies, not relaxing them, he said.
“There is certainly a case to be made that agencies and perhaps the Office of Government Ethics could do a better job of record keeping and collecting information from nominees in a standard format,” he said. “One simple recommendation would be to standardize the process across the agencies, and also make the process more open to the public. More transparency would help us determine whether the ethics rules are too invasive, or whether they need to be strengthened along the lines that POGO has recommended.”
The public already thinks that the government is too cozy with big business, which helps foster a general distrust of government, Smallberg said.
“We worry that the revolving door gives large defense contractors and other big companies too much power to sway the process in a way that damages the public interest,” he said.
Will Goodman, vice president for policy of the National Defense Industrial Association, said there is an unfortunate sentiment out there where people tend to assume that others people with a variety of professional experience should be disqualified for government service.
“In the broadest sense, it serves America best when people in leadership positions have a broad variety of experiences in their backgrounds,” he said.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter and his acquisition deputy Frank Kendall’s emphasis on Better Buying Power and their renewed focus on technological innovation is informed by their experience in the private sector, he said.
“They understand that there’s an unfortunate inversion in public investment in research and development and private investment in research and development,” Goodman said.
Email: aclevenger@defensenews.com
