The 2017 presidential inauguration may be a year away, but The Partnership for Public Service is debuting its plan to make sure the transition runs smoothly.
The nonprofit announced its Center for Presidential Transitions on Jan. 20, an effort to help the next administration streamline its ascension to The White House.
“There is an expectation that the nation’s newly elected president will hit the ground running, but the transition of power and knowledge from one president to another has traditionally been rushed and chaotic, resulting in delays in filling key jobs, policy blunders and management missteps,” said Partnership president Max Stier, in a statement.
“A lack of thorough preparation could put the nation in jeopardy and seriously impede the progress of a new administration.”
To assist, The Partnership for Public Service assembled an advisory board of six policy experts who have planned and run the very transitions being studied, including George W. Bush’s former chief of staff Josh Bolten, Bush-Cheney transition executive director Clay Johnson, Obama-Biden transition advisor Ted Kaufman, former Utah governor and chairman of the Romney Readiness Project Michael Leavitt, former Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty and former Clinton Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala.
The Partnership will also release its Presidential Transition Guide, a research paper co-authored with the Boston Consulting Group, which recommends that the 2016 candidates begin their transition process in the spring of this year.
According to the report, candidates should have a transition chairman in place the first week of April, followed by a transition office in May. With a team in place, it should begin identifying administration policy objectives and appointees to carry them out.
The early groundwork should allow for an agency to plug-and-play the White House staff and top 100 agency leads on Inauguration Day, the report said. Three-hundred more positions could be appointed by August 2017, if candidates start now.
And while such preparations, carried out in the midst of primaries and before party conventions, may seem like wishful thinking, the Center for Presidential Transitions advisory board said it’s a wise candidate that starts the transition process now for the sake of their legislative agenda.
“Some may view such early preparation as presumptuous, but the days of candidates attacking each other for ‘measuring the drapes’ should be over. The global security environment and wide range of domestic concerns demand that the next team start preparing as soon as possible,” the group said in a letter to the presidential candidates.
The Partnership for Public Service said the Center for Presidential Transition will serve beyond the 2016 election year to study and advise on the most effective ways for future administrations to take the reins of the federal government.
