Civil rights

As societal change was afoot in the 1960s as a result of the civil rights movement, the federal government addressed it with a slate of new legislation to stop hiring discrimination and provide opportunities to those who had been previously left out of the workforce.

Beginning with the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the federal government forbade discrimination in hiring and firing on the basis of race and sex. The law also set up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a regulatory body to police discrimination in the workplace. Later legislation gave the EEOC power to prevent prejudicial treatment on the basis of race, religion, sex, disability, age and other factors.

Affirmative action also developed over the course of the decade and came to prominence when the Nixon administration set goals for including more underrepresented groups in the workforce.

These efforts affected the makeup of the government workforce as much as any, with agencies serving as the touchstone in the U.S. for more inclusive workplaces.

“The federal government, as an entity, probably mirrors society better than any institution in American life,” said Donald Kettl, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and a a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We still have a long way to go. We have challenges in hiring and retaining Hispanic workers, for example. We have the further challenge of helping women break through glass ceilings in some agencies to get to some higher levels of leadership. Those are real problems and challenges, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

Recent statistics support that claim. In 2005, 31.8 percent of federal employees were minorities, as compared to 27.4 percent of civilian workers nationwide. Today, minorities represent 35.3 percent of the federal workforce, as compared to 32.5 percent of the civilian labor force.

Beyond its own workforce, federal government has significant influence over the contracting community, and has long used that influence to extend opportunities to segments of the population that face more challenges. The Small Business Administration offers various business development programs, instructing agencies to set aside portions of contract dollars to small disadvantaged businesses, including those owned by women, veterans and minorities. In 1973, the Rehabilitation Act prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability in programs run by federal agencies, programs that receive federal financial assistance, in federal employment, and in the employment practices of federal contractors. The AbilityOne was also created as the largest source of employment for people who are blind or have significant disabilities in the United States. More than 550 nonprofit organizations employ these individuals and provide products and services to the federal government via a prioritized contracting program. Furthermore, in 2013, the Labor Department set a hiring goal for federal contractors that 7 percent of each job group in their workforces should be made up of qualified people with disabilities.

As Carol Glazer, president of the National Organization on Disability noted: “Preventing discrimination and affirmative hiring are not one and the same.”

The federal employee strikes

The postal worker strike of 1970 and the air traffic controller strike of 1981 served as the definitive moments in the history of collective bargaining in the federal government.

Reverberations from the two strikes—which were illegal under federal law as federal workers are not allowed to strike—continue to define the government’s relationship with its workforce and organized labor.

The postal strike originated in New York in March 1970 and spread across the nation, eventually impacting more than 200,000 USPS workers and affecting the stock market. President Richard Nixon tried to break the strike by sending in the National Guard to operate mail services, but following continued negotiations, the strike ended after eight days.

The result was the Postal Reorganization Act, which made the USPS operate more like a corporation than a government office, and guaranteed collective bargaining rights to four postal unions.

While 1970 was a victory for federal unions, the 1981 air traffic controllers strike served as their biggest defeat.

The strike began in August, when 13,000 air traffic controllers from the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization walked off the job, seeking better work conditions. After ordering the controllers back to working, citing the illegality of the strike under civil service statutes, President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 of the strikers on Aug. 5, banning them from federal service for life.

The result was the complete collapse of PATCO, after the Federal Labor Relations Authority took away its right to represent federal workers.

Clinton lifted the ban in 1993, but only a sliver of the strikers returned to air traffic control jobs.

“The shadow of the air traffic controller strike is still very strong over not only the reality of the federal workforce, but also the underlying politics,” Kettl said. “There really is an underlying piece of this that is extraordinarily important in the relationship of government and its employees and, in particular, between government and public employee unions.”

Outsourcing of government

Bill Clinton’s 1994 Federal Workforce Restructuring Act sought to bring more efficiency to the federal workforce and lower the deficit by eliminating 273,000 positions by 1999. The law seemed to encapsulate a movement that began in the 1980s toward a leaner government more dependent on contractors to provide service and support.

It also capped agency budgets and authorized buyouts to spread the reductions across age and experience levels.

Kettl said the law signified a kind of end of skill-level services within the federal workforce.

“The blue collar workforce in the federal government has, not completely, but largely been contracted out,” he said. “So it’s very difficult to a federal security worker, a federal cafeteria worker compared to what was the case back in the late 1970s. So it has transformed the workforce.”

Kettl said, as a result, the GS-level jobs have focused more on managing contractors and higher-level positions, fundamentally reshaping the nature of federal work. Further, the law represented an anomaly between the Republican and Democrat administrations of the era, where defense spending by Reagan in 1980s increased the federal workforce, despite calls for a downsizing of government, and restructuring by Clinton in the 1990s pulled the numbers down again.

“The big downsizing happened during the Clinton years as part of reinventing government,” Kettl said. “And that ended up reducing the size of government significantly. But during the [George W.] Bush administration there was an increase in employment, especially because of TSA. So there is a paradox there.”

Civil service reform

The Senior Executive Service was created during the Carter administration as part of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, to provide the federal workforce with leaders that brought the executive management capabilities needed to transform government over time.

The creation of the SES and merit-based pay led to new pay structures and organizational changes, which occurred alongside the creation of the Office of Personnel Management, and placed executives just below the level of presidential appointees. And as noted by former White House administrator for e-government and IT Karen Evans, it also was a great equalizer. Suddenly there was a a structure that protected job status and promotion opportunities for all employees – even when they needed to be off for extended periods.

“There is a lot of flexibility for those employed by the government,” Evans said in a Federal Times story on the changing role of women in government. “In the private sector, could you be off for six months with a pregnancy and come back at the same level and be considered right away for promotions? No. But in the federal government, you can.”

Today, the SES still plays a role in the management of the federal government, with the operations of 75 agencies overseen by SES employees.

But the service, like other levels of government, has faced challenges. A recent survey by the Senior Executives Association found difficulties with recruitment to fill the SES ranks. The survey cited compensation as well as the political climate of Washington a turn-off for candidates eligible for the jobs.

“The idea of the SES, as it was created back in the late 1970s, is something that has never worked out in practice, for a whole variety of reasons that are more political than managerial,” Kettl said.

Generational Drift

Few could have anticipated the population swell of the baby boomer generation. Perhaps that’s why government didn’t respond terribly early to the inevitability of their aging. But it’s now upon us – exemplified by the stark differences between the baby boomers and the Gen Xers and millennials that will dominate the workforce for the next decade or longer.

One of those differences is sheer interest in public service. Beth McGrath, director of federal sector at Deloitte Consulting, called it a shift from “government employees for life” to a more transient workforce, where people move from employer to employer.

Get the full story: See all of our special report.

At the same time, retirement of the last of the government “employees for life” results in a brain drain of government experience. “The upside is refreshed thinking becomes possible,” McGrath says. “The downside is a loss of practical experience that stops reinvention of the wheel.”

In 2015, OPM estimated that four in every 10 federal employees would be eligible to retire in the next five years. Coupled with estimates that millennials only make up 16 percent of the federal workforce, the government faces the dual problems of attracting new talent and modernizing the way it communicates to potential future hires.

Kettl said the transition from a baby boomer to millennial workforce would likely not come in an exodus of retirees, but in a slow trickle, challenging the federal government to adapt over time. To him, the list of challenges is quite long. Agencies need not only hire new workers, but find ways to motivate them, accommodate their needs, which vary quite dramatically to those of generations before. Agencies will have to make the transformations of both leadership and worker expectations – accommodating new demands for technology and countering the tendency to be far more transitional than was ever the case in the past.

“As the ratio of active workforce contributors to those in benefit status continues to decrease, the burden in all three of these dimensions will strain not only the programs directly involved, but other government agencies, as well, that compete for a shrinking part of the resource pie,” said Linda Springer, former OPM director.

“The acceleration of this shift also has the potential to threaten the sustainability of federal employee benefit programs and retention of knowledge from an aging workforce,” she added. Dealing with all these issues is and will continue to be a major focus for federal government leaders.”

Among all of the possible examples, a few stand out as key moments. Below are our picks for the seven most important technology innovations and events — in chronological order — that have shaped the way government operates today.

DARPA creates early framework for the Internet (1969)

Computer and information theory was already moving along in 1969 — we never would have made it to the moon without precise programming. However, it’s not hard to argue it was the Internet that propelled the technology wave we are still riding today.

There were many people who contributed to the creation of the Internet and World Wide Web as we know them, but it was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s work developing its own network that propagated the rest.

The internal Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first of its kind, establishing the packet and TCP/IP protocols still in use today.

As the first to get their hands on the new tool, the government was the first to benefit and saw radical changes follow. Within two decades, the underlying structure of ARPANET would be used to create the Web and begin interconnecting computers — and people — across the globe.

Government claims its domains (1985)

As the Internet entered the world and just before the Web took over as the main interface for most users, the federal government staked its claim to two secure domains reserved for civilian and defense agencies: .gov and .mil.

While the creation of networking protocols was arguably more influential, the creation of .gov and .mil continues to be unique to American government, with all other countries using their individual nation domain or the more common .com domain.

Carving out its own part of cyberspace was an interesting idea at the time and continues to provide government websites with an added layer of legitimacy.

The General Services Administration took oversight of issuing and managing .gov addresses in 1997. The .mil domain is managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency.

The Obama administration halted the proliferation of .gov domains by executive order in 2011. Individual agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs and NASA have been working to consolidate their domains over time, as well.

Clinger-Cohen brings IT management to government (1996)

The Information Technology Management Reform Act — better known by its sponsors’ monikers, the Clinger-Cohen Act — was the first legislation to codify IT management practices within the federal government.

The law set up the director of the Office of Management of Budget as the chief authority for setting IT management and acquisition policies and established chief information officers at each of the major agencies.

In Clinger-Cohen, the government acknowledged the importance of IT management for the first time, though the CIOs were granted limited authority, acting almost exclusively in an advisory role to the agency or department head.

That lack of authority — and responsibility — was amended with the passage of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act in late 2014.

Cyber gets serious with USA PATRIOT Act (2001)

The government was aware of the vast possibilities of IT and the Internet but it wasn’t until the aftermath of the traumatic terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that its true potential for information dominance was tapped.

Six weeks after the towers fell, Congress passed the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. Among the many provisions of the law, it established new powers for the Intelligence Community — namely the National Security Agency — to gather electronic information in pursuit of terrorists.

Parts of the program included the massive collection of data originating with or being sent to foreign persons and spider programs that culled databases for threat indicators and other useful information.

Most of these programs operated in secret until 2013, when a CIA contractor decided the world needed to know what the government was doing. More on that further down.

The president keeps his BlackBerry (2009)

Mobile security has been a difficult premise since the invention of smartphones in the early ’90s. Wireless connections are tricky to secure; applications can have serious vulnerabilities; vetting third-party apps can be time-consuming; and the basic, underlying framework for most devices leaves much to be desired when it comes to cybersecurity.

So when Barack Obama took office in 2009 as arguably the first tech-savvy president, and told his security staff they would have to “pry [my BlackBerry] out of my hands,” it presented a serious challenge.

The NSA was tapped to figure it out and built the president a secure smartphone based off of then-current BlackBerry technology.

As far as anyone knows, they were successful. While the White House’s networks have been cracked at times — as well as the email systems of a number of agencies — we have yet to see any evidence that Obama’s phone has been compromised.

BlackBerry’s dominance in the federal sector began to wane in 2012 as more smartphone manufacturers entered the marketplace and mobile security became a broader — even device-agnostic — pursuit.

Snowden exposes NSA data collection programs (2013)

While the PATRIOT Act established new protocols for how the government used technology and data, those policies were upended 12 years later when a CIA contractor — Edward Snowden — took thousands of classified documents off a NSA network and released them to select media outlets.

The revelations of mass data collection, surveillance, espionage and more sparked a backlash the federal government — in particular the Intelligence Community and law enforcement agencies — is still dealing with today.

As much as the PATRIOT Act changed the way government operated, Snowden’s actions pushed policies back in the other direction. This was seen most recently in the passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring (USA FREEDOM) Act this summer, which, as the name implies, rolled back a number of the contentious provisions of the PATRIOT Act.

Feds get a lesson in cybersecurity (2015)

Most people had heard of cybersecurity before — at the very least from beleaguered IT managers begging employees not to click on suspicious links. But it wasn’t until the Office of Personnel Management announced hackers had broken into two databases and exfiltrated highly personal records on more than 21.5 million current, former and potential federal employees that the issue became real for many feds.

In June, OPM announced that malicious actors — reportedly associated with the Chinese government — had infiltrated its networks in late 2014.

Though the intrusion was perpetrated using compromised contractor’s credentials — giving the hackers full access to OPM’s systems — investigations into the breaches showed that OPM’s systems were scarcely guarded, lacking encryption and monitoring tools.

Officials at OMB immediately instituted a 30-day cyber sprint to increase agencies’ security postures, which produced significant gains in the realm of dual-factor authentication, in particular. That work continues as OMB plans the release of new cybersecurity policies and best practices before the end of the year.

But as with any storm cloud, there is a silver lining: agency awareness of cyber issues has increased greatly in a few short months. As the government continues to pioneer new technologies and incorporate new innovations, the future of federal IT should at least be a little more secure.

But we’ve come a long way. And then some.

Now there’s a much higher percentage of women in top management positions in the federal government than there is in the general U.S. workforce, according to a 2014 Office of Personnel Management report. Thirty-four percent of senior executive service positions at federal agencies are currently held by women, said the report. By contrast, in the private sector, women occupy just 14.6 percent of executive jobs, according to a 2014 report from the Center for American Progress.

And women’s numbers are greater across other upper echelons of the federal government, as well. They held approximately 44 percent of federal government positions in both professional and administrative occupations, according to a 2011 report from the Merit Systems Protection Board. That’s close to double the number in 1976, when the MSPB began reporting on the role of women in the federal government. And now nearly five years later, the percentage likely swelled further.

Said Linda Springer, former director of the OPM as well as head of the Office of Federal Financial Management at the Office of Management and Budget, a big turning point came in 1977 when Jimmy Carter became president.

“Before that, women having any role in presidential cabinets were exceptions,” she said. “Johnson in 1965 had no women in his cabinet, followed by Nixon, with no women. Ford had Carla Hills as leader of HUD [Housing and Urban Development], but when Carter came in, he had women in three cabinet positions, and from that point, you started to see things change for women in government.”

Said Karen Evans, former OMB administrator for e-government and IT, another pivotal development that set the stage for equity for women employed by the federal government came with the implementation of merit-based pay programs. Merit-based pay was introduced by the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. Said Evans, now a partner at KE&T Partners and national director of the U.S. Cyber Challenge, merit-based pay created a structure that protected job status and promotion opportunities for all employees – even when they needed to be off for extended periods to, say, have a baby or tend to a sick family member.

“There is a lot of flexibility for those employed by the government,” Evans said. “In the private sector, could you be off for six months with a pregnancy and come back at the same level and be considered right away for promotions? No. But in the federal government, you can. There is a solid career ladder set up for all, created to deal with perceived barriers and bias, and this has been a game changer for women.”

Beth McGrath – former deputy chief management officer at the Department of Defense and current director of federal strategy and operations at Deloitte Consulting — said that passage of the 1977 Family Friendly Leave Act, combined with the evolution of parenting norms to include a more active role for men, have changed the face of the workplace for women in government and elsewhere.

“There has been a paradigm shift around family as a multi-person responsibility, and that has enabled more opportunity for women,” McGrath said. “Back in the early days, women had the role of the mom, and if they were working, it had to be around their kids’ schedules, so they couldn’t take on more responsibility and leadership in their jobs. But even in my time in government – 1988 to 2013 – I saw a real shift, with both parents parenting, allowing women to attain and sustain various levels of opportunity and jobs in government, and to stay there.”

Equity in pay has come a long way, too – though women still fall below their male counterparts. According to OPM’s 2015 report, women in white collar federal jobs still earn 87 cents for every dollar men make. But true parity is not far off, it said.

McGrath agrees.

“I made my way all the way up through the ranks, starting as a GS-7 and eventually becoming a political appointee,” she said. “For that to happen for me during those years, I would say that anything is possible going forward for women in government.”

That particular example of life imitating art is more about design than functionality, but the imaginations of science fiction writers have often proved to be inspirational for scientists, whether by inspiring a particular technology or – in the broader sense – encouraging children and teenagers to pursue careers in science and technology.

“Science fiction and science and engineering feed into each other. There’s a lot of back and forth,” said novelist John Scalzi, whose 2013 book “Redshirts” won a Hugo Award for best novel.

“Why did the Motorola StarTAC phone look like a ‘Star Trek’ communicator? The answer is because the engineers building it wanted their own communicators, and here was their chance to get it.”

Another staple of “Star Trek,” the “universal translator” was invoked as a plot device to explain why future humans and aliens alike spoke American English. That too could soon become a reality in online communications systems such as Skype, said science fiction novelist Ann Leckie, author of the “Ancillary” series, which NPR described as a “sociopolitical space opera.”

“I know the people working on [the Skype translator] were in fact people who grew up watching ‘Star Trek,'” she said. “A lot of the technology we have now does show signs of having been shaped by things that were part of fiction.”

Invention begins with imagination, and the creators of imaginary worlds and universes are by definition imaginative. Science fiction writer Scott Jucha, known for the “Silver Ships” series, noted that Isaac Asimov’s stories about robots and artificial intelligence presaged recent science and engineering work in those fields, while Jules Verne wrote of a means of transportation that was later invented in reality — the helicopter.

“If you go back to [Edgar Rice Burroughs] and his early stories on Mars, he describes the capability in his airships to locate one another, even across great distances or at night. He’s talking about radar, and this is in the 19th century.”

Innovators “have loved science fiction for the reason that the ideas fire their imaginations,” Jucha said.

That human beings have traveled into space at all, and established intricate satellite networks for communications, surveillance and scientific study, may be attributable to the inspiring science fiction of the 20th and late 19th centuries. Long before Apollo 11 carried three astronauts to the Moon, writers beginning with Jules Verne imagined ways to get them there.

That’s not to say that the fiction writers actually solve the scientific puzzles, Scalzi noted. The space travelers in Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” were shot into space from a massive cannon, after all.

Instead, the fiction writers — and filmmakers and artists — imagine something that scientists can then take as a goal, such as the communicator or the universal translator. “They leave enough blank space that people who are science-minded try to think about how could this work in a way that doesn’t violate the laws of science,” he said.

The changing equation

Money is one all-too-real limiter for innovation. The private sector tends to spend research dollars only on ideas that are far enough along in terms of development to show commercial promise. Government traditionally has been a key resource for doing the early-stage study, where the commercial prospects are much less certain. That still happens, but on a smaller scale.

Private firms are happy to take over once the financial risk has been minimized — witness the rise of privately-owned space travel ventures such as SpaceX. But SpaceX has a business model partly because NASA spent decades inventing and refining the needed technologies. (The private company also has a founder and CEO in Elon Musk who has both a serious space fascination and a net worth in the billions of dollars, which also helps.)

Government organizations such as NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are still doing robust innovative research, but overall government’s role in advancing technology has diminished.

“By and large, that big blue sky stuff was the role of government,” Scalzi said. “These days, no one wants to spend that much money on government anymore, so as a practical matter, the kinds of technology we get are based on what can we sell.”

The pendulum could swing back, but Scalzi believes it will take a compelling motivation to make the public willing to spend the needed money. The development of nuclear technology began in earnest with the Manhattan Project, driven by the fear of a prolonged war in the Pacific that the enemy seemed to be capable of winning. The space program was fueled by national pride and competition with the world’s other super-power at the time, the USSR.

“It really helps to have an external reason to do these things,” he said. “I expect if we have something like that pop up it will be amazing, the kinds of things we can do.”

Climate change and the quest for sustainable energy may be the next drivers, he said. So might the ongoing sense of risk from Islamic extremism. “It’s absolutely true that war has always been a great driver of innovation,” he said.

“I think achieving the goals of tomorrow is a very complex issue. That’s one aspect where the government can take a leading role,” Jucha said.

The role doesn’t have to be in direct innovation, he noted. Strategic support for science and technology education — now called “STEAM” for science, technology, engineering, arts and math — would put children on the path to careers that could change the technology landscape.

“This type of education helps children today look into it,” he said. “By the time they’re at the peak of their education, we’re going to be at the midpoint of the century.”

It occurred to me as I sat with a group of distinguished colleagues assembled by Federal Times to look at the key events of the last half century, that something was missing: a description of how work and the workplace have changed over that span.

I came into the federal service as a newly minted college grad in 1961 and continue to be amazed at how work and the workplace have changed and continue to change. Rather than make that case with facts and figures, what an ex-OMB wonk like me is inclined to do, I thought it might be more interesting to paint a picture of what work and the workplace looked like – at least to me. This is, therefore, a personal reminiscence, not the definitive description of the mid 1960s workplace in Washington, D.C.

Ambiance

For the most part, large open offices were the norm with no barriers for privacy. While higher-ups might have more private digs, the hoi-polloi typically sat side by side in large bays – no cubicles then. In buildings that were initially designed with private offices, four or six persons sharing these spaces was not uncommon.

Communication was far more formal. One always addressed one’s superiors with an honorific. My immediate supervisor, a GS-9, was a “Miss” and her deputy, a GS-8, was a “Mrs.” Gloria Steinem had not yet given us the marital-status neutral term of “Ms.”

Dress, climate and quality of life

In white-collar workplaces, coats and ties for men and dresses for women were de rigueur, regardless of season. For those of us without the luxury of air conditioning, removing one’s jacket was permitted on hot summer days, but I put my jacket on when I was called to another office.

While colleagues and superiors might be empathetic, there was little flexibility in scheduling or otherwise to accommodate family needs. Office hours were fixed and uniform for all. Women were required to give up their jobs if they were within six weeks of giving birth.

Commuting and downtown Washington

Except for the Department of Defense, most agency headquarters operations were in the Federal Triangle or within shouting distance. I would have used the term “inside the Beltway,” but the Capital Beltway was not completed until 1964. To accommodate the growth of government in response to two World Wars and the Great Depression, temporary buildings dotted the National Mall. Several were on the ground now occupied by the Hirschhorn and Air and Space Museums and the monolithic Main Navy and Munitions Buildings, built during World War I, along Constitution Avenue on the ground now used for Constitution Gardens.

The Metrorail system was still in the planning stages – the first leg opened in the mid-70s – so tens of thousands of federal employees found their way to and from work on one of several bus systems. The last street cars – we now call them light rail – were taken out of service in 1961, but for years, driving on major arteries like 14th Street, Connecticut Avenue or M Street required the special skill of navigating rail tracks. O. Roy Chalk’s D.C. Transit served the city and Maryland suburbs while two other privately owned bus systems served Northern Virginia.

A side note: The layout of the Metrorail system obviously assumed that commuting would continue to be radial – from the periphery into the center. It completely missed the development of edge cities and the changes in commuting patterns.

Technology

The technology in offices in the 1960s was startlingly primitive. I shared a phone with the person whose desk abutted mine and it did not have an outside line. Typing and stenography pools were the norm. Typewriters and those with the skill to use them were in short supply.

Plain paper copiers were in their infancy – and expensive – so correspondence was prepared using carbon paper: original went to the addressee, yellow copy to the subject file, pink copy to a chronological file and plain copies to other addressees. I remember laughing a decade or so later, when xerography was already in wide use, being in an office that used a rubber stamp to mark plain paper copies “yellow” or “pink.” Old customs die hard.

Second generation (solid state) computers were penetrating the government market, but only for large scale transaction processing systems, like tax return processing, social security records and the like.

A Half Century Later

A lot has changed over the past 50 years – and continues to change at an ever-accelerating pace – but much has not. There is still for many of us, a sense of excitement and awe at being entrusted with the honor of serving. And we continue to draw great people into public service.

And just as there are the historic events that shaped government operations overall during the last 50 years – the top 10 of which Federal Times unveiled earlier this month – there are policies that shaped and reshaped how the mega institution we know as the Department of Defense functions.

Here are our picks for the most influential.

Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act

In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Act streamlined the chain of command structure at the Pentagon, connecting the defense secretary to the combatant commanders and shifting service chiefs to advisory roles to both the secretary and the president, among other responsibilities. The original goal was to mitigate rivalry and stovepipes between the services, especially post-Vietnam.

The sweeping changes were the greatest the military had seen since World War II, and they set the trajectory for Defense Department command structure for decades to come.

“Before Goldwater-Nichols, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was a figure head, but lacked the power to coordinate a unified approach. Regional combatant commanders were largely extensions of the dominant military service deployed in the theater,” John Hamre, CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Congress Nov. 10. “The Goldwater-Nichols Act changed all this. Of course there are still strong parochial forces within [DoD]. But the senior officer corps today genuinely knows more about the other services and respects their capabilities and operating procedures. Senior officers genuinely think ‘jointly’ now, something that was quite rare 35 years ago. This has produced the finest fighting force in the world.”

Base Realignment and Closure Act

Military installation buildups and closures fluctuated over the decades since the 1950s in response to a new era of global threats, but the 1980 Base Realignment and Closure Act introduced a new dynamic: Congress versus the military.

In the five rounds that would follow over the next 25 years, and proposed rounds that would be denied, power struggles surrounded the closure of military bases in response to a changing geopolitical climate and threat landscape. The winding down of the Cold War signaled the beginning of BRAC, and now with the theoretic drawdown of troops in southwest Asia, Pentagon leaders find themselves again asking those tough questions. With that, the political battles reemerge, with the Pentagon noting excess capacity and searching for efficiencies, only to be stonewalled by Congress.

It’s a decades-old legacy that refuses to die, but does evolve. Just as military leaders testify they could save billions with more rounds of BRAC amid sequestration and decreased spending, the dialogue among those that pushback has changed.

“The way communities respond to the BRAC process is getting even more sophisticated. You are seeing elaborate economic impact studies done by private, high-impact consulting firms in Washington, D.C., that are going to be used to influence these decisions,” said Brent Eastwood, founder and CEO of GovBrain, a political intelligence and government analytics firm for the investment community. “Stakeholders are going to be spending $250,000 to $500,000 an installation for BRAC advocacy. Maybe more. And there will be modern public affairs grassroots campaigns to advocate for keeping the status quo and fighting re-organizations.”

The Last Supper

In July 1993, then-Deputy Defense Secretary William Perry presided over a meeting with industry executives that would become known as the “last supper,” an event that signaled major changes with the end of the Cold War. It also triggered shifts in the defense industrial base still felt today.

“The reason we had what became regarded as the last supper was that it was just after the Cold War, and defense budgets were going down. In the first Bush administration it went down 3 percent to 5 percent every year, and we saw that going on for another at least five years, maybe longer,” Perry said in an interview with Federal Times.

The goal of the dinner was to encourage effective and efficient restructuring at the companies. Indeed, there was some of that; but the pendulum swung far, and many companies consolidated or exited the market. Competitive acquisition took a major hit as a result of the mergers, something that defense officials still are trying to fix today through such initiatives as Better Buying Power.

“Some consolidation was alright, and probably an inevitable consequence to reducing the size of the defense budget, but I think the consolidation part was overdone,” Perry said. “And it had one deleterious consequence, which was some programs lost [the] robust competition we needed.”

Repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

The Clinton Administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, instituted in 1994, aimed to prevent discrimination and harassment against gays in the military, but it also barred them from discussing homosexual relationships or preferences under the threat of being kicked out for doing so. It was an effective ban on openly gay men and women serving in the military.

The law was repealed in 2011, providing welcome relief to an estimated 65,000 closeted gay and lesbian troops and inching the Pentagon forward to better mirror changes in society at the time. DADT’s repeal was a step forward, to be sure, but many say it wasn’t enough.

“Congress’s repeal of [DADT] was a watershed moment that ended institutionalized discrimination unjustly targeting gay, lesbian and bisexual service members. Yet thousands of service members who were discharged because of their sexual orientation still bear the scars of that discrimination,” a team of senators behind the new Restore Honor to Service Members Act wrote in a November USA Today op-ed. “We are in the middle of a historic moment for gay rights in America. We have struck down [DADT] and we have legalized same-sex marriage. Now, let us restore the honor that is long overdue to our gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.”

The senators behind the bill, led by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, wrote that more than 100,000 troops are estimated to have been discharged from the military since World War II because of their sexual orientation.

Cyber, a military domain

Computer-based battles may go back decades, but it was in 2010 that cyberspace was effectively affirmed as the fifth military domain, joining air, sea, land and space as the official realms of war. That year President Barack Obama declared America’s digital infrastructure to be a “strategic national asset” and appointed Howard Schmidt as cybersecurity czar. The same year, the Defense Department launched the U.S. Cyber Command, and behind the scenes military officials were hard at work on the policies and strategies of the cyber domain.

Establishing cyberspace as a military domain provided functional benefits: It brought cyber into the well-oiled machine of Pentagon operations and military formations, tactics, techniques and procedures. It also delineated cyber funding, and set the stage for training and equipping cyber forces in each service.

Since 2010, the Pentagon has released two cyber strategies directing the coordination of cyber operations. The more recent strategy, released in April, also emphasizes culture – another key area that continues to evolve in the cyber domain.

“I remember being at one deputy committee session and making a statement about the responsibility of the military to defend the U.S. homeland, including cyberspace, and I got immediate pushback on that,” said retired Maj. Gen. Brett Williams, former CyberCom director of operations/J3 and now president of operations and training at IronNet Cybersecurity. “So now we see that very clearly laid out: Just as all the other military forces have the responsibility to defend the homeland in the air, land, space and maritime domains, we have the responsibility to do that in cyberspace.”

See our special report: 50 Years of Government Change

GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth told Editor Jill Aitoro that federal government is entering a new era of purchasing, and what’s worked for decades past no longer melds with the requirements of today. GSA is adapting, she said, and no changes happen in a vacuum.

You said recently, ‘we are in a different stage. We need to get to a different place.’ Can you explain what you mean by that?

I think we are in a different stage in government. We have an American public that is used to being able to get what they need overnight, get what they need easy, and be able to answer their questions without having to work through five layers of people. We have an expectation to provide the same or more services at a cheaper cost or with a less cost to the American public. There is a general sense that there needs to be a great transparency. Not only demonstrating the outcome; but what are you doing with what you have?

We need to respond as a government. We need to respond, GSA, as an agency. All of the work that you see us doing across the agency, I think is reflective of that. Us listening to our customers more, and us ensuring that the products that we provide [are] actually meeting a defined solution.

A lot of changes have been happening in how acquisition are managed. Talk to me about that.

It has been a really interesting and evolving effort. I think that we know ultimately that category management was the right direction and the right way to go in terms of managing spend. But the real question was how do we get there? Do we go in one fell swoop? Do we go in steps? That has been one of the key pieces that I have been able to watch from my vantage point. Coming in as head of GSA and really thinking about how do we set up the agency for success in the future?

We have realized that we are on a path of category management in which all spend really needs to have a clear manager and owner, and have experts that are committed to understanding not only where the opportunities are today, but where the market is going in the future, and respond to that. We knew that we needed to [be] organized in that fashion. As you look internal to GSA, we have made quite a bit of changes in terms of aligning our staff from a category management perspective as well. It has been very exciting.

See our special report: 50 Years of Government Change

Over the years, I have heard so much about an inadequate acquisition workforce in terms of numbers. Does this show that the real need is getting the right people in the room together?

The goal is really to use the resources that we have in people and knowledge; and bring it together in a way that is consistent and overlaps well. We can be able to improve on that knowledge ultimately. I always say that there is this range of work that we ask contracting officers to do. They do anything from a science contract to a contract to acquire pens. And they can do that in the same day.

If you really want someone to be really good at something and really get the most out of it, I think you give them the time and energy to really focus in on a specific area. Sometimes it is a matter of needing to broaden the base of people or activity that you have doing the same thing. Sometimes it is a matter of deepening the expertise. That is what we are doing with category managers. We are going deeper. We are taking the resources that we have and making them work for us at a stronger level.

It is almost cyclical, with centralized buying through a GSA transitioning to agencies managing their own purchases. Where do you think we are going?

In terms of what we see with other agencies, we have seen them reacting to [the question], are they getting the products that they need? Do they feel that they have access to the acquisition platforms that they needed? In response, they started to develop their own. That is not efficient for government. But ultimately, having managers or people who are really responsible for a certain type of spend, strategically placed across government, I think is going to be of great benefit. I do not know that we will see a future in which all of the spending activity is centralized in one agency, GSA or any other. But I do think that we will continue to see certain experts owning certain types of spending. NASA will always have some level of NASA SEWP. But the majority of the spending does come through us. The stronger we are in terms of being transparent and providing better information about pricing, and the better information about spend activity and research around the market, you will see more agencies willing to give up their contracts.

Are you getting a positive response from agencies in terms of that transition? Is there a sense of ownership that they don’t want to give up?

Sometimes, it is cultural in terms of agencies not wanting to give up ownership of what they have been doing for so long. But I think also we see some leaders who are wondering, why do they do this work? Their mission is otherwise. Their mission is housing. Their mission is building spaceships. Their mission is something other than providing for contracts. Where we are able to help provide a platform, we do. For some people, it is going to be just a little bit. They will give us part of their work. But they will still do the scoping. For others, we will do it from beginning to end. It will vary. But I think we have to be prepared to provide support in all fashions.

You will hear a lot of people say the Federal Acquisition Regulation needs to change. The FAR is too long. The FAR is too restrictive. Is the issue with the FAR, or is it more in the interpretation?

I think that it is fair to probably say both. I would think that there is a lot that has been said over time in terms of really the interpretation, in that the FAR really gives us opportunities that we are not taking advantage of. Even looking at why we just have chosen not to do something. It is very important for us to be able to grow.

Getting legislation passed is a difficult and long effort. In some ways, it should be. We need to understand the tools that we have and make sure the application fits for today.

Is there one piece of legislation that you feel was most essential or profound in terms of how acquisitions are managed?

I have been reading [to get] an understanding of how [the GSA Schedules program] came about. We spend so much time with mass transformation these days. Ultimately, if you look just at the purity of the understanding 60-some years ago, there was this opportunity if we consolidated all of the spending and buying activity, and made it easier for everyone to get the same products under something that was already spelled out, where the terms and conditions were already outlined and already negotiated. Just the creativity that was there at that time and even today. We are not talking about changing the fundamentals of that. I think that was an important time. That which allowed for us to rationalize acquisitions in that fashion, I think it was very transformative.

What do you hope to come out of those efforts, in terms of a broader impact for acquisition?

I am not sure if everyone sees how strategic and focused this effort is. When we look at category management and [Multiple Award Schedules] transformation, and some of the new products that are coming out – this isn’t just ideas that came up. There was an overall understanding that our customers were demanding something different. The market was in a different place. That we had new technologies we could take advantage of. Bringing all of those together has really spelled out this strategy. It can seem from afar that we are coming out with this new thing this week or this month. But it really is a part of a larger strategy.

My hope is that we are willing to test how we pursue products more and delivery to the other federal agencies overall. That we are willing to be more agile in how we allow for those technologies to come to the government space. I think that if you talk to some of the industry members, they will say that there are a lot of products that they could provide that government needs. They do not have a way to bring it to the forefront. They can deliver it for one agency. But they could do it for so many others, for so many that are struggling with the same challenges. We do not have a good platform for those things to come forward. I really think that with our acquisition workforce and with [the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act], and with the leadership that we have, in their willingness and openness to look at acquisitions differently – [that] is really what is creating opportunities.

What needs to change or expand in terms of how GSA but also the broader government interacts with the private sector for it to be more efficient?

In terms of being more efficient with acquisition and utilizing industry over a broad perspective, there is really the need for us to understand that there are different products and services that could be provided. The Agile [blanket purchase agreement] was a great example of that in which we were able to invite in industry to say, just show us a product. How would you achieve that? Then, let us look at soliciting for that and buying those items.

In terms of how we are going to work with industry overall, I think industry has organized itself to respond to a more complex government. But at the same time, I think that they do have products that they could provide that would be more creative. That would turnover faster if we would provide the platform for them to do that. We really are trying to catch up in some ways.

Imagine for a moment a government where one doesn’t have to know how government is organized to find the services, capabilities and information one needs or wants. Imagine a world where government services are exposed and provided on a just-in-time basis.

Imagine a world where the real cost and the real benefit and beneficiary of every government function can be measured through transparent real-time and historic metrics. And imagine a world where — especially in this age of privacy concerns — every citizen could securely and instantly view the personal information the government has captured and is maintaining.

I believe we are in the early stages of one of the most significant and profound periods of change the world has ever seen as it relates to the way we govern and manage our civil society — ultimately propelling those aspirations into reality. Just as our government had to transform itself to both embrace and respond to the industrial revolution, we are now challenged as a nation and as a government to embrace and respond to the digital revolution. This new era for government is propelled by a global digital tidal wave that has already produced remarkable changes in the lives of consumers and has impacted the way we work, play, associate and communicate.

Today’s digital revolution had its initial spark in the form of a government-sponsored initiative that created the Internet. A steady flow of private- and public-sector innovations and broad market adoption of standards-based technologies in both the government and the private sector have strengthened its foundations. Government-based organizations like the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Energy have a long history of contributions to the digital revolution, among many others too numerous to name. The federal government and its employees have long been both a customer and a large market opportunity for technology companies, and have had a significant impact on long-term trends. From aiding our capabilities during wartime, to researching new vaccines and cures, to controlling air traffic in our nation’s skies, technology has time and time again changed the game and enabled the federal government to be more effective.

But, there is now broad, nonpartisan consensus that much of the technology that powers the federal government has become too old and slow, too expensive to change, too hard to fully secure, too inefficient to operate, and too hard to use. In short, it lacks the functionality to meet today’s mission. We now face a challenge that’s bigger than Y2K — the only difference is there is no 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31, 1999, and we are grossly underestimating the potential impact.

This time around, we just get a little more out of date every day, and the costs continue to rise. Further, there is a growing shortage of people with the skills to manage these legacy technologies. To break out of this pattern, we have to begin a new cycle of strategic investment to replace and modernize our infrastructure and core government applications. And when we do, it will cost a lot less and serve the American people better as we leverage the lessons already learned from the digital pioneers who’ve led the way in the commercial sector and in forward-thinking governmental organizations.

To help drive this change, my team will continue to drive a whole-of-government approach to advance our capabilities — building on top of the great work being already done across the board by federal employees — including a focus on several key accelerators to move to the digital government of the future:

First, we will soon be asking agencies to rate their core information platforms in a risk- and opportunity-based manner based on both cybersecurity as well as technology obsolescence and functional utility factors. Based on that assessment, we will ask agencies to develop prioritized plans for the timely upgrade and replacement of these core systems, utilizing cloud-based shared capabilities and services. We’ll also “open source” more of the custom-developed common capabilities that government requires to fully leverage the full ecosystem of capabilities available to us.

Second, over the next few months, we’ll develop and implement a comprehensive human resource strategy that will ensure the federal government has the right workforce to manage and implement this huge transformation. This strategy will leverage the best of the private sector along with the right mix of existing and new federal employees.

Third, we’ll continue and expand our already promising work with our US Digital Service teams, GSA 18F resources and Agency Digital Services teams, who’ve made rapid and important improvements to critical public-facing websites and services, like moving the old Healthcare.gov operating system, which cost $200 million to develop and $70 million to maintain, to the new SLS system, which cost $4 million to produce, with annual maintenance costs also at $4 million.

More will be needed, of course, including strong bipartisan support from Congress and a commitment from the next administration to continue on the digital journey we are already on.

But this is a challenge we must meet. It is the right thing to do, the right time to do it and one of the most important things to do right.

The Office of Personnel Management has struggled to address the challenge for a number of years now, as the percentage of federal employees eligible for retirement increases. The risk is one of sheer numbers, of course, but it’s also one of vibrancy, of tapping the new skills and approaches that younger generations can offer.

As part of the Federal Times 50th anniversary campaign that spotlights government transformation past and future, acting OPM Director Beth Cobert offered Editor Jill Aitoro her thoughts on the federal workforce evolution currently underway. Are we facing a crisis? Cobert seems to see it more as an opportunity. Tap a new generation, and agencies will be more inspired to modernize processes, shed dated policies, and use technology to be more efficient and competitive with the private sector market.

Change is hard. But here’s what we do know: the federal workforce of today is very different than the federal workforce of 50 years ago. Looking ahead, the federal workforce of tomorrow could be even more unfamiliar. But if Cobert’s vision proves true, then that might be a powerful thing.

See our special report: 50 Years of Federal Times

What demographic shifts have changed the federal government over the years?

Like the American economy as a whole, the government now has a workforce that comprises four generations of Americans. Understanding different generational styles adds complexity to the management of any workforce.

Yet, as more federal workers near retirement, the government faces the challenge of preserving the technical expertise and institutional memory that is critical to delivering top tier services to the American people. This underscores the importance of attracting new people into federal service and providing them tools and opportunities to grow and benefit from the knowledge and skill of current government leaders.

The federal government has [also] made a dedicated effort to build and sustain a diverse workforce. We have accomplished a great deal, particularly in hiring minorities, people with disabilities, and women in the Senior Executive Service.

So how does diversity of the federal workforce compare to the broader population?

In 2005, 31.8 percent of federal employees were minorities, as compared to 27.4 percent of civilian workers nationwide. Today, minorities represent 35.3 percent of the federal workforce, as compared to 32.5 percent of the civilian labor force. It is important that we retain a diverse workforce by fostering engagement and inclusion and through efforts to support diversity in government leadership.

Do you see a tangible advantage to that strategy?

Our nation derives its strength from its diversity. In both private and public sectors, organizations are at their best when their workforce draws upon the talents, experience, and perspectives of all segments of society.

Describe some of the misconceptions of public service that the feds try to overcome to lure younger generations.

In our search for well-qualified applicants from all segments of society, we have found that applicants from younger generations, especially millennials, place a high value on working in environments that they find exciting, innovative and collaborative. They value environments where they can be creative, take on new challenges and try new things.

To combat the misconception that a career in government will not allow for this kind of dynamic experience, the federal government has implemented a series of new initiatives focused on creating opportunities for new employees to broaden their experiences and reducing perceived barriers to government employment.

These include new hiring authorities that allow agencies the flexibility to recruit, hire and develop talented applicants who are students or recent graduates of higher education programs, as part of their overall recruitment and hiring program. There are also increased efforts to expand job rotations, increase opportunities to serve on detail, and expand training and mentorship programs. So far, these efforts have paid off: The 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey revealed that federal millennial employees were satisfied with their jobs and strongly believed the work that they do is important.

How does age factor into diversity?

Recruiting millennials from diverse backgrounds into careers in government, as part of a comprehensive recruitment plan, and investing in employees’ growth and development will help ensure that our workforce remains diverse and that its leadership becomes increasingly diverse.

What’s the long-term payback of drawing on the younger generations, beyond preventing a workforce exodus?

While millennials make up a smaller portion of the federal workforce than other generations, they already have played meaningful roles through their commitment to transparency and their familiarity with the potential of new technologies to improve communications with stakeholders.

As members of Generation X enter management positions, many are powerful voices in support of workplace flexibilities like telework. They also tend to feel comfortable leading less traditional teams, which will become increasingly important as the government continues to modernize and evolve. These younger leaders are important voices in government, and we rely on their insights to help the government as a whole be responsive to the American people.

I couldn’t be prouder of the work America’s civil servants are doing every day. With more than 2 million civilian workers and more than 1 million active-duty service members, the men and women who serve this country in government and our military continue to raise the bar for America at home and overseas.

They are our scientists and social workers. They guard our borders, respond to disasters and protect our civil rights. They defend our country abroad and deliver the benefits our troops have earned when they come home. They help businesses expand and enter new markets. They push the very boundaries of science and space, and guide hundreds of thousands of people each day through the glory of our natural wonders here on Earth. And by ensuring that Americans can count on quality, affordable health insurance; by protecting consumers in new ways and helping our nation bounce back from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, they’re creating lasting change in the very way that government operates.

See our special report: 50 Years of Federal Times

What’s even more telling, this work is often done with little acknowledgement or fanfare — and as we’ve experienced in recent years, it too often happens in a world of sequestration and mindless budget cuts. Yet despite these challenges, our public servants have stayed focused on serving this country and opening new opportunities to all Americans.

We’ll need this grit and determination as we confront the challenges that lie ahead — challenges to our economy, our security, even the planet we all call home. But I have seen the commitment and dedication of those who serve this country. I know that our greatest resource is the strength and resilience of the American people. And that’s why I know that no challenge is too great for America. And it’s why I’m more optimistic than ever that our brightest days are in front of us.

Signed,

President Barack Obama

December 2015