Interior Secretary says career executives key to agency’s success

Interior Secretary Gale Norton plans to use the experience and institutional knowledge of her agency's career employees to guide decision-making, she said during a luncheon for the Senior Executives Association (SEA) on Monday. Norton told government's top senior executives that her eclectic career path gave her valuable insights and helped her develop a perspective that government decision-making should be a collaborative process that includes all the stakeholders--including career employees. "We can only achieve success if we work closely with the people who are affected by our decisions," Norton explained. As a result, Norton has implemented a "Four Cs" management approach in the Interior Department--"communication, consultation and cooperation, all in service to conservation." "That means that we are moving our decision-making outside my office, outside headquarters and into the fields, into the bureaus, into the places where people have the opportunity to sit down face to face with federal officials and talk about decisions being made," the Secretary explained. "What that means is that my department and myself and my leadership team, are going to be relying on people in senior executive positions, throughout the department and throughout the United States." Norton has had to rely heavily on the expertise of the career service for the past six months. Until June 29, when Neal McCaleb was confirmed as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, she was the only political appointee in the department. That period of dependence helped her gain respect for Interior's senior executive corps, Norton said. "The career employees in the department have been absolutely wonderful in helping us get things accomplished and in understanding how to take the reins of the department," said Norton. "In fact, when I took office I had about 72 hours before we had to get our first major budget report submitted to [the Office of Management and Budget], and that was an incredibly intense time of going through learning about the department in a crash-course manner." Norton said political appointees may be hesitant to ask for help or information, and that one of the key pieces of information needed early on is an understanding of the Senior Executive Service's role today. "It doesn't look a lot like what it was when many of us were here before," she said, referring to the Bush administration's habit of bringing in cabinet leaders and other officials who served in previous presidential administrations.

When asked how the new Bush administration would address pay issues for SES members, Norton said that she and other cabinet members acknowledge there is a serious problem. SEA has been trying for several years to convince Congress to raise the cap on executive pay. Executives at the top three of the six Senior Executive Service levels all earn the same amount of money. In eight cities, federal executives at the top four levels are all paid the same. "There is a huge disparity, especially for people like you, who are the top managers," Norton said sympathetically. "It is always going to be a financial sacrifice to work in public service, but it should not be so much of a financial sacrifice that we lose people and that we're not able to retain and to recruit the quality of people that we have in the executive service." Monday's luncheon was part of SEA's Annual Career Executive Leadership Conference, which ends Tuesday.