Report suggests losing 'M' in management intern program

The Presidential Management Intern program has attracted outstanding people in its 25-year history, but the program's assumption that participants will embark on lengthy careers as senior managers in the government is obsolete, according to a new report.

The esteemed internship program has had difficulty retaining and grooming participants for future leadership positions in the federal workforce, which has limited "its ability to be an effective tool in the government's long-range human capital management," concluded Judith Labiner, deputy director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Service, in the report.

"Recruiting highly talented graduate students, providing two years of training, hoping that they turn out to be good managers, and assuming that they will stay long enough to manage may simply be an unrealistic strategy," wrote Labiner in the report.

Labiner recommended that the program shift its focus from developing and retaining senior career managers to recruiting graduate students from a wide range of disciplines who could serve the government for two years-the length of the internship-or their entire career, if they chose to do so.

"Rather than a management internship, it could simply be a competitive federal program for recent master's, law and doctoral students. Removing the seemingly unrealized management focus, the program could expand to students interested in technical or other nonmanagerial work."

The Office of Personnel Management, which administers the PMI program, has tried in recent years to attract graduate students from more academically and socially diverse backgrounds to the internship. In a response to a 2001 report from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which criticized the program for failing to attract candidates with management potential, Steven Cohen, then-acting director of OPM, defended the agency's efforts to broaden its scope. Cohen said the program should be used to recruit people from a "wide variety of academic and social backgrounds who can do the critical analysis of policies and programs that is needed for government to serve its citizens."

On Tuesday, an OPM spokesman declined to comment on Labiner's report, but said that the agency plans to launch a "whole new" PMI program in early fall. In January, OPM announced proposed changes, including a possible pay raise for entry-level interns. The spokesman would not offer specific details of the program's redesign.

Based on telephone surveys conducted with PMIs between 2001 and 2003 and data from the Merit Systems Protection Board, Labiner concluded that PMIs were disappointed with the program's lack of opportunities for personal growth and skill development, dissatisfied with the nature of federal work in general and more interested in pursuing a varied career path that included work in both the public and private sectors.

"With realities about management development falling so short of expectations . . . problems with the PMI program appear intractable," Labiner wrote.

President Jimmy Carter issued a 1977 executive order creating the PMI program, which he hoped would attract civil servants with "exceptional management potential who have received special training in planning and managing public programs and policies." A 1982 executive order from President Ronald Reagan expanded the program to draw applicants with a "clear interest in, and commitment to, a career in the analysis and management of public policies and programs," not just those with specific training in public management.