Government Employees' Reputations

When a federal employee, like the Transportation Security Officer who was arrested for molestation, commits a crime, it's tough on the federal government for two reasons. Obviously, federal workers are parts of the community affected by crimes like this one, but their reputations, and the reputations of their agencies, tend to suffer as well. "Federal employee" or "TSA officer," or whatever the perpetrator's professional title is, tends to get attached to the news coverage of their crime, even their offense is entirely unrelated to their job duties. And while commenters on TSA's Evolution of Security blog are, unfortunately, savaging the bloggers for stepping up and saying that the actions of this former fed have nothing to do with their ethics and their professionalism, I think it's an important step for agency employees to take.

As part of my reading project (about which more posts to come, loyal readers), I just finished a soon-to-be published book about reputational politics and the Food and Drug administration. While I knew intuitively that reputations, be they good or ill, tend to linger around agencies for a long time, the book was a good example of how federal employees themselves can participate in the construction of their agencies' reputations, whether by becoming poster children, or by upholding a set of ethics or principals or professional standards. There's a big difference between the public saying "criminals shouldn't work for the government" and government employees saying "we are disgusted by the criminal thing one of our former fellows did, and we reject this kind of behavior." The latter gives federal employees some agency in defining their reputation, even if, in the short term, they get attacked for trying to assert those standards.