Good Fellowship

I had the pleasure yesterday evening of formally being inducted as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

It is, to say the least, a humbling experience to be accepted into such an organization when the fellow members of your class include people like Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio; Beth Noveck, head of the White House Open Government Initiative; Dave Mader, senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton and former assistant deputy commissioner of the IRS; and Dan Arvizu, head of the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. As someone who's spent a couple of decades simply trying to understand how things really work in government from the outside, it's an honor just to be mentioned in the same breath with these accomplished practitioners and the other members of this year's class of fellows.

For those who don't know, NAPA is a congressionally chartered independent, non-partisan organization that analyzes and evaluates management, governance, operational and policy challenges facing public sector organizations at all levels.