How Does a Team Work? (Sidebar to "First Teams")

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT

How Does a Team Work? (Sidebar to "First Teams")

he U.S. Society and Values team provides an example of how the agency is working in the new team-based environment. The team, one of six that deals with broad thematic issues on which the USIA works to communicate to citizens of foreign countries, covers a broad variety of topics on the American way of life, including sports, education, history, politics, the arts, and poetry.

In a structure resembling most I Bureau teams, the U.S. Society and Values team consists of one team leader (a GS 14), five program specialists (GS 13s), two writer/editors (GS 13s), two reference specialists (GS 12s), and one program assistant (GS 7). Traditionally, program specialists simply responded to requests for speakers to send overseas. Now they are also being asked to get more involved in preparing new materials, such as electronic journals and thematic sites on the World Wide Web.

Bill Peters, leader of the Society and Values team, reports, "An example of our new way of doing business is the creation of a Web site on African-Americans in the United States aimed at our international audience. The entire project was planned by a team consisting of three program specialists, our writer/editors, and our reference specialists. The writer/editors couldn't do the project by themselves. Our program specialists needed to prepare written materials and the entire team had to pitch in to find appropriate articles and then get rights to the articles for use on the Web. The team had to serve as an editorial board for the project-make decisions about content. These are all new roles for our team."