Looking for Leaders

he Presidential Management Intern program celebrated its 20th anniversary this year with a bang.

An all-time high of more than 300 candidates with advanced degrees were accepted into this year's PMI class, which is almost three times as large as last year's. Record highs also were hit in the numbers of applicants and finalists, at a time when agencies are under continued pressure to downsize.

"Even when agencies are under very tough hiring ceilings and so forth, they really reach out to hire these kids," says Alan "Scotty" Campbell, the former Carter administration personnel chief who founded the PMI program in 1977. PMIs serve two-year internships that commonly lead to appointments to career management positions.

There's broad agreement that the PMI program has been, and remains, an effective recruiting tool. Of each class of interns, at least 60 percent-and in some years as many as 85 percent to 90 percent-take permanent federal positions after their two years, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Several large agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Defense and Treasury, have been especially active in the program. HHS has hired a tenth of this year's placements and in some past years has hired up to half.

"I always try to remember that we are replaced by the people we recruit. That's why my department recruits so many PMIs," says Heath and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

OPM has no data showing how many former interns still are with the government, but agency officials believe the percentage to be high. It is generally believed that Sean O'Keefe, who served as Navy secretary in the Bush administration, achieved the highest rank of any former intern.

Despite these accomplishments, Campbell and other public administration experts are concerned about the program's future. Efforts to broaden PMI recruiting beyond the graduates of schools of public administration and to change the way that potential interns are evaluated threaten to undermine the executive development effort, they say.

Expanded Boundaries

When the PMI program started, "it really focused on anyone who got a master's of public administration or public policy," says Mary Lou Lindholm, OPM's associate director for employment service. "You had a sprinkling of master's of business administration [degrees] in there. This year, we run the gamut of individuals with everything from computer science and engineering degrees to accounting degrees to the master of public administration."

In a change whose full effects are only now being felt, President Reagan in 1982 expanded the boundaries of the PMI program to encompass all fields of study. "That was done because of the ideology involved," says Campbell. "It was assumed that people who came out of programs in public policy and administration were people who thought government was worthwhile. That did alter the mix of the people who came into the program."

"When we developed the program, we were primarily interested in seeing it as an executive development program," Campbell says. "There's nothing wrong with having a program for outstanding graduates of chemistry or forestry or whatever, but then whether they should be selected for careers essentially headed for management is I think a good question."

OPM officials say, though, that today's government needs those different skills. More use of technology requires program managers to have technical knowledge in fields such as the physical sciences and mathematics, and increased contracting out raises the need for employees with business, finance and accounting backgrounds to oversee those contracts. Plus, they argue, there just isn't as much demand for mid-level management.

"As PMIs come in they're being used in a different manner," says Vera Dorsey, PMI coordinator for the Health Care Financing Administration, an active recruiter of PMI interns. "What I see is that they're all rising, no matter where they start. They're moving into leadership positions much faster than those who are already there in the agency. It's just that the management levels are flattening and it's harder to walk in the door and get a management position. Even though we may not have that middle-management level anymore, there are still leadership responsibilities that they can take on."

Identity Crisis

The debate over who should be eligible to serve as a PMI in part reflects the long-standing question about how to best manage federal programs: Should the government take managers and teach them the programs or take program experts and teach them how to manage? For the PMI program, the question turns into one of identity: Is it a recruitment program or a management development program?

"The answer is that it's really both," says Kathleen Keeney, manager of the PMI program office at OPM. "The basic need is what the agencies need to carry out their programs. That could be administrative people, or it could be scientists."

But Anita Alpern, an adjunct professor at The American University in Washington, says the emphasis on other types of degrees threatens to "destroy the initial objective to provide leadership for the government of the future, by opening it up to anyone and everyone."

The PMI program wasn't designed simply to respond to agencies' recruitment needs, says Alpern, a member of the Presidential Management Alumni Group (PMAG) advisory board. "The concept was that we wanted to ensure that the federal government would have a continuing pipeline of people from schools of public administration who would receive special treatment and special training in order to ensure that the government would have potential future leaders," she says.

Alpern questions whether broadening the program has benefited either agencies or candidates. Eight graduates of American's law school were named as PMI finalists last year, she says. Only then did they discover there were no legal positions available, making them wonder why they had gone through the process. OPM officials say they're working to make sure applicants know what kinds of jobs are likely to be available.

In addition to emphasizing different fields of study, OPM also is reaching out more to colleges that haven't been active in the program, including historically black colleges and those with large Hispanic populations. Still, a few schools with prominent public administration programs continue to place high numbers of graduates in the program-including American, Columbia, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of Pittsburgh, Syracuse and the University of Southern California.

"The core of applicants is still coming out of the schools of public administration. If the fundamental ratio changed, I would be more concerned," says Michael Brintnall, executive director of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.

Making the Grade

A recent change in the way candidates are evaluated does concern many people associated with the PMI program, however.

In the past, OPM used an application form that included essay questions about policy issues and personal attributes. Applications were screened by a dozen officials trained by the Educational Testing Service, and applicants making that cut went through assessment centers before being accepted into the program.

But at a meeting in early 1996 with several major agencies, OPM was told that the application process, which included a booklet exceeding 50 pages, had become too cumbersome. Since then, OPM has used a shorter, simpler form with questions focusing on leadership skills and academic and workplace successes. Applicants' responses are stored in a computer database and then they are invited to assessment centers, where they make individual presentations, participate in group discussions and write essays.

The original PMI program "put a great deal of emphasis on using a selection process which relied on interviews with people who had knowledge of government and government employment," says Campbell. "That has been substantially altered today. Now the first sweep is done by computer reading of applications."

OPM officials say that while the applications are indeed designed to be computer-friendly, no applicants have been screened out by automation-although OPM held open that possibility. All of this year's applicants were invited to the assessment centers and nearly all of them accepted the invitations, they note.

"It's not a traditional kind of application. It's not the kind of application that the academic community would look at and say, 'These are the questions we would ask,' " acknowledges Joseph D. Stix, director of OPM's Philadelphia service center. "We felt that with people in their dorm rooms answering [essay] questions, it's an unsupervised environment. They could be filling it out themselves or someone else could be doing it for them."

"I thought the old application gave you a better picture of the applicant," says Rosslyn S. Kleeman, an executive-in-residence at George Washington University, who participated in the first level of screening under the old system and who also is a PMI alumni board member. Many GWU students who have gone to the assessment centers, she says, believe the interviewers weren't adequately trained and "may or may not have known much about the program and try to turn it into something else because that way you can get agency support."

Fewer Opportunities

Kleeman also says the program has suffered in recent years from a lack of support from high-level officials. As a result, agencies are not giving interns the full range of developmental experiences, including mentoring by senior executives, that the program once offered, she says. PMI interns now count against an agency's personnel ceiling, hampering rotational opportunities, and emphasis on training and mentoring by high-level officials has dropped off, Kleeman says. Also, she notes, OPM moved the PMI program office to Philadelphia two years ago, which "seemed to me to give a signal that it was not a priority."

OPM officials say the move was only one of a number of shifts of responsibility from headquarters to field centers and did not indicate a weakened commitment to the program. The President's Management Council recently went on record as supporting the PMI effort and encouraging agencies to hire interns, they point out.

OPM believes that with the record-setting PMI placements this year, personnel ceilings must not be a significant problem. And the agency recently published rules requiring that agencies give interns rotational assignments and at least 80 hours of formal training per year.

"We've really worked hard to heighten its importance and to raise the level of interest in the agencies," says Stix. "If the program is not successful, why are so many people hired and so many seem to be so happy with it? From what I've been hearing, agencies are very pleased with this year's candidates."

But if the interns are serving the agencies as well as ever, agencies might not be doing the same for them. A shrinking government means today's PMI interns have fewer promotional opportunities. Many of the hands-on policy and program jobs where they traditionally started now are performed by contractors or state or local governments, and the senior career positions they aspire to seem to be out of reach, says Paul Light, director of public policy programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts and also an alumni advisory board member.

"They're sealed off by so many of the baby boomers who now occupy many of the senior positions in the hierarchy," Light says. "Many of the top career jobs will not be open for decades. So that leaves them a choice between getting out and getting stuck. There are too few chances for advancement from the bottom, and there's a growing uncertainty about whether the truly good jobs are in federal service."

Jennifer Gorman, a member of this year's PMI class interning at the National Institutes of Health, shares that uncertainty. She says that at a recent gathering of current interns, "we were all concerned with the issues of how long do we stay in government, and do we need to get out of government to be satisfied and be exposed to other areas."

"How can you develop the skills, given that a lot of the real work is being done elsewhere?" says Gorman. "The government is managing that work but by only seeing the work from that perspective, you're not going to get the skills necessary to improve the system. Eventually you may have to get out to the private sector or the other levels of government, or the nonprofits."

Says another current PMI intern, "I wonder if the goals that I have set for myself, being an advocate for change, making a positive difference, are possible to achieve in my agency. And if it is possible, is it possible to the extent that I had hoped? I don't think I'll go out in two years. I might in four years. I think that if I'm still in the government in eight years I might have sold out on my goals."

Such idealism always has been a feature of the PMI program. In its earlier years, interns generally were younger, with little experience in the working world. Reflecting the trends in education, many interns today worked for several years before returning for their advanced degrees and have a more realistic view of what to expect. But the commitment, while perhaps not as wide-eyed, is still there.

"These are people who want to come and really be a part of public service," says Lindholm. "They understand what it requires, they understand that the compensation at times may not match what they think they could get in the private sector, but I think they really are committed. I think they're really focused on what the missions are of the different agencies, and they really want to make a difference."

"The program's had its ups and downs, but on the whole I think it's been very successful and probably has produced some of the top people in government today," says Kleeman. "Its aims are certainly ones that we really have to promote."