Examining Excellence

Should federal employees don the hair shirt and writhe in anticipation of the austerity such deficit spending may portend, or suck it up and get on with the tasks that need attention today and tomorrow?

I vote for the second option. After all, until further notice the great agencies of government are assigned many duties by Act of Congress, and it's their responsibility to carry them out as efficiently and effectively as possible.

By writing about what's working in agencies, by sponsoring awards to identify same, and by convening leaders from across government and other experts to discuss the best ways to accomplish public sector missions, our magazine endeavors to help.

In that spirit, Government Executive and the Council for Excellence in Government have organized Excellence in Government West, a new conference on best practices in government to be held Dec. 3 through 5 in San Diego. We invite you to attend.

The new conference is modeled on the Excellence in Government conference we have been mounting in Washington for eight years.

As in the East, the West Coast conference will offer a heady blend of serious business, inspiration and entertainment. Kay Coles James, director of the Office of Personnel Management, will offer an expert view on trends affecting the federal workforce. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about the President's Management Agenda and prospects for actually meeting its competitive sourcing, financial management and human capital improvement goals. Other tracks will focus on ways to enhance careers and improve management techniques. Harry Paul, famed for the business and motivational lessons he distilled in Seattle's fish markets, will entertain with a blend of inspiration and humor. There will be opportunities to learn by observing high-profile government programs: the Navy SEALs training program, the busiest border crossing in the nation at San Ysidro, and the manufacturing facility for the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle, one of the key systems that helped win the victory in Iraq. The full program can be seen at www.excelgovwest.com.

This month's issue of the magazine includes sobering lessons on how difficult it is to fulfill the public's expectations for security in the post Sept. 11 world, as well as inspiring tales of people who have made a difference trying. In the first category is Matthew Weinstock's story about the Transportation Security Administration, which has been fighting off cynics who claim TSA stands for "Thousands Standing Around." The agency labors to perform with what Administrator James Loy says is only about 85 percent of the budget it needs. In the second category is Katherine Peters' wonderful series of vignettes about Army Corps of Engineers civilians doing the unexpected and the impossible in Iraq.

Iraq, one might argue, offers a lesson in the law of unintended consequences of a kind detailed in Brian Friel's story about "systems thinking." His article makes one wish that many more people in policy-making and leadership positions in the public sector could learn the discipline he describes. A bit more long-range thinking might help avoid eye-popping deficits and heart-wrenching foreign affairs imbroglios.