Maybe Less Is More

The goals of shrinking government and recruiting talent can be compatible.

For a dozen years, our political leadership has been on a mission to shrink the federal bureaucracy. The most significant, though unheralded, consequence of the Clinton-Gore "reinventing government" drive was to cut the civil service head count by 426,000 people.

President Bush picked up the torch, declaring he would shed 425,000 civil service jobs by means of "competitive sourcing." The drive continues, though the numerical target has been abandoned and most public-private competitions have been won by teams of federal employees. Saving money, the principal point of the exercise, also isn't a sure thing, as Amelia Gruber reports this month.

It can't do much for morale to know that every agency's leadership is on the hunt for jobs to shed. That sends quite a different message than the one we hear from Comptroller General David M. Walker, Sen. George Voinovich and others who have emphasized that government must recruit great talent to meet the missions of the future.

Perhaps the two goals are not incompatible. Efficiencies generated through competitive sourcing are surely desirable. At the same time, sophisticated civil servants are needed to oversee expectations for public programs, whether they are carried out by government or private sector workers.

Government needs more people like those you will encounter in this issue. For example, in our cover story on women who have been pioneers in the Foreign Service, we find:

Barbara Bodine, who held high-profile and high-peril posts in the Middle East, most recently as the American "Mayor of Baghdad."

Ann Wright, an Army lieutenant colonel who joined the Foreign Service at age 40 and who, as charge d'affaires in Sierra Leone, led the evacuation of 2,500 people during a 1997 military crisis, the largest exodus of a U.S. diplomatic facility since the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Mary Ryan, who was among women who lodged a discrimination suit against the State Department but nonetheless rose to become assistant secretary for consular affairs and was State's most senior career official at the time.

Prudence Bushnell, who served as ambassador to Guatemala and then Kenya, and who led the recovery from the devastating bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998.

Elsewhere in this issue, we encounter:

Anne Sadler, whose treatment programs for sexual trauma are helping the rapidly growing population of female veterans, who now number 1.7 million.

Clark Kent Ervin, whose four years as inspector general at the State and Homeland Security departments gave him unique insight about the shortcomings of those institutions.

Judy S. Davis, whose skillful hand has turned around once-laggard acquisitions operations at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Philip Grone, who has taken over the Pentagon's controversial, last-round effort to shed unneeded military facilities.

In addition, George Cahlink writes this month about the Army's response to its urgent need to develop leadership skills among the junior officers who are leading the small-unit actions that typify the war in Iraq. Here, and everywhere in government, it's the people who count.