Agencies gear up for new administration

President-elect Barack Obama is not the only one expediting the transition. Federal agencies governmentwide have spent months preparing both operationally and logistically for an orderly handoff.

The General Services Administration on Wednesday announced that it had "turned over the keys" of the transition's Washington headquarters to the Obama team.

"This is a proud day for GSA, and it has been an honor to work with the campaign teams to fulfill our responsibilities and meet their transition needs," said acting GSA Administrator James Williams.

Located in downtown Washington, the building includes approximately 120,000-square-feet of office suite space on three floors. In addition, a basement media room can accommodate about 100 reporters.

The office space comes complete with desktop computers, furniture, phones and other equipment, GSA's Presidential Support Team Manager Tim Horne said in a Monday briefing.

The 1963 and 2000 Presidential Transition Acts gave GSA the responsibility to provide the president-elect's team with parking spaces, and administrative services such as mail management, payroll and contracting. The agency also is authorized to release $8.5 million in congressionally appropriated funds to support the daily activities of the transition.

"Our goal is to make it as smooth and effective a transition as we possibly can," said GSA Presidential Transition Director Gail Lovelace in a pre-election interview. "We want to have a fully loaded safe for them so that when they walk in the day after the election … we will open the doors to them so that they can begin their work."

Along with the National Archives and Records Administration, GSA also has been creating a transition directory to familiarize the incoming team with an overview of each agency.

Across the government, meanwhile, agencies have been preparing briefing books for political appointees that summarize their missions, goals, budgets and key personnel.

At the Office of Management Budget, which is coordinating the transition for the White House, transition preparations have been under way for more than a year.

In a July 18 memo, OMB Deputy Director for Management Clay Johnson, directed the President's Management Council to begin identifying by Aug. 1 the career officials responsible for assuming the positions of departing political appointees.

Agencies also were directed by Nov. 1 to identify and summarize their "hot policy, internal management, legal and infrastructure issues" and to provide work tools such as identification cards, BlackBerrys and ethics briefings for new employees. Agencies have met nearly all the deadlines, Johnson said.

"They are the most highly motivated group to make a transition of the new leadership team in their agencies a success," Johnson said.

The No. 1 priority for OMB itself, Johnson said, is to help the incoming administration prepare the fiscal 2010 budget that reflects the priorities of the president-elect.

"The budget examiners have been looking at what campaign promises have been made and researching those so that they can sit down and very quickly engage the new group on the costs of this and that, and the pros and cons of this and that, so that they can assist the president-elect put together the budget that he wants Congress to consider," Johnson said.

In a White House press conference on Thursday, President Bush said his staff had provided intelligence briefings to President-elect Obama and the Justice Department has approved security clearances for transition staff members.

"Offices within the White House are at work preparing extensive transition materials," Bush said. "We're preparing career employees throughout the administration to take on added responsibilities to help prevent any disruption to the essential functions of the federal government. Taken together, these measures represent an unprecedented effort to ensure that the executive branch is prepared to fulfill its responsibilities at all times."

At the Pentagon, a task force has been meeting daily to identify all the objectives, processes and key information needed to ensure a smooth transition, said spokesman Bryan Whitman.

For example, the group has outlined a list of events and milestones taking place within the next 90 days that the president-elect's team should be aware of, including his first budget submission, upcoming conferences, and deployment orders for troops heading to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defense also has cleared fully furnished office space for as many as 50 Obama transition team members. The space, which is ready, has not been occupied yet, Whitman said.

The Pentagon has developed a succession plan for about 200 political appointments, approximately one-fourth of which are Senate-confirmed positions. The agency has identified members of the Senior Executive Service and military officials to serve temporarily in those political positions.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked the department's political appointees if they were willing to stay in their positions, according to Whitman. The agency, however, declined to discuss the results of Gates' survey.

At the Office of Personnel Management, Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Lowe, a career senior executive, has assumed the role of transition coordinator, said spokesman Michael Orenstein.

The agency has both governmentwide and internal transition responsibilities, including conducting pre-appointment reviews of all competitive service appointment actions that involve the selection or conversion of Schedule C or noncareer SES employees, Orenstein said.

The agency also is developing the "Presidential Transition Guide to Federal Human Resources Management" and performing background investigations on political appointees upon request, he said.

With most of the transition planning already under way or completed, the next step for agencies is to wait for Obama's team to initiate specific conversations about their plans and priorities, Johnson said.

"Right now there is a lot of guessing about what the transition teams' needs are going to be and what their definition of being well-prepared on Jan. 20 at noon is," Johnson said. "We will give them lots of counsel, and they will have their own ideas, and together we will come to an even better definition of where we can help them be by inauguration time."