Making the Case

When Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry announced in May that he would pursue pay reform during his tenure, he also outlined an important and somewhat unusual component of that effort. To make substantial changes to federal pay, and again attempt to close the pay gap between comparable jobs in the public and private sectors, Berry said he will have to convince the general public that it has a stake in such reforms.

He isn't alone in believing that management reformers must build public awareness of and support for their initiatives if they're going to achieve their goals in government performance. But the Obama administration's management officials face a daunting challenge educating the public about what government does, and making the case that agencies need resources and attention to improve.

"There are nice experiments bottom up, but you need a clear mandate from the top," said Nancy Killefer, President Obama's first choice for chief performance officer, during a July event on improving government performance at the Center for American Progress in Washington. "This has to be a mandate that survives a news cycle. This is not going to happen overnight."

The problem is cracking that news cycle, and convincing mainstream media that government management challenges are worth continuous detailed coverage -- not just when something goes wrong, or when an arresting statistic catches a journalist's attention. In a May meeting with reporters to discuss the administration's agenda for the federal workforce, Berry cited pundits like CNN's Lou Dobbs, who frequently argues that federal workers are overpaid compared to most members of the general public, as an obstacle to convincing ordinary Americans that to be competitive, federal agencies might have to offer higher salaries.

It's not just that some inaccurate perceptions about federal pay exist. The problem is even more basic, said Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, pointing out that many Americans simply don't understand the full scope of what the federal government does. As the debate over health care reform has ramped up, there have been a steady trickle of stories about lawmakers whose constituents have asked them to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," as one town hall attendee last week told Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C. Medicare and its counterpart Medicaid are both government-funded programs administered through the Health and Human Services Department.

Stier said even when citizens do understand what federal agencies do, the language the government uses to describe management challenges, or even basic human resources issues, is often incomprehensible.

"The government even talks about vacancy announcements rather than job opportunities," Stier said. "There's a whole separate process that's grown up that's inside government-speak that does not translate to the public."

Those are formidable obstacles Berry -- and the administration as a whole -- will face if they are to educate the public about how government works and how it could work better. Berry has been appearing frequently at Washington events and at conferences across the country to make the case for a new dialogue about civil service to people who already are interested in management reform. And an October conference on pay and management reform sponsored by Harvard University and scheduled to be held in the Washington area, will attract listeners from outside the Beltway.

Stier agreed that it's important to rally the troops, the stakeholder groups that talk to the media and release reports, universities that communicate with students who are looking for jobs, and practitioners eager for a place to apply their skills. He also reiterated Berry's point that the dialogue about federal pay and employee productivity will have to extend far beyond the current boundaries of the debate to have any impact.

"All too often, we talk to ourselves and to a small population of people who are deeply invested in this," Stier said. "At the end of the day, what we have to demonstrate is that this matters to people who don't see this as their primary issue, but rather who have some other agenda -- be it the environment, or children, or defense, and unless you can connect this issue to that network of ideas, you don't succeed. It's performance for the sake of better outcomes in areas people care about."