Ross Gianfortune
This is GovExec Daily, where we bring you the federal stories that really matter.  It's March 29, 2021 . I’m Ross Gianfortune.

When President Joe Biden’s administration came into office two months ago, there was a sense of a clean slate, as there is with every change of government. But, as with everything, what came before colors what comes next, even in concepts like government reform and management.

Workforce modernization, cutting waste and other notions have been a part of the government management space for decades and can affect the way the new administration approaches reform. In a report for the IBM Center for the Business of Government and on a post on our site, our guests today outline how the past can color the future of reform. JOhn Kamensky and Daniel J Chenok look at a series of past reform efforts that administrations over the past 30 years have taken and the lessons that can be learned from them. 

After a short break,they will join me next to discuss how government has worked to get things done and how administrations can implement government reform with past efforts guiding the way. 

Ross Gianfortune
One year into the global pandemic, the way we work has been completely transformed. Looking ahead, which of these changes will remain permanent and which will fade with time? During the Future of Work virtual summit, Nextgov and Government Executive will dive into not only what the future of work looks like for government, but also how agencies can harness technology, people, and culture to build a workforce resilient to whatever challenges come its way. Learn more at govexec.com/events

Ross Gianfortune

There is often an idea that a new administration means a clean slate upon its beginning, but so much involved in public service reform is that which builds off what came before. In a recently released report from the IBM Center for The Business  of Government, our guests today lay out the different different reform initiatives over the past 30 years. The report focuses on how government works to get things done and the leaders over that time who have and continue to implement missions. 

John Kamensky is a Senior Fellow with the IBM Center for The Business of Government. Prior to joining the IBM Center, he served for eight years as deputy director of Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Before that, he worked at the Government Accountability Office where he played a key role in the development and passage of the Government Performance and Results Act. Welcome back to the program.

John Kamensky
Thank you very much.

Daniel J. Chenok is executive director of the IBM Center for The Business of Government. He also serves as a National Academy of Public Administration fellow and as an Adjunct Associate Professor with the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, teaching at the school's Washington, DC Center. Welcome to the show.

Daniel J. Chenok
Thank you.

Ross Gianfortune 
Government reform is a perennial topic in our world and John, You've been grappling with it. For decades, what's the biggest challenge right now, the government faces?

John Kamensky
Interestingly, the biggest challenge I think that we are facing as a government is trust. Trust in democracy. Trust in government and trust in each other, and not just citizens but also within the government between career and non career. We tend to focus, I think, broadly as certainly our industry internals my industry on screw ups and disappointments and things that don't go well, we did a show on my vaccine frustration with the DC Department of Health for example that's local government, but nonetheless, but you know you think of things like the Obamacare website, the pandemic response last year. Dan is there one particular government achievement over, you know the 30 years that you studied that stands out as an example of excellent government management. 

Daniel J. Chenok
Let me let me point to a couple and also tie it back to the first question around challenges, I think that trust is earned. And the way that trust is earned is by performing over time and in providing for the needs of citizens the needs of small businesses the needs of state and local governments, all the constituents that government works with. And so, The, the ability of government to pull together despite some of the cross boundary issues that John talked about the bureaucratic issues, the issues around government being sort of risk constrained government often doesn't like to take on risk can be overcome with a straw, as we've seen in our research with strong efforts from from teams of who work together to achieve a common mission on behalf of nations, and so a couple that come to mind, the y2k example which John Koskinen wrote about in our setting was a tremendous global leadership model and I was at OMB. At the time, working alongside working as sort of a partner with John when he was an ER, I was leading the technology policy and budget office at OMB at the time, and we worked with John and his group really pulled together a remarkable cross boundary cross inter governmental cross sector and international leadership effort into that, I think represented the best of the government's ability to come together, point to an approach to government use that the Obama administration really introduced and is still in place today and these are the cross agency priority goals. So with these you have a set of goals that were meaningful, reducing veterans homelessness, delivering on cybersecurity, and a range of goals that have remained remarkably durable since they were introduced, There's been some, some changes across administration's, of course, and we'll see how the Biden administration was formed with the process. But in each case, they, they set an ambitious but achievable, set of goals that the government could work together on in terms of metrics and pulled together a team where you had a center of government leader from. And then an agency leader, kind of working together to achieve something so both cases are for governments pulled together across boundaries, achieve big things but achieve them in a way that's meaningful for the American people.

Ross Gianfortune
I guess let's talk a little bit about the American people, John you focus a lot of your career on studying and improving customer service, and an outcome for the customers the you know the people the citizens. Do you have a success story or a failure that comes to mind immediately and where have you seen the most progress in your credit.

John Kamensky
Oh, what was interesting was that the motivation behind President Clinton and vice president Gore's reinventing government initiative, tied back to increasing citizen trust, and they, their studies found that a key element of citizen trust is how well the government works, and they the best metric for that becomes customer service. And when we started that initiative we were focusing on an initiative that work seemed to work in the in the UK, which was creating customer service standards. And so we wound up creating 1000s of standards in the US government in the early 90s, and a, an interesting lesson that we had was that, setting a standard, doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to improve the service in the case of one standard of no longer than 10 minutes in line waiting for a passport, we found that the post that the passport office began to put guards on the outside to keep people from coming in so that they wouldn't be there are longer than 10 minutes of the line so that wasn't what we met. What is really an interesting success story is, is fairly recent. And that's what happened as an outgrowth of the crisis at the Veterans Administration with the Veterans Hospital, wait time about five years ago or so, Secretary McDonald created a completely new way of delivering services to veterans, and they call it, customer experience as opposed to customer service, and Barbara Morton, who I think is one of the quiet heroes in the federal government help reframe how services are delivered in an integrated way from the Veterans perspective as opposed to the different democracies within the VA, and they've increased citizen trust by about 20% Over the past three or four years as a result of dramatically changing the way they serve customers.

Ross Gianfortune
And certainly, you know, a bit of a Gordian knot that agency so any any improvement is always something to celebrate. I know in my time covering it, it's been, it's, it's, it's really tough, you have a lot of a lot of veterans to serve in a mission that's that's often very difficult and widespread and varied, then you know the civil service took a beating during the last administration, President Trump indulged a lot, talking about the deep state and and attacking bureaucracy tried to get rid of OPM, even as far as the civil service, how do you look at the civil service, right now, and how do you rate the health of it, And what do you see going forward for the Biden administration to restore the trust both in government and of the civil service of, you know, the whole system. 

Daniel J. Chenok
Sure it was a former civil servant in NSCs leader and no one has tremendous respect for the civil servants who are in government working to improve services and programs every day I think that even given all of the issues over the last several years. Most of the several million people who work for the government are there for the mission. They're there to because they believe in the cause of their agency, and they are looking for leaders to come in and help support them in that effort. And I think that the statements of the Biden administration are in support of the civil service and the value of career expertise, have been statements that have been. They can get behind in terms of understanding their role going forward. I think that the, the work that they do. Will is being rewarded I think you're seeing a lot of citizen restoration of belief that government can help them. As a result of the American rescue plan Act, and the stimulus dollars and this is something that came upon with the stimulus dollars from last year as well that you know at a time of great crisis across the country, health care, economic, racial climate, that there are government efforts that can help move forward and that government employees are key deliver delivery mechanisms for helping citizens. And so, as government works more closely with in terms of its own, working in its own offices working with its own agencies, and also reaching out to work with other sectors with the nonprofit sector with the industry with academia, that'll all kind of act as a springboard to improving the, the capacity and belief that civil service has in its own ability to deliver on results and I think that it does come back to that because back to the, they go to work every day. Government employees with a mission to deliver on education, health care, transportation, international affairs, defend national defense. They go with the belief that those missions are critically important and rallying behind those missions setting a tone that those missions matter and the people we deliver on those missions matter can help the civil service really to achieve new ends, and that's not getting into all of the bureaucratic issues around civil service reform which, which would take a long time it has indeed taken several decades of discussion, but more about sort of the principle of the, the importance of the civil service and the, the respect that they have for for one another and the respect of the American people have for them, that can inspire them to do that work.

Ross Gianfortune
And we covered the Schedule F. Executive Order quite a bit in its time. It's short time of existence and that was one thing that all that came down to everybody we spoke to in the government management, and reform world was that there are things that are need to be changed about the civil service for sure and there are reforms that can be made to make it better. But the idea that it would just be totally up ended in this way. Really disrespected and really sort of lost the thread very quickly on the value of civil servants. And that, that's always that was, you know it's not the single blast ministration because, you know, God knows every elected official talks about Washington as though it's a bunch of the robots from that Will Smith movie just faceless kind of drones and that's governments made up of people hard working people who believe in the mission as you know, but it's always a little shocking when it's so sort of nakedly out there, you know, we'll end on this and then as you just noted, it's easy to be pessimistic right now sometimes you noted rather the the big problems require big solutions. So I guess John will end on this. Are you hopeful for the future of government service, and the execution of these programs and mission through reform and through the administration.

Daniel J. Chenok
The answer is a resounding yes. I started my career in government around the bicentennial. And through that entire time, both government service and being able to work as privileges, the IBM center Think Tank. I'm very optimistic. The nation's facing enormous challenges that basically only a public service can address. It's a noble profession, and addressing things like climate change and social justice, inequity and the economic recovery, that we face out of COVID and stuff, this is only something that government can deliver and the people in the government can deliver, and I feel very confident that they will, or can I add a note on this, and John has been a leader in many of these efforts, both in government and with the IBM center for many years, and he is leaving us at the end of this month, he's retiring this report, represents a culmination of a year's worth of work that he and I did along with a number of distinguished contributors to chronicle some of the issues that we've talked about today and many more and their impact for today. And this is just one of the many things that we are grateful for for John's having worked with us he continues to inspire civil servants, nonprofit leaders, IBM, and the work that he that he will continue to do in his post IBM life I know will continue to be an inspiration so it's it's been an honor to work with him and I wish him the best as he moves into this next phase.

Ross Gianfortune 
Oh, I mean, I will absolutely cosign on that 100 times, I know John's been a contributor for us to come exactly in, you know, for a long time and it has been, you know, pleasure, all the way and we didn't, we didn't, you know, I know. John's pretty, you know, humble guy so we were gonna make it a big celebration but for sure it's deserving such on certainly thank you for, for all your years in this as well and Dan and John, thanks for being on the show.

John Kamensky
In a real privilege. Thank you.

Ross Gianfortune
Thanks for listening to GovExec Daily. Our show was produced by Adam Butler and hosted by me, Ross Gianfortune. We want to thank John Kamensky and Daniel J. Chenok for joining the program. Our music is the song “Signals” by Catfish Dancing. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can email us any feedback at podcast @ govexec.com or hit us on Twitter @ Govexec.  
 
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