Earl Rice

I have taken quite a few leadership courses. The best were in DOD. But, I stopped taking them when I finally faced the facts that leadership was doing the opposite of what I was being taught in the classes. Then I worked for 3 years in DC. Didn’t take long to loose faith and realize why.

And trying to compare government workers with private…[Read more]

Senior VA leaders have been trying to change the culture of the VA for decades. You have a Central Office that is totally disconnected from the field. Regulations are vague at best open to many interpretations. And, each facility has become a fiefdom (Marcher Baron is what comes to mind) unto themselves. It will take way more than 2 years to…[Read more]

Somewhere I read that only 20% of Federal Government (maybe less than that) have served in more than one Agency. I belong to the minority on this. I have also moved around and worked in 5 different locations. Competing for a new job is probably the only way you will get there now days. There’s a lot of talk about getting MOUs, and details…[Read more]

This would never work in my Agency. To many egos, to many middle managers, to much bureaucracy. It would take 50 years for the “climate” to change. And, by that time, ideas like this one would have changed 50 times, and there would be whole new fads. Further, no body is going to tackle the task of just throwing the Title 5 merit based system…[Read more]

In the US, it is normally associated with Washington DC Central Office positions. I.e. Position A is graded as a GS12 in St Louis, but the same standardized PD would grade out (or rate out…classifier term) as a GS13 in the DC area. The connotation is usually meant in a negative context that a person’s position is way overrated grade wise for…[Read more]

I will cut the philosophic contemplations out on this.
I think the first part is in the title. Is there to much transparency talk in the Gov?
There’s a lot of “talk”, probably to much “talk” of the buzz word “transparency”, and it sounds good, but in reality there is very little “action” behind the “talk”.

First, what would transparency gain…[Read more]

There’s more to it than just the hiring processes. And, there is a lot of committee actions as a CYA. It’s hard to file an EEO complaint against a committee/board (I guess you have never had that). But, let’s look at this, there is the HR person making sure the applicants sent over on the list are qualified (this is a qualified, not a motivated…[Read more]

Mark,
I can only say you hit the nail right on the head with this one. So many people forget that we are the Government, not some for profit entity where the CEO’s one and major goal is to soak as much profit out of the company as fast as they can, get their high salary and bonuses, and then put on that “golden parachute” and jump to the next…[Read more]

If I was Secretary of……. (which would probably mean I was a well-connected Political appointee, with little experience doing whatever the Agency is doing, but lots of connections in the Whitehouse and stepped in party agenda’s and fund raising).

1. Order an immediate review of all functions the Agency is performing and eliminate everything and I…

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As I started reading through the report, the first thing that I picked up on was statements about not holding management officials to the standards of the Merit Principles. Likewise, there was a common theme about not holding management officials to the required standards of work performance. And last, and this is just getting into the study,…[Read more]

Sometime written history (and historians) gloss over the events after the Gettysburg Address. After Lincoln gave the short speech, there was, what we would call now, a huge pregnant pause. After this pause, the audience began to clap, not enthusiastically, more out of courtesy to the President. In the weeks following, there was much debate as…[Read more]

David, I was reading through and whole heartedly agree. But at least now days, people do say thank you for your service (always feel a bit embarrassed when they do though…I just look at it that I did what needed to be done, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but it just needed to be done at the time, and I won’t go into the morality). I remember in…[Read more]

This is a true question. Landmark Bill that will be the legacy of an Administration, that was rushed through the legislative process, and as the Speaker of the House stated at the time: “We will have to pass it to see what is in it!”. [Boy that is scary!!!! Passing laws to see what is in it.]

My personal opinion doesn’t matter on this. And, I…[Read more]

There will never be a “Public Servants Day” on the scale of “Veterans Day”. Nor should there be. And the local populace will never care about the “Public Servants” like they do their Veterans. Public Servants would never put up with the sacrifices that Military members do (and by implication, Veterans have done). Trying to compare public…[Read more]

I was in Germany at that time. I remember the Bundesgrenzschutz patrolling the airports with their MP5’s, a pistol, and 90% of the time with their German Shepherds (and they weren’t drug dogs). Talk about a deterrent. Between them and the Polizei, there was enough firepower only a mad man would try something. These were highly trained…[Read more]

David,

I have to agree with you and share your opinion. Under no circumstances would I trust a TSA employee with a gun. Not even a toy rubber gun. (I say that bearing in mind that in a former career, I was a police officer…yes I have done many things in my life). If they tried to do the required background checks to arm the TSA employees,…[Read more]

You got me wrong, I have never had a problem with having non-qualified or poorly qualified Veterans “poluting” the top of the list. Much to the contrary, I have always had highly qualified Veterans in the best qualified. That is as long as best qualfied isn’t defined as the daughter of a current employee, or the son of a neighbor (i.e. cronyism,…[Read more]

There are two types of announcements.
One is Merit Promotion, which you can allow status candidates to apply. They get no special placement because of Veterans Preference, but they do get to compete with Government Employees (Schedule A also falls into this category). Now, if an Agency announces a position to people in the Government, but…[Read more]

Back to the basics, what I need to do my job as a staffer is:
1. An up to date desktop/laptop I don’t care. Something with more than 2 megs of ram, and a 1.2 gig processor.
2. A network connection faster than 564k.
3. Managers to stop gripping because who they have predetermined they want to see on the list isn’t there (ergo stop pre-selection,…[Read more]