17. Future of the Public Workforce: Issues, Challenges, and Actions Needed
An Issue Paper for the American Society for Public Administration by Max Stier President and CEO Partnership for Public Service It is clear that there are any number of serious issues and challenges facing the United States and the American public that cannot be successfully dealt with unless the country has a highly qualified, motivated, and enabled public workforce available at all levels of government. Threats to public health and safety, environmental concerns, geopolitical turmoil, terrorism , a weakened national and global economy, an aging national infrastructure, and so on--all require an engaged, committed, and highly competent public workforce as one of the necessary ingredients of an effective response. Good public administration requires good public employees. However, the public workforce at all levels is under considerable stress. According to an analysis of the public sector workforce by the Rockefeller Institute of Government (as reported in “Life after Civil Service Reform: The Texas, Georgia, and Florida Experiences” published by the IBM Endowment for the Business of Government): • • • Nearly half of all government workers (local, state, and federal) are 45 years old or older (as compared with just over 31 percent for the private sector). From 1994 to 2001, the percentage of older workers in the government workforce increased more than the percentage for the private sector. Nationally, 50 percent of government jobs are in occupations requiring specialized training, education, and job skills, compared to just 29 percent in the private sector. The number of workers age 25 to 44—prime recruitment fodder for government—is expected to drop by three million from 1998 to 2008, meaning that the competition for workers just coming into their professional stride is going to get increasingly fierce.
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Compounding the difficulties for government and good public administration are several other workforce related issues: • Despite the impact on the national psyche of the 9/11/2001 attacks, public trust in government continues to be relatively low and while the general public might appreciate the work of public employees more that they did pre-September 11,
government is still not seen as an employer of choice by most of the highly skilled (and sought after) members of the national labor pool. • While an growing number of some of the most experienced and dedicated public employees are preparing to retire from or otherwise leave public service, many government jurisdictions—including the federal government—are discovering that due to years of downsizing and tight budgets, the employee “bench strength” in many organizations at the mid-career level is quite low. So recruitment into the public service needs to focus at all levels of intake—entry level, mid-level, and senior level. Many government organizations still focus primarily, if not exclusively, at the entry-level. The poor image of government as an employer needs to be addressed not only through a better public relations campaign, but also by ensuring that government truly is a model employer with a world-class workplace. The challenges that government is being asked to address and the size of the national population looking to the government for services is growing—requiring not only that it replace departing employees but that it replace them, in many cases, with more highly skilled employees. Many government organizations still operate on a model of a “cradle to grave” workforce that will spend an entire career within government. There is evidence that the percentage of high-performing employees who will actually do that is rapidly declining. Government organizations, therefore, need to adjust their workforce planning, employee benefit policies, recruitment and retention practices, and so on. Government civil service laws, rules, and procedures were developed to promote and protect public service values such as merit-based hiring, advancement and removal, fairness and equity; non-partisanship, and diversity. However, over time many of those laws, rules, and procedural safeguards have become outdated or so encrusted over the years with successive layers of “refinements,” additions, and requirements that are added on top of rather than in place of pre-existing requirements that they now often hinder rather than help government organizations in their quest to recruit, retain, and motivate a quality workforce. Justified criticisms of some civil service system weaknesses, however, could also unintentionally lead to some suggested cures that are worse than the illness. Movement to an “at will” system for hiring and termination purposes—without some procedural safeguards against undue partisan political interference—could have serious consequences for government and the public it serves. Some important questions are currently “on the table” in the public policy debates over the future of the public service workforce, particularly at the federal level, and it is important that principles of effective public administration and genuine
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concern for the public’s interest serve as drivers in the search for answers to those questions. Among those questions are: -- Are public managers and supervisors well prepared for their demanding roles with regard to attracting, selecting, developing, motivating, and managing the public workforce of the future? -- What workforce management lessons, policies, practices, or issues from the private sector do and do not apply in the public sector? Or, stated another way, what distinguishes public sector management in comparison to the private sector. -- What role should employee unions play in workforce management issues and under what ground rules if different from those that currently exist? -- What procedural safeguards are effective protection against unjust disciplinary actions, illegal discrimination, reprisals for reporting fraud, waste, or abuse, sexual harassment, and so on, without also being so time and resource consuming that they inhibit taking justified personnel actions to deal with conduct and performance problems or otherwise unduly interfere with mission accomplishment? -- Are the current programs and procedures in place to promote public policy workforce objectives (e.g., veterans preference, diversity, hiring people with disabilities) the most effective and are the public policy objectives themselves in need of adjustment based on changes in workforce demographics, labor market conditions, and so on? -- What functions currently performed by government employees should be discontinued altogether, contracted out to the private sector, or put up for competitive bid between the public and private sectors? -- What work currently being done by the private sector or by contractors should instead be done by government employees (the recent “federalization” of security screening at the nation’s airports provides a good example of the fact that the “contracting out” debate is not a one-way process.) -- Does the legal framework underlying the current civil service system(s) need a complete overall, fine-tuning, or incremental adjustments over time? What are the implications of the above for ASPA’s Strategic Plan? ASPA’s mission is “to advance excellence in public service.” Its vision includes being “a powerful voice for public service,” and strengthening “the effectiveness, responsiveness, and accountability of democratic governance.”
In keeping with its mission, and to also be a meaningful part of the response to the very real challenges facing the public service, ASPA should be in the forefront of the various stakeholders proposing answers to the questions outlined above. Moreover, ASPA needs to be seen as a real forum for practitioners (not just in name only) as well as academicians. To do this, ASPA may wish to consider addressing the following in any revisions to its strategic plans: 1. Expand ASPA’s presence within the halls of government by developing and disseminating real solutions to real public management and public administration problems. 2. Doing more to translate the theories of good public administration into the practice of good public management. For example, readable and convincing case studies, real examples of good public service practices that achieved measurable results, and highly visible success stories should be prominent in ASPA’s publications and celebrated in its conferences and public meetings. 3. Clearly articulating and actively communicating the case for and values underlying good public administration and why it’s in the best interests of the country and the American public to support those goals. 4. Becoming more pro-active in building a public constituency for the public workforce and actively supporting constructive actions that support good public workforce management. For example: -- ASPA might seek more opportunities to testify before Congress in support of beneficial legislative changes or in support of appropriations that adequately fund good public workforce initiatives that already exist. -- ASPA might seek to develop active partnerships with other good government organizations to promote common interests or to support common goals. -- ASAP might also become an advocate of and a facilitator for exchange programs that bring academicians temporarily into government organizations to work on relevant programs, issues, or change efforts and, in turn, bringing qualified practitioners into the classroom. In short, ASPA needs to become an Association that managers, policy makers, and others turn to for answers to the tough questions about government and governance and an Association that seeks to get things done.