The National Academy of Public Administration held its annual Fall Meeting in early November, unveiling its final list of “Grand Challenges in Public Administration” following a year-long effort to identify these challenges and position the Academy as a leader of future collaborative efforts to address them.

“Over the next decade, we will face tremendous technological, economic, environmental and social shifts in our world, which will have a seismic impact on the future path of our nation,” said Terry Gerton, President and CEO of the Academy. “Therefore, it is critical that governments at all levels take steps to transform and modernize, to ensure they can tackle these challenges in new, innovative and effective ways.”

After a year of gathering and analyzing input on the major issues facing the United States, the Academy unveiled its final list of 12 Grand Challenges in Public Administration, which fall within four major focus areas: Protecting and Advancing Democracy; Strengthening Social and Economic Development; Ensuring Environmental Sustainability; and Managing Technological Changes. The Challenges include:

• Protect electoral integrity and enhance voter participation
• Modernize and reinvigorate the public service
• Develop new approaches to public governance and engagement
• Advance national interests in a changing global context
• Foster social equity
• Connect individuals to meaningful work
• Build resilient communities
• Advance the nation’s long-term fiscal health
• Steward natural resources and address climate change
• Create modern water systems for safe and sustainable use
• Ensure data security and privacy rights of individuals
• Make government AI ready

The Robertson Foundation for Government’s mission aligns particularly strongly with the bolded challenges above. RFG sponsored a panel at the meeting on “Improving the Development of Public Administrators for Global Work in the 21st Century” focused on how we can develop public administrators to be ready for global work and where there is still work to be done.

“Addressed individually, these Grand Challenges will take years or even decades to solve,” said Gerton. “So it is imperative that we move forward on these challenges simultaneously, to shape effective governance in the 21st century. With this campaign, the Academy wants to inspire action, enhance understanding of each Grand Challenge, connect stakeholders, and drive change. We plan to work with interested people and organizations at all levels of government, in academia, and in the private and nonprofit sectors so that, collectively, the nation can make meaningful progress.”

Lecture speakers during the Fall Meeting included Darin Atteberry, City Manager of Fort Collins, Colorado; Dr. Courtney N. Phillips, Executive Commissioner of Texas Health and Human Services; and Sarah Rosen Wartell, President of Urban Institute, who held a plenary discussion on social equity as the Elmer B. Staats Lecture on November 7. The Staats Lecture discussion was moderated by Valerie Lemmie, Director of Exploratory Research for the Kettering Foundation. Anne Rung, Director of the Government Sector for Amazon Business, delivered the James E. Webb Lecture on November 8.

In addition, the Academy inducted the Academy’s 2019 Class of Fellows and presented its three major annual awards.

The Academy awarded the 2019 George Graham Award for Exceptional Service to the Academy to Academy Fellow Blue Wooldridge, Professor Emeritus at The L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The Academy awarded the 2019 Louis Brownlow Book Award to Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means, co-authored by Academy Fellow Donald P. Moynihan, McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Pamela Herd, Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

The Academy awarded the 2019 Herbert Roback Scholarship Award to Joaquin Taussig, a public policy graduate student and research assistant at Georgetown University.

A detailed meeting agenda can be found here.

NAPA President and CEO Terry Gerton gave several interviews on the grand challenges, two of which can be found at:

Federal News Network (Federal Drive with Tom Temin)

Sirius XM (The Morning Briefing)

From curing diseases to helping launch the internet, the federal government has a history of innovation that has improved the lives of Americans and advanced societal interests. Despite this legacy, outdated systems, rules and processes hinder innovation at a time when government must grapple with a wide array of critical and complex 21st-century challenges.

In “Risk and Reward: A Framework for Federal Innovation,” the Partnership for Public Service, in collaboration with Slalom Consulting, investigated innovative federal organizations and what made them successful. The report provides a framework for federal agencies seeking to innovate and meet the constantly evolving needs of the public.

Read the report to see the 10 characteristics of innovative government organizations that can foster creative problem-solving, deliver operational changes and improve institutional performance.

Read more

Successful leaders envision, shape, and safeguard the future, creating clarity amidst uncertainty. This objective is increasingly difficult in an era where rapid, unforeseen change seems constant. Agencies face serious public management challenges that go to the core of effective governance and leadership, requiring innovation, collaboration, flexibility, and understanding of the capacity needed to tackle complex, non-routine challenges. Given these challenges, leadership development programs can lay a foundation for skills that current and future executives can leverage to anticipate and respond to future opportunities and risks.

In this new report, Preparing the Next Generation of Federal Leaders: Agency-Based Leadership Development Programs, a team of expert authors—Gordon Abner, Jenny Knowles Morrison, James L. Perry, and Bill Valdez—focuses on how best to build programs that can shape and inform future government leaders.

The authors analyze the performance and efficaciousness of agency-based leadership development programs, which ensure that leaders understand trends affecting their jobs, such as risk management or cybersecurity; such programs prepare future leaders for the rigors of driving action across the federal government’s $4.4 trillion enterprise that touches the lives of all Americans daily. The depth and breadth of current agency leadership programs vary widely, inhibiting systematic development of tomorrow’s government leaders.

The report explores five core topics: 1) factors that enable a sustainable agencybased leadership development program; 2) system-level challenges to creating and operating such programs; 3) training and development strategies that have had the most success in the federal government; 4) transferable lessons learned from exemplary agency programs; and 5) ways to demonstrate programmatic return-on-investment (ROI). The report underscores that federal organizations can mount successful leadership development programs, and that the effective practices they have identified provide excellent guides across all facets of the leadership development cycle—enabling government executives to tackle problems with fresh ideas and energy.

This report builds on the Center’s extensive research into federal leadership. Previous Center reports have explored how particular leaders have responded to public management challenges they faced running a government program or agency. These reports, as well as the many leadership interviews and profiles produced by the Center, focus on telling a leader’s story, outlining experience, and sharing insights. We trust that this new report will be a useful and informative guide for efforts to build the next generation of government leaders.

Learn more and download the report

In recent years, the norms and expectations that once ensured that our government was guided primarily by the public interest rather than by individual or partisan interest have significantly weakened. There are now far fewer constraints to deter abuse by executive branch actors. This report focuses on two distinct areas: the growing politicization of government science and research and the breakdown of processes for filling key government positions.

Objective data and research are essential to effective governance and democratic oversight. But over the last few decades, the safeguards meant to keep government research objective and publicly accessible have been steadily weakening. Recent administrations have manipulated the findings of government scientists and researchers, retaliated against career researchers for political reasons, invited outside special interests to shape research priorities, undermined and sidelined advisory committees staffed by scientists, and suppressed research and analysis from public view — often material that had previously been made available. In many cases, they have appeared to pay little political price for these missteps. This trend has culminated in the efforts of the current administration not only to politicize scientific and technical research on a range of topics, but also, at times, to undermine the value of objective facts themselves.

Now, we are at a crisis point, with almost weekly violations of previously respected safeguards.

• The acting White House chief of staff reportedly instructed the secretary of commerce to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — a part of the Department of Commerce — issue a misleading statement in support of the president’s false assertion about the trajectory of a hurricane, contradicting an earlier statement released by the National Weather Service. The secretary of commerce reportedly threatened to fire top NOAA officials in pressuring them to act.
• The Department of Agriculture relocated economists across the country after they published findings showing the financial harms to farmers of the administration’s trade policies.
• The Interior Department reassigned its top climate scientist to an accounting role after he highlighted dangers posed by climate change.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted rules that prevent leading experts from serving on science advisory boards and encourage participation by industry-affiliated researchers.
• The White House suppressed a report showing a toxic substance that is present in several states’ water supplies endangers human health at levels far lower than previously reported by the EPA.

Political officials have the prerogative to make policy decisions, and even challenge the science and methodology of career experts, but accurate, nonpolitical, government-supported research and analysis should be protected. Indeed, government research has shifted the course of human history through, for example, the space race, cures for disease, food- and water-safety measures, and computer and internet technology innovations.

Effective government also depends on a reliable process for filling senior government positions with qualified professionals who are dedicated to doing the people’s work. Recent presidents have filled critical jobs with unqualified cronies while leaving other posts vacant, and have found ways to sidestep the Senate’s approval role, nullifying a crucial constitutional check. For their part, lawmakers have rubber-stamped some nominees who are unqualified or have conflicts of interest while dragging their feet on considering others, often based on whether or not the Senate majority and the president share a party.

The consequences are readily apparent: less than half the senior roles at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are filled; at least a dozen agencies — including two cabinet departments — are run by non-Senate-confirmed acting officials two years into this administration; and the Senate confirmation process takes five times longer than it did 40 years ago.

If left unchecked, both of these trends are likely to do damage. Government research that is guided by politics, not the facts, can lead to ineffective and costly policy, among other harms, and a dysfunctional appointments process risks stymieing vital government functions. Both developments also threaten to exact a long-term price, if allowed to stand. They risk creating a vicious cycle, opening the door to abuse by future administrations, which may push the envelope ever further.

We are committed to teaching future administrations the opposite lesson — that these abuses of power violate broadly recognized standards of honest and effective government, long accepted by both political parties. Abuse once again can beget reform. And the task of advancing this reform could not be more urgent, and cannot be for one or another party alone.

We have big problems to solve in this nation. If we cannot agree on the facts underlying potential solutions to those problems, and we do not have qualified and dedicated people in place to develop and execute on them, we will imperil the future of our democracy.

To protect government research from politicization and keep it accessible, we offer proposals that would

• create scientific integrity standards and require agencies to establish protocols for adhering to them,
• prohibit politically motivated manipulation or suppression of research,
• ensure the proper functioning of scientific advisory committees, and
• increase public access to government research and data.

To fix the process for filling senior government positions, we offer proposals that would

• encourage the appointment of qualified and ethical people to key government posts,
• make it harder for presidents to sideline the Senate during the process,
• streamline the confirmation process for executive branch nominees, and
• protect national security by fixing the vulnerable White House security clearance process.

Our proposals narrowly target areas that are ripe for executive abuse. But as former federal government officials, we have seen up close how other factors contribute to government dysfunction and undermine democratic values. We conclude this report by highlighting these factors — in particular, our broken campaign finance system, the president’s expansive emergency powers, the weakening of Congress as a check on the executive, and the politicization of the judiciary — and we reaffirm the essential role that a functioning system of checks and balances plays in protecting our democracy.

Read the full report

Listen to government’s untold stories.

Presenting #StoriesOfService: a campaign to celebrate and honor the voices of public service. Each Wednesday for the next month, we will share a new track featuring a 2019 Sammies finalist. Each of these outstanding honorees reflected on their public service journey in conversations facilitated by StoryCorps®, a nonprofit organization with a mission to “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.”

Learn more and listen to the stories

The American Society for Public Administration has opened nominations for its 2020 Annual Awards Program. Issued in recognition of public servants from across the nation, the awards will be presented to winners at ASPA’s 2020 Annual Conference.

Among the honors is the National Public Service Award, granted in partnership with the Academy to leaders from all levels of public service: local, state and federal governments, as well as international officials and public service nonprofit organizations. While individuals may hold a position in academia or a nonprofit organization, all recipients must have made significant contributions as career public servants in at least one level of government.

Learn more and submit a nomination

The Partnership for Public Service is ready to accept nominations for next year’s honorees and needs your help. Each spring, the Partnership for Public Service recognizes more than two dozen individuals and teams who have made significant contributions to the health, safety and prosperity of our country. The Robertson Foundation for Government is a proud sponsor of the program.

Nominate your colleagues for a 2020 Sammies award. Nominees can be new to government or have decades of service. They can directly serve citizens or work behind the scenes to make government more effective. They can serve in any field and work in any part of the country or abroad.

Nominating is easy! Visit servicetoamericamedals.org to find eligibility and selection criteria, category descriptions and profiles of past honorees. Review the guide to writing a winning nomination for tips on getting your nominees noticed.

Nominations are due January 17, but don’t wait until then. Start your nomination today, and encourage your coworkers and friends to participate as well. There is no limit to the number of nominations an agency or nominator may submit.

Learn more about the history of the most prestigious awards in civil service. Questions? Contact Nola Tolsma at sammies@ourpublicservice.org or (202) 869-3084.

The National Academy of Public Administration announced that 51 leaders in the field of public administration have been selected for the 2019 Class of Academy Fellows. Induction of the new Fellows will occur during the annual Academy Fall Meeting, which will take place November 7-8 in Arlington, Virginia.

“I am very pleased to welcome our 2019 class of Fellows,” said Academy President and CEO Terry Gerton. “Our Fellows are nationally recognized for their expertise and contributions to the field of public administration and this year’s incoming class is no exception.  They are an outstanding group that will enrich our Fellowship, especially as we unveil the Grand Challenges in Public Administration and collaborate across the field to find solutions.”

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The Minnowbrook conferences, hosted periodically over the past 50 years by the Maxwell School, have reflected major milestones in public administration. These sessions have brought together a range of experts to discuss and debate how research and teaching can best contribute to a vibrant public sector, as well as how the field should address larger social and economic challenges facing nations and the world.

National Academy of Public Administration Fellow Tina Nabatchi and Julia Carboni authored a report on the discussions at the Minnowbrook at 50 Conference, with the intent of sparking discussion around the important role that public administration plays for government, scholars, students, and the world that they continue to shape.

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