Document created: 24 August 04
Air University Review, September-October
1970
The history of changeovers in national administrations in the U.S. federal government has been fraught with instances of waste of management skills and time-consuming trial-and-error experience. However, during the administration changes of 1961 and 1969 we find evolving a pattern of management education to better prepare top management for this all-important transition.
Accounts of the 1961 transition are well presented in a Brookings Institution report, The Presidential Election and Transition 1960-1961, edited by Paul T. David, and in another Brookings study, Changing Administrations, the 1961 and 1964 Transitions in Six Departments, authored by David T. Stanley. Mr. Stanley concludes very perceptively that the success of the 1961 transition “fostered a constructive attitude toward the transfer of power. The citizen can hope that all parties to future changes of administration will make the further changes and devote the extra effort needed to assure that power will change hands with a minimum of risk and confusion.”
National interest in the effective management of administration changes was further evidenced in the passage by Congress of the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, which sets forth policy guidance for “the orderly transfer of the executive power in connection with the expiration of the term of office of a President and the inauguration of a new President.”
The transition period of 1968-69, then, afforded an opportunity to use the improved techniques resulting from management education. My evaluation of the outcome in only one part of an executive department, the Department of the Air Force, is based on my experience as the senior Air Force civilian official representing the Secretary of the Air Force in the exercise.
Though the Air Force is not a cabinet department, it did have during the year of transition the largest share of the federal budget, $26.2 billion, and, next to the Army, the largest number of personnel of any department, 1.2 million (335,000 civilian, 865,000 military). Accordingly, a report and evaluation of the transition in the top civilian management of this vast executive organization in FY 1969 should be of particular interest to management educators.
Certain basic problems were encountered throughout the period of the 1969 transition, and a complete solution to some of them is not yet at hand. Several major problems were posed:
1. How to effect an orderly transfer of management information, skills, and know-how.
2. Development of guidance in required qualities of leadership needed for continuing desirable programs and in initiating new ones to fulfill the department’s roles and missions.
3. How to develop a greater understanding of interagency, white House, and Congressional relationships.
4. What should be done about high-level officials who are in competitive Civil Service jobs but whose attitudes and abilities do not meet the expectations of a new administration.
First, let us look for a moment at the background and authority for the 1968-69 transition, On 9 September 1968 Charles S. Murphy of the White House staff wrote the head of each executive department that “the President wishes that necessary steps begin now in order to meet the objective that each outgoing official of your agency plan to do for his successor those things which will assist in a smooth and orderly transition.” He cited the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 as the authority for “the orderly transfer of the executive power.”
Mr. Murphy’s memorandum continued: “Such a transition requires careful advance planning,” and “each agency will have the major responsibility of briefing its own incoming management.” His memorandum further directed the head of each agency to prepare “Transition Materials” on the following subjects:
Agency mission and statutory
authorities
Basic organization and functions
Budgetary and financial information
Key personnel
Significant interagency relationships
Significant intergovernmental relationships
Legislative processes and problems
Policy and program issues, priorities.
In addition, Mr. Murphy indicated that each new appointee needed information on the following:
Arrangements for taking office
Personal policies and administration
Internal communications
Program operations and administration.
Secretary of Defense Clark M. Clifford, at his staff meeting on 23 September 1968, discussed his views on transition with the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and expressed his hope that transition planning could take full advantage of the experiences in 1953 and 1961 and anticipate as many of the needs of the incoming administration as possible. He requested each Military Department Secretary to designate a senior civilian official to consult with his Special Assistant, George M. Elsey on coordinating transition planning among all major Defense components. Mr. Clifford further instructed each Departmental Secretary: “Your representative will also be responsible for supervising the preparation of the essential briefing materials to enable a new administration to obtain rapidly a grasp of organization, functions, personnel relationships, programs, and problem areas.” In addition he stated: “Our planning must insure that the Department continues to operate with the absolute minimum of disruption and that the new senior personnel entering the Department have been given every opportunity to become acquainted with their responsibilities and obligations.”
Air Force transition planning
In response to Secretary Clifford’s request, on 25 September 1968 Dr. Harold Brown, Secretary of the Air Force, designated me, as the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, to be “the senior Air Force civilian official” for the Department of the Air Force in the 1968-69 transition. I promptly assembled a staff to assist me, and we launched into this effort with enthusiasm. I named Lieutenant Colonel Maurice L. Mullen of my staff as executive assistant for the project and obtained the services and assistance of knowledgeable civilian and military officials throughout the Secretariat and Air Staff.
During the remainder of September and the months of October and November, we assembled, classified, evaluated, and put together in three volumes the basic materials called for in the White House memorandum and Secretary Clifford’s instructions. From time to time we attended transition conferences under Mr. Elsey’s guidance at the Department of Defense level, comparing progress in each of the military departments. We kept Secretary Brown and the Chief of Staff, General J.P. McConnell, fully posted on our exercise and obtained their advice and suggestions. We had complete cooperation from all echelons of the Secretariat and the Air Staff in preparing, evaluating, and presenting our materials.
By 21 December we completed our basic project, composed of three transition volumes on the following subjects:
Volume I-Key Positions, together with job descriptions, biographies, and pictures of incumbent senior officials.
Volume II-Personal Information, such as appointments, pay, promotion, assignments separations, retirements, conflict of interest, honors, ceremonies, and protocol matters.
Volume III-Departmental Organization and Subject Issues, including functional statements, authorities, roles and missions, priorities, budgetary processes, procurement and contracting, operations and logistical support, interagency and Congressional relations, and a wide variety of individual issues and answers called “The Shopping List.”
Next, we asked each of the incumbent Presidential appointees in the Secretariat and the principal Air Staff officials to examine the transition volumes and offer suggestions for improvement and refinement. Each one complied with great care and full cooperation.
By Inauguration Day, 20 January 1969, we had our transition materials in final shape and were ready to welcome aboard the new leadership team. The new Air Force Assistant Secretary for Research and Development, Grant L. Hansen, was the first to arrive and begin his transition indoctrination. On 15 February, the new Secretary, Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., took his oath. By the following June we had our full set of new senior managers on board.
Since the new managers came to the Secretariat over a period of four or five months, we had sufficient time to present the transition materials to each one and brief him on the contents, receive questions and furnish answers, and set up orientation visits to project offices and air installations. The real management lesson learned by all of us who participated in the 1968-69 transition exercise is that advanced management planning and programming do pay substantial dividends and insure that the Department continues to operate with an absolute minimum of disruption during a period of transition.
In evaluating the usefulness of the Air Force transition experience, Mr. Hansen stated in a letter dated 17 March 1969: “As I take over the SAFRD office, I wish to express my appreciation for the most excellent job which you, your people and contributors have done in providing for my indoctrination. The transition material has been of outstanding quality and coverage. It has hit hard at both general coverage and identification of major and urgent matters.”
Much was learned by all who were a part of this transition exercise that will help in improving management techniques, methodology, and materials next time. Some of our indoctrinees felt that a better job could be done to adapt the vast store of transition materials to the individual needs of the incoming man, in light of his background and experience and his future duties and responsibilities. Others suggested that we cut down on the volume of descriptive detail; spell out abbreviations, acronyms, and number designations; develop a better compilation of reference data on Air Force and other military aircraft, missiles, and systems; and present more pros and cons on subject issues and more light on “gritty” issues.
By and large, the new Air Force executives handled their new tasks and responsibilities with professional skill. Within a few weeks after their arrival, they were in the midst of serious decision processes and were answering probing questions from Congress and the public media for which they were better prepared than if they had not had the benefit of the transition exercise.
analysis of major problems
To return to the four major problem areas in the 1968-69 transition, I feel that a very creditable job was done in meeting the first three: the orderly transfer of management information, skills, and know-how; guidance in the required qualities of leadership; and development of greater understanding of inter-agency, White House, and Congressional relationships. However, as to the fourth problem area, that of blending senior careerists with new administration managers, I feel that we have not yet found the best formula for this mix.
This problem is certainly not a new one. In fact, David Stanley, in Changing Administrations, published in 1965, says:
More difficult and controversial is the question of what to do about high-level officials who are in competitive civil service jobs but whose attitudes or abilities do not meet the expectations of a new administration. The whole matter of tenure and flexibility of assignment in higher federal civil service raises difficult dilemmas of equity and efficiency . . . To make a long story short, the present situation is not satisfactory, and there must be some revision of civil service laws and regulations so that department heads have more freedom to replace or reassign higher civil servants without depriving them of career tenure, reducing their status and pay, or destroying their prestige.
Mr. Stanley’s comment on the 1961 transition applies to the 1969 transition as well. In fact, the problem is still very much with us at the top federal executive management level.
I know that the U.S. Civil Service Commission is genuinely concerned with this dilemma. In a recent briefing presented to the Federal Executive Group in Washington, Seymour S. Berlin, Director of the Commission’s Bureau of Executive Manpower, stated that there have been complaints from several new Presidential appointees that senior careerists are not sufficiently responsive to the policy guidance of the present administration and are frustrating their new managers. He reports that the question is often being asked: “How can we insure that bureaucracy reflects public policy expressed through the political process?” His observations reveal that the new political managers tend to believe that careerists are “locked in” and are often identified in the minds of the new management with the past administration’s programs.
Mr. Berlin indicated that the Commission now has a study in depth under way in this problem area and that their findings thus far indicate the need for an overhaul of the Federal Executive Assignment System, involving changes in law and regulations, which will provide:
· A simplified and integrated executive personnel system.
· A new compensation system that will allow more flexibility in the supergrade pay structure.
· A new system for entry into and retention in the career executive group. This could involve a contract period extending for stated periods, e.g., five years, with renewal contracts on an annual basis.
· A new system that gives executive managers more flexibility to appoint, reassign, and remove supergrade careerists.
· A system for more effective overall and agency planning.
· A single source to provide executive branch overview and leadership.
· Effective career management programs.
Mr. Berlin’s probing search for desirable and workable remedies is indeed timely and promising. How far he and the Civil Service Commission, under the able leadership of Chairman Robert E. Hampton, will be able to design and implement a resolution of this dilemma is a question that is hot on the Washington griddle. All of us can well foresee stiff headwinds and roadblocks that any substantial effort will encounter in moving toward better management and utilization of senior careerists throughout the federal organization.
This challenge, I feel, is our greatest and most significant piece of unfinished business from the 1968-69 transition period. Its resolution will require our best professional talent and know-how both in and out of government, from academia, industry, and the private sector. Those who are deeply concerned with this issue must have the courage and foresight to press on with the task before it is too late.
Hq United States Air Force
John Albert Lang, Jr., (M.A., University of North Carolina) has been The Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force since 1964. Now a major general in the Air Force Reserve, he was on active duty in Alaska, North Africa, and Italy during World War II. Starting in the early thirties, he worked with several government agencies, including National Youth Administration and U.S. Office of Education, and from 1947 to 1961 he held various Congressional staff positions.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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