Forging a More Efficient Government

I was happy to be in the audience for this presentation from Steve VanRoekel the Federal CIO.

USCIO, Steven VanRoekel, Forging a More Efficient and Effective Government - Part 1 from ACT IAC on Vimeo.

It was a good talk and there were some very specific themes that he touched on. One important theme is the question of, "Are we ready?" The 21st centerury needs a 21st century government to keep pace. The people both inside and outside of the government need new and different things. As such the government must change to meet those needs.

I wish I had the link to the Prezi that he used for this discussion. It was really well done. The FCW article identifies a couple other points.

The discussion concerned with sunk costs was right on. Maintaining the old systems and platforms versus delivering new value and figuring in depreciation is important. His point that the operating expenditure when compared to the capital expenditure is out of balance.

It was kind of cool to hear him talk about BusinessUSA and the National Export Initiative.

The New Fed

I read this article over at Federal Computer Week entitled Generation Fed. It was a good piece that highlighted some good work people are doing. But it would be wrong to think that there are just 5 people out there trying to change government for the better. In fact, off the top of my head I can easily come up with 50 in the next 5 minutes.

Federal employment is just as much a calling as being a teacher, or working in law enforcement. It is who you are AND what you do. There are a lot of things that I don't like about the federal government. But every day me and countless others are working hard to turn things around and make it better. I don't know of any person in federal service who isn't working to this ideal. In fact, it is the challenge that drives me forward.

This is why my new project, BusinessUSA is so important to me. I work hard every day to better connect citizens with the services and programs Congress authorizes and funds. But it is rare indeed when a person or small group of people have an opportunity to consider and change things beyond the boundaries of one single Agency or Department. That is what we are doing. To a certain extent the Bureaus of the Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration, parts of the Department of Treasury, the Department of Agriculture and many others are competing for eyeballs on the Internet.

The issue is actually simple. Each entity is doing and has done a terrific job of putting a message out there and working to connect people, business owners and entrepreneurs, to the programs, services and data they support and administer. The issue is that each Agency's mandate is constrained to the programs, services and data that particular Agency provides. From the perspective of the business owner or entrepreneur this is a maze of disjointed programs services and data. Today we, the federal government are forcing that business owner to figure out how we are organized in order to access what we have. The business owner needs to navigate through the Department of Commerce and get to the Patent and Trademark Office to protect his or her idea. He or she needs to go through the Department of Treasury to get to the IRS content about what forms are required for filing taxes. And to get started, he or she must get to the Small Business Administration to connect to a loan. I didn't even touch on exporting or agri-business. It really is quite a maze.

But this isn't a situation about assessing blame. This is nobody's fault. In fact, everyone was working as he or she should, representing his or her Agency and making sure that the right information is out and available. But to address the problem we have to look at those constraints and think beyond the mandate of our individual Agencies. What is necessary here is a cross-functional, cross-Agency team that is able to really adopt the voice of the business and organize the programs, services and data in a new way that makes sense to the people who need help.

This for me is also a personal project. As you may know, my wife had a business for 20 years. She succumbed to the changing market and economy about 2 years ago. I wasn't able to help her save the business, but I hope that with this project I may be able to help someone else save his or hers. And I hope that I will help someone new to take that leap of faith to start a business. Time that these people spend trying to figure out how the government is organized is time lost. That is time that could have been spent on improving a product or service, or making contacts with new customers, or hiring great people.

So when we talk about the new fed, open your eyes. We are everywhere, and we're doing some really amazing things. Now get out there and do something amazing yourself.

BusinessUSA

On Friday the President signed a memo intended to simplify and consolidate how businesses connect to services and programs in the US. It is essentially creating a platform on USA.gov for all the things that can help small businesses and exports. I mention this only because this is the new project I am managing out of the eGov Office in the Office of Management and Budget.

This project is big simply because of its breadth. It impacts so many Agencies, I don't even know them all yet. It also has a very long list of stakeholders. Anyway, within 90 days the first phase of this project needs to be complete. I will try to make a few updates as I have interesting things to report. For now you can see the splash screen at http://www.business.usa.gov/.

Questions to be answered within a year

So OPM came out with a new On-boarding Model for Senior Executives. Fairly straightforward, not too many surprises except for the appendix at the end, which I have reprinted below. I think this is a really good starting point for any person in any new job. These are the things you need to know. It will take time to gather all of the answers, but this will be something that I'll be keeping with myself to look back on and make sure that I can answer.

Questions that must be answered.

Ask themselves and/or their mentor	Ask other leader	Ask manager and/or key stakeholder	Ask direct reports	Ask others in order to access information about available training resource
What is the agencyvision and mission	What are the 3 things we should be very proud of as an organization, and why	Who are our customers	What is a recent management decision you did not understand	How can I advance in the organization
How are my goals and objectives tied to the vision	What are the unspoken norms	Why do customers do business with us	What does the leadership team do that gets in the way of you doing your job	How do I request training
What does the end state look like	Where do the great ideas come from in your organization	How and when have we made it hard for them to do business with us	How can we communicate management decisions more effectively?	How do I register for training
What is the state of the talent within my group	How is personal success measured	What do our customers need from us now	How do you feel at the start of the workweek	How and when can I initiate a leadership assessment process
What are the organization norms regarding dress and appearance	How do you encourage others to communicate the “core values”	What will our customers need from us in the future	How do you feel at the end of the workweek	Which organizations provide professional development opportunities for SES members
What are the organization norms regarding punctuality	How do you help a new employee understand the culture of the organization	What gets in the way of us doing our job	What are the key metrics to track progress and success	With whom should I discuss development opportunities
What is the process for requesting and documenting leave	When faced with two equally qualified candidates how do you determine whom to hire	What are the expectations for my role as a leader	What are the short term priorities	How do I find out about required training
Are there any quick wins	How do I locate information about agency departments and offices	How is departmental success measured	What tools are used to manage schedules(appointments)- paper, outlook?	How can I access available leadership training resources?
What support do I need to achieve success for my organization?	What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others?	What are the organizational taboos?	What is my role in emergency evacuation?	Where can I find recommended reading materials?
Where can I go to find the most recent Employee Viewpoint Survey(or other employee opinion survey)results for my organization	What is the one behavior or trait you have seen derail more leaders’ careers	What are some of the challenges that previous incumbents in this position have encountered	Where is the alternate operating location	When and where is the next SES Orientation Briefing? How do I register
What is my role in COOP	Why do people stay in this organization	Where can I find information about the current administration’s priorities	What process is used to collect our customers’ needs and measure their satisfaction	Are there any organizational leadership tools I should be aware of
What strategic relationships and internal networks should I be aware of?	What motivates senior management	What key policies should I be aware of in the first month and which ones do I own?	What are the short term priorities for the organization and my office	What are a few resources you would recommend to someone looking to gain insight into becoming a better leader
What do I want to be remembered for	What are the organizational norms about travel(not the GSA/official rules)	Who are my key partners and what do they do/provide	What are the results of the most recent third-party inspection (IG, GAO, etc.)	What are you doing to ensure you continue to learn and grow as a leader
What are the major risks associated with my positionto me, to my organization	In my first twelve months, what can I do to help you and your staff be successful	What are the results of the most recent employee morale survey	What are 3 capabilities we have that are under-developed or under-utilized and what should we do about that	What is one characteristic you believe every leader should possess
How does the work I do contribute to the overall success of the organization	Who are the “power players”	What is the current and future year budget outlook	What are the three things you would change around here and why	What skills do I need to be most effective
What is the organization’s commitment to telework and other work-life programs	What is one thing you would change about the organization	Which congressional committees are concerned with the organization’s mission and funding	What is the most pressing issue for me to address with our customers	When should I complete my Executive Development Plan(EDP)

Enabling Program Manager Mobility

I've previously written on a couple of points in the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT. I wrote about Designing a Program Management Career Path and what I think the foundation of that should look like. I also wrote about Preventing Scope Creep and Data Center Consolidation. Today I'm going to think out loud about something that I am currently living, Program Manager Mobility, point #12.

I have paid for some hard knocks in my time, and while some of those knocks were probably harder than I would have liked, I would not trade them for anything. Getting things wrong has provided me with opportunities to learn from my mistakes. Even when projects go well, I still take the time to learn about how the things that didn't go well can be improved and how I can better leverage the aspects that went well.

If I'm going to take this time to better understand these aspects, I believe that I have a responsibility to share the knowledge gained from these experiences. But my point here is that the way this particular point is written, I believe it is too narrow. It seems to indicate that the only way those good ideas get around is by allowing people to spread that knowledge by working on details with other teams. For sure, that is one really good method. But I would ask that you keep your eye on the goal. The goal is the dispersion of knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Detail assignments are one way to achieve that, but the fact that you are reading this is evidence that there are many other opportunities to achieve that same objective.

Don't misunderstand, I am a big proponent of mobility. I am currently working on a detail (and loving it btw) and I'm planning to go on another, 5-month detail at the conclusion of this one. So, yes, detail opportunities are valuable for both the detailee as well as the organization hosting the detail. Both stand to learn from their previous experiences.

This also ignores conferences which I have found to be quite valuable over the last few years. I've written about a number of topics from the CMITs I've attended as well as some others. Though it wasn't the focus of the content, that is where I learned about Prezi, which I still love.

Finally, I would strongly suggest that everyone should have a mentor. Regardless of your position, you should at least have a mentor and possibly a mentee as well. First, just go ahead and accept that you don't know everything, and that there is at least one thing out there in which you could benefit from bouncing ideas off of someone else. That person can help you to make connections that you weren't aware of before. Picking up a mentee as well provides you with a tremendous opportunity to see problems in new ans interesting ways and look at solutions without the bias that we sometimes bring.

Anyway, I agree that details present a really good opportunity to spread the knowledge around, I just think that there are other really good ways of accomplishing that as well and we should encourage all of them.

Facebook should read their own literature

So the week before last, Facebook made some changes. They created some new thing where your highest priority friends are on top. The problem is that Facebook rolled out this change without any heads up or notification. It was not there one day, and is there the next.

I don't want to sound like Andy Rooney, who incidentally retired today, but what's up? Facebook got a bloody nose last year when they rolled out a bunch of privacy changes without any heads up. So my first concern is that the organization seems to have a difficult time learning from their mistakes. Or, dare I say it, that they think they know what is best for us regular people and aren't interested in what users think.

But here we are with the application that put social networking on the map and they keep pissing off their users. I know that I'm not alone on this, but users can only take so much of this before we decide to go somewhere else. The baffling thing is that the social network creator can't devise a social solution to this problem.

Why do they not have some sort of forum by which the masses identify the type of changes people may consider making? Then they could implement or illustrate these changes somewhere and put them out there for people to vote on. Then you leave it for people to vote and wait. The purpose of voting is to see whether the masses sign on for that change or not. Let the power of the social platform work in your favor.

Instead they are doing the converse. They push these changes out and then wait to see how many status change to tell people how much they hate the changes. If the hate mail rises to a certain level they roll back the change.

Hey, Facebook, hire a Project Manager.

Designing a Formal IT Program Management Career Path

For me, probably the most interesting point in the 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT is the one dealing with creating a Program Management career path. In fact, that is what my job is supposed to be, but I am listed as a Project Manager because what I actually do isn't yet a real position.

I've written in the past about how there is an apparent distinction between the Project Manager and the Business Analyst roles (PM vs. BA). My point back then was that the most effective PMs do not recognize this distinction and in fact are BAs at heart.

I've also written about the different responsibilities between the Project Manager and the Contract Officer Representative (PM vs. COR). On this issue both the PMI and acquisition side both want to make these duties different and carve out nice and neat roles.

The truth is that you can be a good Project Manager without performing the BA functions. Similarly you can be a good PM without performing the COR functions. However a good Program Manager will not be able to avoid the bleed in functions on either of these fronts. As such, I think the first three areas in which the Program Management career path must focus are in Project Management, Business Analysis and Acquisition.

The first pillar in the Program Management career path should be rooted in the business. IT exists to support the mission or the organization. It is easy to tell from my description of the friction between the BA and PM positions what I'm going to advocate for on this issue. A Program Manager who doesn't understand the business is doomed to fail.

Second on these, Project Management, I believe that the Project Management Professional certification is important because it allows the Program Manager to baseline the language that he or she uses when communicating about the portfolio. When we talk about schedule, scope, risk, cost, quality and satisfaction (the anti-triple constraint), we all understand what the other people are intending. But don't for 1 second believe that I am praying at the PMI alter. I don't believe that receiving a PMP credential makes any person a good Project Manager. It only baselines the language that we use so that we can more effectively communicate with each other. Although I don't have the credential, I do not thing that the Program Management Professional (PgMP) is necessary. If there is commonality in how we communicate at the Project Management level, I just don't think that we are going to achieve that much more at the Program Management level.

Lastly, as the core set of competencies, I believe a firm knowledge in acquisition is critical. Acquisition plays off of both the business and Project Management capabilities in that you must deliver value to your stakeholders and you have to know how to build a schedule and deliver within a budget. But specifically to the acquisition series, you must know how to structure the work in a way that can get the best competition and support the mission without breaking the budget. This would be consistent with the FAC P/PM levels. Perhaps the Level I, II and III there equate to grade levels with increasing degrees of responsibility.

So, for my money, the three core elements in a Program Management series include:

• Business Analysis
• Project Management
• Acquisition