Endless Knots

Kamensky: "Using czars and commissions to govern"

Encouraging everyone to click right on over to John Kamensky's post, "Using czars and commissions to govern." John, who's a Senior Fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, has been keeping tabs on new thinking in government for a long time.

We first met in 1993 when we were advising Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government, where John served as deputy director.

In the post I'm referencing here, John talks about the use of alternative appointments, such as czars, and organizations, like commissions, to cut through some of the government morass - and shines a little light on (disclosing self-interest) OrgScope and its use to track recovery funds, as per a couple of posts here over the past few days. Thanks, John!

Accounting for trillions through OMB

When President Obama receives his first report on "open government" this coming May, we're wondering what it will include. As we reported a couple of days ago, the president's first five actions at the moment of taking office included ordering the Open Government Directive, due by May 21, four months from its issue.

This directive "...instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum." What principles? Transparency, participation, and collaboration.

Three senior government folks have this deliverable on their to-do lists: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag, the General Services Administration head (Paul Prouty is acting administrator), and the still-to-be appointed Chief Technology Officer, whose reporting structure remains unclear. (We're speculating, based on OMB's organization chart, that the CTO will be in that agency and likely report to Orszag and the president through the "Deputy Director for Management." But we can't really tell, especially since the president said during the campaign that the CTO would report directly to him. The deputy position, by the way, which is to include the new title of Chief Performance Officer, is vacant due to the original nominee's tax problems.)

We've added these OMB positions and other top spots in the newest edition of our OrgScope chart of the accountability structure, as portrayed in our US Gov Map (click, patiently wait a moment for Java to load, click on the Executive Office of the President at about 1 o'clock on the map, then follow the chain down through OMB).

"Transparency for accountability" is the starting point, the critical role for organizational transparency as the precondition for "open government through participation and collaboration." Transparency, accountability, and open government are really OMB's core responsibilities. In essence, OMB is the working hub of the new "open government."

By law, OMB is the place where the executive branch of the US Government comes to "get a whole of itself" (sorry, we couldn't pass up the pun). Its mission is to assist the president with budgeting and  administration of executive branch agencies. Responsible for management and budget, this agency also collects data, measures effectiveness, and helps set priorities. It is a major information pipeline between the administration and Congress. Itself a small agency, OMB's job performance contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of all the rest of government.

So how OMB does its job is particularly critical at this critical time. Kind of "critical-squared."

Why is mapping the hierarchy, in the way that we've been doing with our US Gov Maps, so important? The maps reveal the clear structure of accountability, the interdependent set of "end-of-the-day" responsibilities that includes every person-in-a-job in the organization. An org chart is the foundation for transparency, and provides context for all the specifics around both organizations that disburse funds and organizations where those funds are headed.

In our FDIC post earlier this week on ballooning rescue organizations, we reported that the budget for just one division was going from $75 million to $1 billion--not in funds to distribute or guarantee (those will likely be many billions, if not trillions) but funds allocated directly for the organization and management.

Three-quarters of that $1 billion will go to contractors. In our view, all organizations--government and otherwise--should map their accountability structures. Those maps should include the jobs of everyone working in the organization, whether full-time employees or contractors, i.e., the only org charts that make sense are the ones that account for everyone. Again, "account for," as in accountability.

The next step for the government agencies involved in the rescue/economic turnaround is to hang the specific details of dollars and deals off the boxes of the agencies and teams responsible for making decisions and awarding funds for rescue spending, investments, loans, and guarantees.

Tracking the transparency trail is already part of at least the stimulus package. While the president graciously took the suggestion of a Republican congressman to include a web site to track the stimulus funds, he has been laying the foundation for real transparency in spending since he entered the Senate--and laying it at the feet of OMB even when it was run by the Bush administration. Obama's early and deep interest is indicated by his co-authorship of the “Google for Government” law.

This bipartisan Coburn-Obama Bill, officially the “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006,” directed OMB to create a searchable database of almost $3 trillion (in 2007 dollars) in federal grants. It was the first law the new senator introduced when he came to Washington.

The legislation called for tracking contracts, earmarks, direct payments, and loans by January 1, 2008. What happened? OMB made its deadline (see www.USAspending.gov for the result of this useful piece of 21st-century legislation). This is doubtless the platform that will be used to track the stimulus spending (see some of the back story here). For the moment, Recovery.gov is a nascent site in the whitehouse.gov style that shows great promise, offering both tabular views and visual displays of the information, although now only in a few gross chunks adding up to $789 billion.

We believe real transparency connects the details of spending to the the configuration of accountability, aka the org charts. Make both context (the map) and detail (the dollars) visible.

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency and open government - Obama's midnight memos

At the stroke of midnight on January 21, 2009. five "Presidential Actions" went into force (see White House press statement), establishing a clear foundation of organizing values and principles for the new Obama Administration. The "Midnight Five," with their links, are:

Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government

Presidential Memorandum on Freedom of Information Act

Executive Order on Presidential Records

Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel

Presidential Memorandum Regarding Pay Freeze

The capstone action is the one we list first, the memo on "Transparency and Open Government," a remarkable document that lays out the fundamental reason we need openness and how to achieve it. This understanding of the central role of transparency is vital at this extraordinarily critical moment in the still-accelerating economic crisis. Transparency is both necessary and beneficial. To paraphrase Judge Brandeis again, things get better with sunlight.

The president doesn't mince words in his preamble to the memo:

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."

How are these open government benefits of efficiency, effectiveness, and a stronger democracy to be achieved? The memo outlines three imperatives ("shoulds"):

• Government should be transparent.
• Government should be participatory.
• Government should be collaborative.

Lest you think transparency and openness apply just to government, listen up all you leaders in organizations of every size in every sector who are feeling and dealing with desperate challenges. We can only get out of this mess by all of us being smarter and contributing to the overall solution.

We are posting the whole transparency memo after the break below, inserting in brackets words that indicate its applicability to all organizations, thus, the revised title and what follows. Please take a read and see if you might be able to endorse the same statement in your organization.

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency and Open Governments [Organizations]

Obamicon-me: This is fun

So long as I'm having such a me-centered day, how about you? Try it.

Bailout plan fails to instill trust

Where is the new thinking?

With all due respect, I (Jeff speaking) don't think Tim Geithner gets it. Nor, apparently does the market think he gets it, as the Dow began to tank (losing almost 400 points) as soon as the new Treasury Secretary started outlining his plan for economic recovery today. 

According to Stephen Labaton and Edmund Andrews's page-one piece in today's NY Times ("Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout"), Geithner opposed placing tighter curbs on executive pay, didn't endorse directing how the banks would use the bailout money, and refused to challenge the retention of current management -- the brilliant folks who brought us this mess.

The Times article also said Geithner "expressed concern that too many government controls would discourage private investors from participating." And, the Times piece indicates that not everyone in the President's office agreed with Geithner's approach, specifically David Axelrod, who "did not deny that there were differences of opinion as the policy was being crafted or that he had taken a harder line on issues such as executive pay restrictions, as other participants to the discussions recalled."

Obviously, we are not privy to conversations in the White House but, along with millions of other Americans, we too experience the effect of every decision made regarding the economy--and thus care deeply about the choices Geithner is making.

In announcing the plan today, Geithner said he would restore "lost faith" in the bailout. Instead, he apparently did the opposite. His plan unsettled precisely the group he didn't want to offend, private investors. No thank you, said the market.

In a word, what Geithner doesn't get is trust.

We have been following the TARP (Troubled Assets Recovery Program) saga on our site and here on the blog since the program began in October, 2008. Likewise, we've created an OrgScope overlay of the Act I TARP and related programs on our map of the US Government. From the beginning, we said it was all about "transparency for trust," which we titled our online essay about this subject. We have written numerous posts on the subject.

Trust is not a nice to have. It's a need to have. The Obama plan needs to restore trust for private investors, for the American public, and for a Congress that will be asked to come up with billions and probably trillions more before this is over.

And the only route to trust is transparency. Sunlight. Geithner's plan thus far offers little in this regard.

-- Jeff Stamps

NetAge Report #4: Organizing at the edge of chaos

There's an obvious subtitle for this post: "Stop before you chop." Fourth in our series of NetAge Reports on virtual reorganization, we address the hidden forces that sit behind how we shape our organizations. Since so many organizations are undertaking reorganization right now, we feel compelled to contribute what we know. And, we're concerned about mindless reorganization that doesn't take into account unintended consequences.

Driven by twin needs--to optimize communication while enhancing decision-making--organizations are in constant flux between centralization and its opposite, decentralization. But as we've said before, mindless flattening of organizations will be disastrous because it reduces the ability to respond intelligently to change.

In our post yesterday, we pointed out that Obama is "complexifying" government by creating more layers, adding cross-links, and multiplying leadership. At the end of the NYT article we referenced there, Karl Rove is quoted as saying that Obama's moves are likely to "create a more centralized and possibly incoherent policy process." Not surprisingly, Rove has it exactly wrong, calling Obama's reorganization centralizing moves. But Rove is hardly alone in this common misconception, even among our network-tuned friends. However, he does have it right that such rearrangements indeed may cause incoherence. This is why we have promoted the idea of visualizing and analyzing our organizations, so we can manage more complexity with less effort.

Here's NetAge Report #4:

Organizing at the Edge of Chaos

Early in the presidential contest between the newly-presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and already named Republican John McCain, Elisabeth Bumiller published “Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy” to which the New York Times gave page-one real estate. Largely an insightful “who’s-who” of his advisers for this delicate area of national concern, the article also offers remarkable portraits of the stark contrast between the organizing styles of two the candidates. One was simple, the other complex. Guess who won.

Bumiller describes Obama’s apparatus as a “huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy organized like a mini State Department to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.” The article goes on to describe an “infrastructure” of twenty teams that focus on regions (e.g., Asia and China) and issues (e.g., nuclear proliferation). By contrast, Bumiller describes John McCain’s approach as “a far smaller and looser foreign policy advisory operation, about 75 people in all, and none are organized into teams.”

So there you have it. McCain had direct input from 75 people, an incredibly large “span” of “direct reports” by any organizational measure and an extremely flat organization. No “middle” men or women. Perfect for simplicity and direct communication. McCain, the ostensibly more experienced of the two men in foreign policy, didn’t think he needed nuanced views regarding foreign policy, and he didn’t get many.

Obama organized differently, with a core team of six people managing twenty separate pipelines of progressively synthesized input from advisors with great depth of expertise. Larger teams had their own sub-teams, such as the forty-person nuclear proliferation team organized into eight working groups by Brookings Institution and National Security Council veteran Ivo Daalder.

Reorganization fever at the White House

Peter Baker has a great reorganization story in today's NY Times' Week in Review section, "And Now Let the Jockeying Begin." It neatly combines attention to the power of the position with the power of the person--twin dynamics that we've been writing about when discussing organization structure. Baker's story recaps many of the reorganization changes we've noted in posts over the past few weeks, and nicely platforms (stayed tuned) tomorrow's post, "Organizing at the Edge of Chaos." The Baker piece and those that we're adding here are not just about the Obama administration but also point to valuable insights for any organization facing redesign themselves in uncertain times, meaning now.

The Times piece notes, as have we, that Obama's government is becoming more complicated, with the appointment of "czars," special envoys, and task forces, which Baker describes as "overlaying an additional set of actors upon a bureaucracy already scratchy about who's in charge. Mr. Obama concluded that new high-powered figures are needed to force change but they pose a delicate management challenge."

These formal organizational overlays are precisely the virtual reorganization forms emerging to transform traditional bureaucracy. They represent a necessary "complexification" of government to match the complexification of problems we face. They also reflect the need for a more "leaderful" structure, a hallmark of the new networked organizations, whether hierarchies or more informal groupings. Such enterprises are, of course, more difficult to manage, but they're smarter. If there's one thing we need right now, it's intelligent organizations. Really, we have no choice.

The article notes the same new White House offices that we described in our recent "Reorganizing the Executive Office of the President"--offices to coordinate climate change and energy, urban policy, technology, and health. Vice President Biden's task force on the middle class is a great example of a coordination overlay that you can see in US Gov + Task Force map. We've also blogged about the unusual two-hatted organizational role assigned to the incoming HHS Secretary, who will also serve as an insider in the Exec Office of President, leading the Health Care Reform effort. This dual role is now threatened by a tax mess with an uncertain confirmation ahead.

According to Baker's article, John Podesta, who co-headed the transition effort, is an architect for many of these design changes. "There are things that cut across agency lines that needed real powerful White House cohesion, direction, and leadership," Mr. Podesta said.

These cross-cutting networks overlaying the hierarchy require new types of leaders who can operate in more complex environments. Thus, the choice of leaders follows the design requirements. "The structure that was built was done with due regard for the fact that there would be conflict. But the team we built was done with the idea that these people could work together," Podesta explained.

-- Jeff Stamps

"...so that all our children could fly"

Speaks, make that, sings (see Amy Dixon-Kolar) for itself, posted for all veterans of the Civil Rights movement, for my parents who called themselves "integrationists" in a segregated Pennsylvania town where that word was hardly understood, and for all of us, still shaking our heads while looking ahead:

No IM for WH Staff?

This just gets interestinger and interestinger. First there was the showdown at the BlackBerry Corral, with the President holding on for dear life while the Security Forces threated to rip the device from his hands. Pres 1, Security 1, I'd have to say, because we certainly don't want the President to be insecure in any way.

Now Politico reports that IM is banned for all White House staff. The most technologically advanced team in politics, ooops, in government, is having one of the most useful tools ever taken away. Great headline, by the way, Politico for Ben Smith's article: "Obama staff will say cu l8r 2 IM."

When we were involved in Reinventing Government 15 years ago, many people in government agencies weren't allowed to have email. So they went home and sent email to one another on their private accounts. We don't want that, obviously, and these folks are in the White House, which we want to be the most effective, fastest, most accurate (enough superlatives yet?) government on earth. Taking away IM is not a step in that direction.

Seriously: we've talked before about Tom Allen's famous finding - that if you're more than 50 feet apart, you've got a virtual communication problem to address. Everyone in the White House is more than 50 feet apart and they need to stay in very close contact.

Information policy is lagging, folks. We need some quick brain work from the folks who've really been thinking about this stuff. The desire for transparency should not be blocked by the fear of discovery.

Here are a few choice paragraphs from Ben Smith's piece:

Barack Obama may get to keep his BlackBerry, but David Axelrod is losing his IM.

The lawyers broke the bad news to Obama aides at a briefing Friday morning convened by incoming Deputy White House Counsel Cassandra Butts: Not only are they leaving the modern world to enter a White House where some of the clunky desktop computers still run Windows 2000 but — worst of all — they'll be forced to surrender a form of communication staffers have relied on for the last two years to communicate with each other, outside allies, and the press.

From Axelrod, the chief campaign strategist, down to junior staffers in the press office, Obama's campaign relied heavily on software many of them began using in high school — AOL Instant Messager and Google Chat. Instant messaging, though little mentioned, is — perhaps as much as e-mail—deeply woven into contemporary politics and media, whose fabric is the constant, quick, gossipy transmission of spin and information. But a calculus that's perhaps one part security, one part law, and two parts politics, has long barred instant messaging from the White House.

"They just told us flat out we couldn't IM in the White House," groused one senior staffer Friday.

"It sucks. It's really going to slow us down," complained another, saying that lawyers had warned that, along with instant messaging, White House software will restrict users to a range of sites roughly "like your average grade school."

The clunky technology is standard issue for government offices, but the bar on instant messaging is  particular to the White House. Legal and security experts say it is dictated by the fear of embarrassment if IMs were to be disclosed.

Reorganizing the Executive Office of the President

While he has not used the word, President Obama's very first act, even before being sworn in, was to reorganize. As Jessica said yesterday, at the stroke of noon, January 20, 2008, the White House website changed, and with it a new, reorganized Executive Office of the President went into effect.

Having kept a close eye on the various Executive Branch charts over the past few months, I can now report on the major changes as I perceive them, including promotions, additions, and deletions to the president’s core staff structure. These reorganizations reflect profound changes in emphasis and priorities, adaptations to the external environment (literally), and a respect for the complexity of the job. All of this comes through in a number of new functions focused directly on the importance of organization itself.

Until today, our digital US Government organization chart used the Executive Office/White House structure of the Bush Administration as its basis. Each time, Pres-elect Obama made appointments and nominations, we entered those new names into existing positions, as we did when Larry Summers was named director of the National Economic Council. When a new position, such as Carol Browner’s remit to connect energy and climate, we engaged in some guesswork, trying to figure out how these new posts would hook together. Now we know.

President Obama's first appointment was Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff to the President, who now runs the Executive Office. From what we can tell, Emanuel has 19 people reporting directly to him--ranging from senior advisors such as David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett to James Jones, Director of the National Security Council. One of those 19 positions is that of the "White House Office" itself, which, in turn, is run, we think, by one of two Deputy Chiefs of Staff, either Mona Sutphen or Jim Messina. (This use of dual deputies is already a departure from the apparent Bush rule of one deputy.) While we can't quite determine yet whether Sutphen or Messina has this job, one of the two deputies has 23 people on staff, comprising a second group of advisors, offices, and councils that are two steps below the root of power.

Both the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff, with 19 and 23 direct reports respectively, are what we call “hub” positions in the US government, which we discuss extensively in our report and blog post on “Analyzing the Organization as a Network.”

Meanwhile, five organizations have been "promoted," their org-chart boxes having been moved up a level in the White House Office:

·        Domestic Policy Council (Melody Barnes);

·        National Economic Council (Summers);

·        Office of National AIDS Policy;

·        Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board; and

·        White House Military Office.

Then there are nine new boxes representing official functions that simply were not there before:

·       Chief of Staff's Office;

·       Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy (Browner);

·       Office of Management and Administration;

·       Oval Office Operations;

·       Office of Presidential Personnel;

·       Office of Urban Affairs Policy;

·       Office of Social Innovation (!); and

·       A splitting of the position of Advance and Appointments into two functions

And two organizations have been eliminated:

·        Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives; and

·        USA Freedom Corps.

Missing from the list (so far as I can tell) and unaccounted for is the announced, and highly unusual, Office for Health Care Reform and its Director, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Daschle.

Based on press releases from the Obama-Biden change.gov site and the newer, but not complete, list of Nominations & Appointments on the whitehouse.gov site, we've been able to map about 50 positions in the Executive Office of the President. This means that we've got about half of them as press accounts of the President’s January 21 briefing for his staff, (the one announcing a pay freeze and emphasizing transparency), indicate that the staff as a whole numbers around 100.

To carry transparency the next step and to set a good example for other government departments and agencies to follow, we believe that President Obama should immediately publish the org chart of his office. In our view, such a chart should include names and responsibilities, indicating where jobs have been filled and where there are empty spots still awaiting appointments. Although all the departments publish org charts (you can see these charts on our site), the Bush White House's chart never went deeper than the two-level structure we just discussed.

--Jeff Stamps