SES

The success of an administration can rise—and fall—based on its competence in managing the government. As history demonstrates, strong management can enable rapid and positive results, while management mistakes can derail important policy initiatives, erode public trust and undermine confidence in the government.

This report is intended to spark a discussion of how to create a cadre of experienced career senior executives who can lead major, cross-agency initiatives on national priorities. The Senior Executive Service (SES) corps today is chiefly composed of highly skilled professionals in specific mission functions, with relatively few having cross-agency expertise.

Recent trends in government have created a new demand for cross-agency capabilities. This report attempts to offer a practical, targeted approach for meeting this demand. It is divided into two parts:

The transition from campaign to governing requires that presidential policies be transformed from rhetoric into an actionable agenda and then into concrete results. Neither good policies nor sound investments are likely to work, let along succeed, if undermined by poor implementation. Too often, however, federal management issues are considered somewhere between “uninteresting” and “a waste of time.” The reason: Washington is a policy town. If you are focused on politics or policy, “management” is often ignored or simply left for someone else to figure out.

This report, which continues the IBM Center’s long interest in collaboration, provides valuable insights into how federal senior executives view collaboration. Based on survey responses from over 300 members of the federal Senior Executive Service, O’Leary and Gerard found—to their mild surprise—that nearly all those surveyed report using collaboration as a management strategy.