Change Leaders Share Lessons of Resiliency

This Capstone session, the very last of the two-day 2006 Excellence in Government conference, featured five senior government executives who were catalysts for change at their respective organizations. They shared lessons learned on how to overcome bureaucratic inertia, make change sustainable over the long haul, and improve organizational performance. In summary, these change leaders agreed that the right investment over the long-term yield tangible results.

The panel featured Admiral James Loy, former Deputy Secretary of DHS and head of the TSA, now at the Cohen Group; Dave Mader, former Assistant Deputy Commissioner of IRS who is currently a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton; Thomas Modly, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Financial Management at the DOD; Jacqueline Myers, Associate Deputy Chief of Business Operations at the Forest Service; and Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for the Director of National Intelligence.

Here’s Dave Mader on his experience at the IRS:

The IRS’s transformation began with the formation of a Congressional committee to study the restructuring of the IRS. The concern was that the IRS had lost touch with its customers – the citizen taxpayers. In other words, the IRS had become overly concerned with a sole performance metric: revenue dollars.

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Posted by Scott Karp at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Brilliant Careers of Three Public Servants

This session profiled the careers of three young, exceptionally accomplished government leaders, each of whom in the past have been nominated for a Service to America Medal for exceptional public service (each in different categories). They are:

- Tobin Bradley, Foreign Service Officer at the State Department, who served as a political advisor in Southern Iraq and organized 15 local elections there. Bradley is on his way to Princeton to receive a Masters Degree in Public Policy (as part of his professional development).

- Subhashree Madhavan of the Rembrandt Project Team at the NIH, who helped create a database for aiding cancer research and new treatment product development.

- Nicole Nelsen-Jean of the Department of Energy, who helped lead US negotiations with Russia over better securing nuclear materials and weapons which led to the creation of a service and training center for nuclear security in Murmansk, Russia.

The session opened with a glossily-produced video feature on the three professionals. Then Bradley, Madhavan, and Nelsen-Jean talked about their careers and how they got to where they are today.

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Posted by Scott Karp at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How DHS Is Preparing for the Next Emergency

Under Secretary for Preparedness at the Department of Homeland Security George Foresman talked about how the federal government is gearing up for the next disaster and the progress DHS has made on key preparedness documents, such as the national response plan and national preparedness goal. Foresman emphasized the importance of the fact that the DoD, DHS, and state and local governments are using the same planning documents.

Foresman argued that homeland security is not the sole responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. It is also the responsibility of the state, local, and federal governments – DHS’s job is to coordinate and orchestrate all those pieces.

There remain major challenges for the nation’s emergency preparedness, including:

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