Advice From Top Civil Servants

The Senior Executive Association, which represents top-level civil servants, is the latest organization to provide advice to President-elect Barack Obama.

Today, it released a series of recommendations that it hopes “will facilitate a more thorough approach to revitalizing the career executive service than the piece-meal reforms that are typically undertaken.”

SEA President Carol A. Bonosaro knows there’s already a long line of recommendations on a variety of issues and she made the case for hers: “We recognize that the paper we are releasing today will join a hefty set of documents from a number of good government groups, all seeking to advise the next administration on how best to govern. We believe that our advice is critical — because it provides a foundation for success that is rooted in how to best utilize the critical human resource represented by the career federal executive service.”

Among the association’s recommendations:

• Placing former career executives on the transition teams assembled for departments and agencies.
• Naming high-performing career executives to jobs that have become the province of political appointees, such as assistant secretaries for administration and other key positions that the association says require experience and longevity to accomplish long-term agendas.
• Sharply cutting the number of appointed positions and “reducing the political layers which have multiplied over the years to extremely negative effect, as typified by FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina.”

- Joe Davidson

By Terri Rupar  |  November 12, 2008; 12:55 PM ET  | Category:  Transition
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