The Public Manager articles from September 2007

The Public Manager archives from September 2007

The Manager's musings.
September 22, 2007... Talking about New Affiliates A warm welcome to three new affiliates that joined The Public Manages readership ranks: the Federal Aviation Administration Managers Association (FAAMA), the Federal Executive Institute (FEI), and American...

Post-Katrina emergency management: forum overview.
September 22, 2007... It's said that cooperation is an "unnatural act among nonconsenting adults. "Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the flooding of New Orleans, highlight the need for collaborative action before, during, and after disasters. This post-Katrina forum...

A seat at the table for nondisaster organizations: West Virginia University has a strategy for bringing organizations together to render disaster services to special needs populations, and North Texas shows how to integrate religious organizations in disaster response.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)
September 22, 2007... The hurricanes of 2005 taught public managers many difficult lessons. As we watched the aftermath on our TVs, the deficiencies in our disaster response system became clear. Communication between state, local, and federal agencies was difficult....

Collaborative governance lessons from Katrina: federal executives involved in the response effort reveal four key lessons that illuminate both the challenge and opportunity of working together in emergency management.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)
September 22, 2007... Our nation's most pressing and difficult problems defy jurisdictional boundaries and are resistant to bureaucratic routines. Quite simply, twentieth century bureaucracies are not designed for twenty-first century problems. One such problem,...

Transformational leadership and NIMS: the NIMS promise of collaboration can be realized on the ground through basic steps that transform theory into practice.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)(National Incident Management System)
September 22, 2007... The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina revealed a disaster response system that was broken and in need of repair. The National Incident Management System (NIMS), a coordinated disaster response system, exhibited serious flaws. To fix them, many...

Revitalizing emergency management after Katrina: a recent survey of emergency managers urges improved response, planning, and leadership and a reinvigorated FEMA--the federal government has responded by making most of the recommended changes.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)(Survey)
September 22, 2007... In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the federal government and the State of Mississippi issued several reports criticizing and recommending improvements to federal and state disaster response. Common themes included the following:...

Building community capacity to respond: shifting from the internally focused Federal Response Plan to a National Response Plan requires greater involvement of public, nonprofit, and private organizations as well as citizen participation.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)
September 22, 2007... The emergency management system in the United States is mainly designed to respond to major disasters. The programs and organizations have been instituted in response to these disaster experiences, not to create resilient communities that can...

Rebuilding the parks of New Orleans: despite Katrina's devastation, New Orleans is taking a unique opportunity to create a functional master plan for parks to reclaim its place among the premier park systems in the country.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)
September 22, 2007... In 2005, before the August arrival of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans boasted one of the premier park systems in the nation.Then came Katrina, enormously damaging the city's parks and recreation resources. Planners from multiple organizations...

The unavoidable politics of disaster recovery: Hurricane Katrina offers lessons on the interaction of technical matters with decisions that distribute benefits and burdens.(Forum: Post-Katrina Emergency Management)
September 22, 2007... In the two years following Hurricane Katrina, public bodies, journalists, professional associations, and university scholars have made numerous diagnoses of what went wrong before the storm made landfall and of the rescue and relief operations...

Leading change through action learning: agency managers can change organizational culture and build a learning environment, as demonstrated by APHIS.
September 22, 2007... Federal, state, and local governments in the United States invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually in university leadership courses, executive development programs, and off-site retreats for mid-level and senior managers--yet leadership...

Realizing a performance culture in federal agencies: government executives and human capital professionals offer a road man for designing and implementing effective performance system.
September 22, 2007... What's the best way for government executives to create high-performance cultures in federal agencies? In March 2007 testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Bob Tobias, Director of Public Sector Executive Education at...

Fostering a performance-driven culture in the public sector: culture is key in managing organizations, and specific practices make performance a cultural priority.
September 22, 2007... Organizational culture is a concept widely understood on the surface. The focus of several books, it's a construct like weather and social status, which has been invented by people who want to study or discuss it. In the not-too-distant past,...

Family-friendly policy: lessons from Europe-Part 1: a work/life bale not only makes a happy family, but increases productivity on the job.
September 22, 2007... Countries have been compelled to tackle the concomitant problems arising from increased female employment, an aging population, declining fertility, and higher divorces rates. The single breadwinner has been replaced by the dual-earner and...

Nontraditional leadership training for public managers: new educational programs expose working professionals to the critical challenges of our time: emergency preparedness, crisis response, disaster management, and counterterrorism.
September 22, 2007... Natural and human-made disasters challenge public management leadership, exposing the need for preparation beyond traditional academic courses to solve real-time problems in public health and safety. Public managers challenged by such crises...

Fulfilling the Promise of e-Gov initiatives--Part I: the integration of federal acquisition processes has greatly improved services to government and citizens.
September 22, 2007... Is it working? The candles on the cake for the five-year anniversary of the e-Government (e-Gov) initiatives were barely cool before critics began asking if their promise has been kept. How widely are e-Gov systems used and how satisfied are...

Executive's guide to practical computer models: the nontechnical leader can learn to shape, oversee, any manage projects wit, computer-based to and, in the process, become a more intelligent consumer.
September 22, 2007... Government executives are witnessing revolutionary changes in information technologies and the geopolitical landscape. These profound changes present leaders and decision makers with unique technology demands and special opportunities as they...

Within reach ... but out of sync: a report from the Council for Excellence in Government and the Gallup Organization sheds new light on the challenges--and possibilities--of shaping tomorrow's federal workforce.(Image of Public Service)
September 22, 2007... When it comes to the future of the federal workforce, the predictions are dire. According to experts, 60 percent of General Schedule employees (rank and file workforce)--and 90 percent of the Senior Executive Service (top managers)--will be...

To the Man-of-War-Bird.(Poem)
September 22, 2007... To the Man-of-War-Bird Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) Now...

Public service leadership: lessons from the front lines: federal executives hear two firsthand examples of how public servants can make a difference in a time of crisis.(Image of Public Service)
September 22, 2007... The theme of the recent Federal Executive Institute Alumni Association (FEIAA) annual Executive Forum in Ballston, Virginia, was "Public Service Leadership: Lessons from the Front Lines." This brief article passes along two firsthand examples...

Yin and Yang of government and politics.(The Uncivil Servant)(List)
September 22, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Events around the world would lead the rational to worry about the fate of the planet. What with global warming, immigration foibles, US. Attorney firings, innocent Duke lacrosse players, Paris getting forty-five...

Ten principles for coalescing the generations.(Brief article)
September 22, 2007... Jennifer J. Deal. Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007) Loaded with data-based analyses questioning common stereotypes of generational differences in workforce...