People and Performance: Challenges for the Future Public Service – The Report From the Wye River Conference

Giving Priority to People and Performance: A Federal Public Service for the Future From June 27-30, 1999, 25 leading public-sector practitioners and scholars met at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland to discuss the state of the federal merit system and to outline a vision of a system responsive to changes in the labor market and in the delivery of public services. (1) At this meeting there was broad and strong consensus on four major points: * The people resources of government--its human capital-must be valued more highly and developed more carefully than current practice allows; * Performance--high performance--must become a way of life and a critical part of the culture of the federal service; * Strong leadership from both political and career executives must come center stage; and * Partnerships with unions, with other levels of government, and with other sectors must be front-loaded and focus on mutual goals and performance objectives. The many ways in which the challenge was perceived and described--a "war" for talent; a palette of choice and opportunity; a mandatory focus on human capital; new competition in a unified and hypercompetitive market; and a necessary reexamination of leadership needs for new challenges-grew from a common foundation. If government leaders and the public are serious about demanding better performance from government, they must also be serious about better ideas for the public service. Those ideas include knowing that human capital is an investment to be carefully tended, that performance is deterred by systems that are too complicated and often contradictory, and that responsibility for effective and far-sighted leadership resides with political leaders as well as with other members of the public service. Ensuring that the federal service of the future has the flexibility, the vigor, and the focus to be effective is a formidable task. It involves new analyses of some of the most closely held tenets of federal service: merit, the statutory bases of the current system, and the ideas of risk, reward, and accountability in the public service. Without attention to the task, effective government is at risk. How to best navigate the move from old to new, while retaining core commitment to the enduring value of effective public service, is not completely clear. The charting requires extensive discussion, collaboration, and consensus. The leaders at Wye emphasized different priorities in charting the transition and had different ideas about how to achieve the common goals. However, they shared the unequivocal view that the debate must be engaged now, that it must be raised above an incremental discussion of reform to a vision for the future. The purpose of this paper is to engage that debate, beginning a process of dialogue between the actors concerned with the issues and future of the public sector. Changing Markets: New Challenges The ever-changing global economy, dramatic technological change, and increased expectations about government performance demand a new attention to the complex set of public-service skills and capacity. The foundation of the public serviceuits human capital--must be strong, capable, and committed. The presence of this talent cannot be assumed, however. The reality of the marketplace is that there is a strong competition for talent, and the public sector must compete with the private sector for human resources with increasingly complex skills. A recent report from McKinsey and Co. placed the issue in stark terms: "What we found should be a call to arms for corporate America. Companies are about to be engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain a defining characteristic of their competitive landscape for decades to come" (Chambers et al. 1999, 44). Competition with other sectors is not new for the public service, nor is it, on its face, problematic. The challenge and value of a public-service career remain high. …