Originally Broadcast October 6, 2008

Washington, D.C.

Announcer: Welcome to The Business of Government Hour, a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The Business of Government Hour is produced by The IBM Center for The Business of Government, which was created in 1998 to encourage discussion and research into new approaches to improving government effectiveness. You can find out more about this center by visiting us on the web at businessofgovernment.org. And now The Business of Government Hour.

Mr. Morales: Good morning. I'm Albert Morales, your host and managing partner of The IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Mr. Morales: Good morning, and welcome to The Business of Government Hour. I'm Albert Morales your host, and managing partner of The IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Global trends and rapidly evolving societal needs continue to post critical national science challenges. It is the use of natural resources on the global scale, which has the potential to impact the nation's ability to sustain its economy, national security, quality of life, and natural environment.

The U.S. Geological Survey has reputation as a leader in natural science monitoring, assessing, and research. It also plays a vital role in the federal response to many resource challenges facing this nation. With us this morning to discuss his efforts in this area is Robert Doyle, deputy director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Good morning, Robert.

Mr. Doyle: Good morning.

Mr. Morales: Also joining us in our conversation is Kunal Suryavanshi, associate partner in IBM's federal civilian industry practice.

Good morning, Kunal.

Mr. Suryavanshi: Good morning, Al.

Mr. Morales: Bob, let's start off by learning a bit more about the U.S. Geological Survey, or the USGS. Can you take a few minutes to tell us a little bit about its history, its evolution, and the current mission today?

Mr. Doyle: USGS is a science agency for the Department of Interior. We have a long, proud tradition, and well-earned reputation of providing objective and credible science and information products. Our origins date back to 1879 when we were chartered by Congress to classify the public lands and to examine geologic structures and mineral resources on the federal domain. And over the next 130 intervening years, we have become the leading with science agency in the nation.

And we are the primary source of data on nation surface and groundwater resources, important information for water managers, and emergency responders. We produce authoritative assessments of energy and minerals, both on land and offshore; you may be familiar with their recent report on unconventional oil and gas off the coast -- in Alaska and in the Arctic.

We issue hazard warnings for earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and we also conduct research on wildlife diseases and ecosystem services. And we serve as the premier civilian mapping agency, noted also for our range of products, as topographic maps.

We have tremendous strength in terms of our integrated sciences. We have modeling capabilities and we have our long-term monitoring networks that we're able to bring to bear to address some of the natural resource issues that are facing this country. We provide important science information and products to policymakers and resource managers in the department that demonstrate our relevancy to their work.

Mr. Morales: So that's a very broad mission. Could you give us a sense of the scale at the USGS in terms of how it's organized, size of its overall budget perhaps number of employees, and how you're dispersed across the country?

Mr. Doyle: Sure. We have approximately 8,500 employees -- 1, 800 located at our headquarters in Reston, Virginia, and 7,200 employees that are located in our field offices across the nation. We have an office in every state. Our budget is about $1.4 billion, 400 of which monies that we receive from cooperators and other folks that we do work on their behalf.

As a science organization, we are located near colleges and universities where we have an opportunity to take -- have mutual benefit to share resources with students, professors, and the physical laboratories. We use approximately 250 emeritus scientists. These are people who have retired from the agency but wish to continue to do their science work, to share their institutional knowledge and expertise with the scientists who work -- continue to work at the agency.

And we utilize about 2,500 volunteers, sort of, citizen scientists, and we have about -- anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 contractors and they work for us to help complement our career workforce.

Mr. Morales: So Bob, with this broad overview of the organization, could you tell us a bit more about your specific role as deputy director and what are your specific responsibilities and duties?

Mr. Doyle: Well, our primary role is to focus on internal operations, make sure the buses run, so to speak. Try to make sure that the things are running efficiently and effectively and there we have a system of accountability to ensure that our goals and objectives are accomplished.

Mr. Suryavanshi: So with respect to these responsibilities and duties what would you say are your three most significant challenges that you have faced in your position and how have you addressed these challenges?

Mr. Doyle: I would say the biggest challenges I had was when I first came aboard about 4 years ago was to restore physical integrity to the financial operations. The USGS was in a position where they were unable to get an opinion on their financial statements.

We had some problems in internal operations so my task was to try to restore the credibility to fiscal operations and -- brought in some new people. We made some investments in the financial operations. We hired some new folks. We changed some of our business practices.

We engaged the senior leadership in the organization, engaged the employees to get them to understand and appreciate that financial integrity was their responsibility as much as it was for the administrative folks. And so it was my view that they should be treating administration and financial matters with the same degree of integrity and transparency that they do with their science projects.

Mr. Morales: I understand that you started your federal career back with HUD. Could you tell us a bit about your career and what brought you over to the USGS?

Mr. Doyle: Well, I started with federal service about 35 years ago, GS-13 equal opportunity specialist with the Department of Health and Urban Development, and then over the next 15 years I operated in a number of different positions in the administrative field on budget, finance, and procurement, the human capital, property, and IT.

And so after 15 years at HUD, I decided to take a position with the Department of Interior and I served in the executive capacity within Interior with the bureau -- first with the Bureau Mines, and then later worked with the Bureau of Land Management, and now, I'm currently working with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Mr. Morales: That's great. So Bob, as you, sort of, reflect back on the 35 years of federal service and the various departments and bureaus that you've worked for, how have these experiences prepared you for your current leadership role and how has it shaped your management approach and your leadership style?

Mr. Doyle: Well, I would have to say that I having worked through all the major administrative functional areas, gave me a good appreciation of the governance process that exists within government, across government, within the department, and that knowledge is very helpful in trying to craft strategies for getting things done.

I have had opportunities to take on some very challenging and difficult assignments, taught me how to make some tough decisions. When you serve as the deputy of any agency you have to be willing to say "No." And I've also, you know, worked in a variety of leadership positions at other agencies where you are forced to establish your priorities. You have to learn to where to focus your energies.

Mr. Morales: What is the U.S. Geological Survey science strategy? We will ask Robert Doyle, the deputy director of the USGS to share with us when the conversation about management continues on The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Morales: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I'm your host, Albert Morales, and this morning's conversation is with Robert Doyle, deputy director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Also joining in our studios from IBM is Kunal Suryavanshi.

Bob, I understand that in 2007, the USGS developed a science strategy, outlining the major natural science issues facing the nation in the next decade. Could you elaborate on this science strategy, and its implications specifically, to what extent does the new strategy better address complex environmental challenges through a systems-based approach?

Mr. Doyle: Well, the new strategy outlines areas where natural sciences can be -- make a substantial contribution to the well-being of the nation. It's a 10-year forward look for the bureau and it gives us some indication of future direction in growth; put together a team of scientists and ask them to do a rigorous assessment of our current science goals and priorities and to identify global trends and national priorities.

And we also asked them to formulate a plan that would build on the existing strengths of the agencies and to challenge us to better integrate the full breadth and depth of our science and our information capabilities.

So the focus of this strategy falls into six thematic areas; climate variability and change, which helps us clarify the record in assessing the consequences; a water census, for quantifying, forecasting and securing fresh water for America's future; energy and minerals, provide scientific foundation for resource security, environmental health, economic vitality and land management. Also have hazards risk and resiliency assessment program ensuring for us a long-term health and wealth for the nation.

Human health is also identified as a theme where we are challenged to develop a system and a process that identifies environmental risks to public health in America. And the final thing deals with the understanding of the ecosystems, and predict an ecosystems change to ensure that the nation's economic and environmental future is secure.

These are thematic areas that represent complex, multi-scale challenges, challenges to which the USGS is uniquely positioned to apply the fundamental understanding of natural processes related to geology, hydrology, biology and geography in a variety of comprehensive, coherent systems approach for addressing these challenges.

Mr. Morales: So the first five, I think, I understand a bit but the last one, ecosystems -- could you tell us a little more what is an ecosystem and why have you focused on understanding these?

Mr. Doyle: Well, ecosystems are viewed as the life support system for us. An ecosystem provides important services for sustaining human life, including fresh air, fresh water, soils, carbon sequestration, and pollinators for crops to name a few.

Ecosystems are generally self-sustaining. However, they can reach a certain threshold beyond which it is unable to repair itself. So USGS, with its multidisciplinary science, is in a unique position to provide a holistic view and a sound understanding of the ecosystems and ecological processes so that wise management can prevent crossing those thresholds.

Mapping, monitoring, modeling and understanding ecosystems is important for informing resource managers in their challenge of balancing land use and land change issues within human needs.

Mr. Morales: So going back to the first one on climate, we are beginning to see how the climate seems to influence every aspect of our life here on earth. Could you elaborate on USGS' effort to deepen and expand the climate science research? Specifically, how is USGS contributing to the global discussion on climate change and how are you supporting decision makers in this area?

Mr. Doyle: Well USGS scientists have spent decades conducting research and collecting information on climate change and its effect on ecosystems and its implication for resource managers.

The Department of the Interior is responsible for management of one in every five acres of land in this country. They have a significant interest on how climate change influences, it's just too much of responsibilities.

As climate predictions are made, USGS scientists can use their understanding of how ecosystems function, to predict how ecosystems will change in a response, allowing resource managers to develop adoption or mitigation strategies for protecting wildlife such as ducks that rely on water or food produced by the ecosystem.

This year, the USGS is engaged in developing a Climate-Effects Network that will serve as a early warning system for resource managers and policy makers, so that they can identify problems before they become chronic or costly.

Well, the debate and the discussions of climate change that occur have many dimensions to it. Our focus has more been on the effects and we will be trying to develop adoption and mitigation strategies that can be used by our resource managers so that we can preserve and protect the resources on our land.

Mr. Suryavanshi: Now Bob, it's my understanding that energy and mineral resources are the backbone of human food supplies, economies and national security. Would you tell us about the USGS' efforts to broaden its energy and mineral resource research? Specifically, what are the key strategic areas that this agency will focus over the next decade in energy and mineral resource research and how will that benefit the United States and resource management?

Mr. Doyle: The U.S. is the largest user of mineral commodities and energy resources in the world. And our economy and our standard of living depend on them. Because many of these resources are imported from trading partners around the world, it's important for us to understand the domestic and global supplies, distribution, use, and their future needs.

As directed by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, over the past four years, the USGS has been studying the resource potential of oil and gas on public lands. In our research plans, where we will be looking at alternative energy sources, we're looking at things like thermal energy, oil shale, wind energy, solar energy -- lot of alternatives besides the petroleum based oil and gas that we have today.

USGS research will be broadened to contribute to the national discussion of our future natural resource security, environmental effects of resource development, economic strength of the nation and management of national resources on public lands.

Mr. Suryavanshi: It's my understanding that domestic geothermal resources have the potential to provide significant amounts of clean, renewable, and reliable energy to the United States. Could you tell us about the USGS' assessment of these conventional, moderate and high temperature geothermal resources and if you can add, what are some of the major technical challenges for increased geothermal development?

Mr. Doyle: Well, without question the nation's energy demands will continue to grow. It is estimated that the United States will need to increase its electric power generating capacity 40 percent to 50 percent over the next 20 years. Geothermal energy is an alternative source available to partially satisfy this increase in demand.

We are currently conducting assessment of moderate and high temperature resources on public lands and the report is due later this year. This will be the first comprehensive assessment in 30 years regarding geothermal resources.

However, since 1979 the technology for power production increased dramatically. For example, the expansion of temperature range of geothermal systems capable of electric power generation makes low and moderate temperature systems more viable. And then, there's enhanced geothermal systems and techniques that create an opportunity to expand existing geothermal reservoirs and capabilities through hydrographic fracturing and other advanced techniques.

We are working collaboratively in our efforts with the Department of Energy, Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies along with the national labs, universities, state and local agencies and even the geothermal industry.

Mr. Suryavanshi: Bob, recent events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and natural fires have resulted in hundreds of deaths, disruption to commerce and destruction of homes and critical infrastructure.

Now, I understand that a core element of the USGS mission is to provide scientific information in order to minimize the loss of life and damage to property from these natural disasters.

Could you tell us about your National Hazards, Risk, and Resilience Assessment Program and your efforts to develop a national risk monitoring program?

Mr. Doyle: Well, the natural environment continues to pose risks to society. USGS has a long and respected history of providing relevant and timely information for responding to hazard events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides and so forth. We have an extensive network of sensors to model, forecast and detect natural hazard events. We work in collaboration with partners around the world as part of the Global Seismic Network with colleagues, universities as part of the Advanced System Seismic Network and a new National Volcanic Early Warning System.

Science and technology can play an important role in developing a disaster resilient program. National science and technology committee has a subcommittee working on disaster reduction and they have identified six grand challenges for the future: To provide hazard and disaster information where and when it's needed, to understand natural processes that produce hazards, develop strategies and technologies to reduce the impact of extreme events, to reduce the vulnerability of infrastructures, develop standardized methods for communities to measure and assess disasters and to promote risk-wise behavior.

Now, we are currently working with the state of California and the Department of Human Services, the state and local entities, to set up a plan -- planning exercise that will culminate in a November earthquake drill entitled the "Great Shakeout". USGS science and information products will significantly inform the exercise.

One of the objectives of the exercise is to translate regional disasters to a local level using a 7.8 earthquake as a triggering mechanism. We expect to have about 5 million citizens participate in the process and, in fact, we have about 2 million people already signed over the Internet.

The exercise also includes the discussion with Canada and Mexico, to explore cross-border implications and opportunities. And then we plan to have an international conference to be held in Los Angeles, for other mega cities participants to learn more from the exercise.

>Mr. Morales: So Bob, you mentioned networks and sensors, could you tell me a little bit more about what some of the key monitoring networks are and what might you be doing to enhance these networks and expand their capabilities?

Mr. Doyle: Well, the networks provide for us the ability to predict and characterize a hazard and provide information for response and recovery efforts. And USGS operates several critical hazard monitoring networks. Our key monitoring networks include the Global Seismic Network, the Advanced Network for Seismic Systems, Stream Gauges, geomagnetic observatory laboratories and satellites. The Global Seismic Network will be expanded to about a 150 stations worldwide, enabling USGS to report on recent earthquakes such as in China, within minutes.

And then in Afghanistan -- with the rebuilding that's occurred there has enabled us to restore an active site for the network to provide a critical coverage in a disaster prone area. We are also expanding our Advanced Network for Seismic Stations, with additional sensors and additional locations. We are upgrading the software to greatly improve our earthquake notification, especially within at-risk urban areas. And we are speaking to partners to improve the quality of regional networks, for example, with California Tech, the University of Nevada, and St. Louis University.

And we are developing a National Volcanic Early Warning System to adequately monitor all high risk volcanoes in the United States, to alert communities at risk as well as aviation at risk to the ash cloud formation. And we also have on the drawing boards a launch of Landsat 8 replace aging fleet of satellites, Landsat 5 and Landsat 7. I'll mention the Landsat 5 has been up and running for about 25 years and Landsat 7 is on its 10th year, and both are well beyond their projected life.

Mr. Morales: Now Bob, you talk about networks and partners but just to clarify and you mentioned some universities, partners can also include other governments around the world?

Mr. Doyle: Yes. So, a lot of the networks are really a collaborative effort that it is a good example of countries reaching together, working together to benefit the world as a whole. And so, we have members in the Global Seismic Network from countries in Iran, in China, here in the United States and Europe, all of us is certainly concerned about the hazards that are generated by earthquakes and all are interested in sharing information across countries so that we can all learn and understand the national -- natural phenomena of earthquakes and try to better advance understanding of that event.

Mr. Morales: I understand that over 75 percent of the declared federal disasters are related to flooding. And certainly we are in the middle of hurricane season and that's top-of-mind to a lot of folks, and obviously we saw a flooding hit the Midwest very hard this year.

Could you tell us about USGS' floods response efforts in this past year, and what are some of the lessons learned during this past, this past year?

Mr. Doyle: Well, the USGS plays an important role in providing real-time information to flood responders. As you said, this past year the Midwest was hit particularly hard by winds and torrential rains. We have a stream gauging network that provides valuable real time data to the national weather organization who forecast potential flood areas. The network consists of over 7,000 gauges and we have dedicated staff to install temporary gauges where coverage is needed during the hazard event.

We also have historical river data that proves to be invaluable to understand the implications of increased volume of water, to better deal -- and the implications for communities in an ecological environment. Recent preparations for Gustav and Hannah, we've had extensive communications and coordination with assigned centers in the affected areas, identifying where additional sensors in the network needed to be added so that while we have 7,000 sensors in permanent locations depending on the hazard and where it occurs, we also have mobile units, and we also have temporary sensors that we put in place to provide us some information.

And I should mention that a lot of this information is telemitted and available, real-time over the Internet. And so, for example, if anybody wanted to see the readings on a particular gauge all they needed to do is go to USGS, www.usgs, and look at our water watch website, and they'll be to see the volume of water and the tide that's occurred in a particular time and be able to see how that measurement compares to historical records and so they get a sense of how high there the water levels are, and how fast the water is flowing. The National Weather Service is extremely reliant on that information because they're the ones responsible for making forecast for a flooding, but they greatly rely on some of the basic data that our scientists provide to them.

Mr. Morales: That's fantastic. How is the U.S. Geological Survey using innovative technology to succeed? We will ask Robert Doyle, deputy director of the USGS to share with us when the conversation about management continues on The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Morales: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I'm your host Albert Morales, and this morning's conversation is with Robert Doyle, deputy director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Kunal Suryavanshi.

Bob I read about how the U.S. health spending is projected to continue to rise reaching almost 20 percent of the GDP by 2015. We talked about how the environment is one of the major determinants of human health. But can you tell us a bit more about USGS' role in environmental health research specifically monitoring the effects of the environment and wildlife on human health?

Mr. Doyle: Environmental health affects to citizens are increasing. The U.S. proposes to provide scientific and monitoring information essential for helping the nation to identify existing and emerging environmental ecosystem health threats. USGS is engage with a broad spectrum of partners in environmental health research. We characterize exposure to potential contaminants and pathogen in air, dust, soil, and other earth materials.

Monitoring and understanding vector-borne and zoonotic diseases, disease that are transmitted between animals and people such as Avian Flu and West Nile virus. We also characterize exposure to chemicals and pathogens in drinking water, food, and recreational waters. And we work with EPA and state, local water authorities to identify and understand the sources and impacts.

Mr. Morales: So along same lines let me transition a bit to water. According to a 2003 U.S. GAO report it said the nation lacked an adequate picture of water-availability at the national, regional, and local level.

Could you tell us a bit about USGS' efforts in this area specifically around the water census which you mentioned earlier and modernizing the stream gauges?

Mr. Doyle: The 21st century brings a new set of water resource challenges for us. Water shortages and water use conflicts have been more common place across the nation -- for irrigation crops, expanding cities, and communities, for energy production, and for environmental health, and species protection under the law.

The last comprehensive water census was concluded in 1978 and much has changed since that time. For our fiscal year 2009 we have proposed, begin in 10-year effort to undertake a water census that informs managers and policymaker as to what is available, where it is located, and what condition it's in.

Knowing our nation's water assets and rates of use on an ongoing basis is crucial to effective water management. So our initiative is a 10-year study of water-flow, storage and use. We also plan to conduct regional studies comparing storages and flows with prior conditions.

We will be collaborating with state and local governments in selected water studies and aquifers as to increase use of new technology in water planning and management. We will be cooperating with states and local entities to improve characterization of the nation's aquifers and we hope to modernize nations 7300 strain gauges and upgrade the technology, to support real-time data reporting, to provide more timely information for better water management, and to stabilize long-term network by reestablishing critical gauges that have been discontinued in the past 2 years.

Mr. Suryavanshi: Now that's a great information, Bob. As you know, innovative and continually evolving technologies have the potential to transform not just science methods, but even the questions that science can ask.

Could you tell us about a few new and evolving technologies that are particularly relevant to the earth sciences? For example, what is the Geographic Information System and how is that critical for integrating the many kinds of data across disciplines?

Mr. Doyle: Well, let me pick up on the Geographic Information System as one. GIS is an information system that integrates data elements in a geographically referenced way. That is its links to a location or a place on earth and it's a framework for understanding the world and applying geographic knowledge to solving problem, guiding management actions and it gives us the ability to visually relate multiple data sets within a geographic contexts as with a map displaying transportation routes, structures, terrains, rives, and streams and elevation. It's valued as a relational tool. It helps us to visualize and see the interaction of data, the cause and effects of actions in one area and how it affects the areas of the system.

There's a whole host of other new technologies out there that we are anxiously looking at and expecting to take advantage of their capabilities -- molecular genetics, nanotechnology, geomicrobiology, molecular technology, environmental census, particularly wireless census, land imaging -- just a whole range of new technologies out there that have an opportunity to really influence the earth sciences and how we do business.

Mr. Suryavanshi: Along similar lines, could you tell us about the National Map 3.0? How does it provide nationally consistent geospatial framework and also what are the key national geospatial initiatives currently underway?

Mr. Doyle: Well, the national map is our vision to the future -- 3.0 is our vision to the future. Our expectation is that we would have a map that is not dynamic rather than static. That we'll have real-time data represented in the map and so that as land changes occur and that information is made available, it is automatically incorporated into the national map.

Then we have streamflow information connected to real-time data reports and so that if the rivers increase in height and flow faster that information gets accurately represented in the map the day that it occurs. And so it's a real time nature that is envisioned as part of the national map.

We also would look up an opportunity to make 3D graphics, an integral part of the map part of the map and that we would give the user of the map the ability to customize, to be able to go screen and pick out a polygon and create their own map and add changes to that map and to do what-if scenarios and change the elevations on the map, to change some of the transportation routes in some of the structures.

Our kids today are experienced with the technology that gives them the ability to do things onscreen and to imagine and to think about things that aren't -- and to ask question why can't it be this way. This would give us the ability to make the map dynamic and allow people to play with it and to imagine and to configure it differently than what it is.

Mr. Suryavanshi: So it acts as modeling or a predictive tool also?

Mr. Doyle: Absolutely. In fact it -- even now the National Map 1.0 is really instrumental in helping to provide the geographic contexts for lot of our studies. It enabled us to see the ecosystems and see the changes that are taken place on the ecosystems and then be able to make some projections about some of the changes that it might be occurring and how they would be represented on the map.

Mr. Suryavanshi: Just changing the topic slightly, Bob. We heard a lot about collaborations and partnerships both across government and with organizations outside the government. What kinds of partnerships are you developing to improve operations or outcomes at USGS?

Mr. Suryavanshi: Just changing the topic slightly, Bob. We heard a lot about collaborations and partnerships both across government and with organizations outside the government. What kinds of partnerships are you developing to improve operations or outcomes at USGS?

Mr. Doyle: Well, indeed on of the strengths that the USGS possess is the network of partner and collaborators available to draw on. The complexities and many of the issues that we face as a nation require that collective and coordinated efforts of participants, national, international, federal, state, local, NGOs and the commercial sectors as well.

Our extensive network of partners enables us to extend our knowledge and expertise and our capabilities. Some of the more significant partnerships that we have been engaged in, our partnership network in hazards arena is a good illustration to work in collaboration with other federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, NOAA, the National Weather Service, state and local government's, colleges and universities.

Hazard events such as Katrina and Southern California fires, Midwest floods demonstrate the importance of working together, the share of information, coordinate activities, and to capitalize on respective resources and capabilities to best avoid and minimize the loss of life and property.

We have numerous partnerships with the Department of Interior Land Management agencies such as Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureaus of Land Management, where we provide important science information and products that inform every source management polices and practices as with the strategic habitant conservation efforts or with energy development on public lands.

Bureaus of Land Management is involved, the Fish and Wildlife Service is involved and the State Fish & Game for the State of Wyoming, we have NGOs, we have a National Nature Reserve is involved and we have the University of Wyoming also involved. So it's a tremendous collaborative effort where a lot of participants who have an interest in what's going on, and ultimately if the plan is going to work, it needs the support of the local people -- trying to look at the issue in Wyoming on landscape scale basis, we have individuals site specific oil wells, but it really has an impact on the larger ecosystem.

And so this is our efforts to try to look at things on a larger scale and to engage partners to join us in that effort and to share of information across organizational lines at the federal, state, and local level.

Mr. Morales: That's great. So Bob, I want to go back to your science strategy and talk a little bit about human capital. With the broad mission and program that you've described, how do you envision USGS' human capital needs evolving over the next couple of years? And specifically, what are doing to attract to maintain a high quality of technical and professional workforce to meet some of these future challenges?

Mr. Doyle: Well, the rate of attrition associated with the much touted baby-boomer bubble hasn't burst us but it certainly has seeped a bit. And what we having been seeing over time is that rather than having abrupt high rate attrition, that people have been slowly leaving the workforce.

So it is a challenge for us in terms to trying to replace the institutional knowledge and the expertise, but it is also an opportunity for us. An opportunity with the science strategy that would be -- take us in new directs, requiring new skills and new capabilities. And so the attrition gives us the opportunity to hire those capabilities to pursue those new directions.

Now a critical aspect to realizing our science goals is an effective human capital strategy for recruiting, develop, and retaining, and managing a highly skilled, flexible, motivated, and diverse workforce. Our major concerning challenge is maintaining the institutional memory as the workforce retires.

We have above 40 percent of our workforce eligible over the next 5 years. But our workforce planning is an integral part of our 5-year program planning process. In 2004 we developed a comprehensive suite of workforce planning tools and guidelines for evaluating both current and future workforce needs.

We currently make extensive use of the student -career-education program, which has proven to be a good source for future employees. And we also maintain an active postdoctoral program both internally within the survey called the Mendenhall Doctoral Program and we also take advantage of the National Academy of Sciences', mentoring program. I think for us to maintain and attract highly qualified talent, I think the answer is in creating a rewarding working environment where employees are valued.

Faster challenges, and interesting, and meaningful work and afford the employees an opportunity to excel, to be recognized, and to be rewarded, to give the employees the freedom to experiment and the latitude to fail -- one that is capitalized on the flexible workplace route that OPM has put in place over the last 3 or 4 years.

Flexi-place, telecommute, work-week alternatives, job sharing et cetera -- and it's important for us also as a science agency to invest in technology and equipment in the creative development of our employees.

I think, if we do all of that and I think we will set ourselves to be able to continue to attract and retain the talent that we will need to carry out the science strategy that we have before us.

Mr. Morales: Now you mentioned knowledge management, and in the last year we have seen that many federal agencies and communities have launched their own versions of Wikipedia or are using blogs.

Could you talk about efforts within USGS to leverage these new societal networking ideas and technologies and how can these tools support your mission and operations?

Mr. Doyle: USGS employees have been strong proponents of social networks and other new technologies that facilitate communication within and across our organization.

Our new generations of employees bring with them a familiarity and a comfort level with electronic information sharing. They have incorporated all of this into there daily life with family and friends. And so introducing these new technologies in the workplaces has been logically and welcomed addition to our communication tools.

Podcasts are frequently used and integrated into our websites. They enable us to reach a new audience in new ways -- they are new, popular way to communicate with the public. And I would invite you both to take advantage of accessing our website, USGS, www.usgs and to click on some of the latest podcasts that we have and that would include the hurricane activities that is occurring in the Gulf of Mexico as well as some thought about the great Shakeout exercise that will be occurring in California in November.

Convening information in nonscientific teams -- using technologies will help us to convey science in non technical terms so that the relevancy of a word can be easily understood by the general public to convey technical topics and essential points in a citizen-friendly science discussions. Our latest statistics on our web show that 1.8 million people have already accessed our sites to take advantage of the podcasts that we've made available.

We also make extensive use blogs which have become and accepted and an effective tool for informally communicating information on a range of issues or for simply sharing observations. It has become a useful tool for rapid dissemination of information, to get a general message out quickly.

We are also using Wikis. We have found them to be invaluable to us to keep our staff informed and up to date on various issues -- and have been very helpful to us in planning process in terms of with 7,300 employees located in our field location across the country with an office in every state -- sometimes it gets difficult to engage them in a process and invite them in and make them feel a part of the process.

But the Wiki technology gives us the ability to solicit comments and we found that to be very effective in some of our planning documents where we invited them to comment on and participant in that process. And so it's simply another way for us to extend their communication tools and to make it easier and more effective for us to get the message out and to increase the understanding across the organization.

Mr. Morales: That's great. Now back on the podcast, I'd just like to also let the listeners know that this very interview will be available on our podcast. So, we can sort of extend the favor there.

What does the future hold for the USGS? We will ask Robert Doyle, deputy director of the U.S. Geological Survey to share with us, when the conversation about management continues on The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Morales: Welcome back to our final segment of The Business of Government Hour. I am your host, Albert Morales. And this morning's conversation is with Robert Doyle, Deputy Director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Kunal Suryavanshi.

Bob, as you have noted many of the environmental challenges discussed transcend the national boundaries. So to that end, could you tell us a bit more about how the role that USGS plays in international efforts and issues that seek to develop a global understanding of the earth systems?

Mr. Doyle: The USGS has an active international program in part to provide technical systems to foreign countries and to collaborate with scientists around the world to further acknowledge in understanding of its science. We have many international arrangements with the United Nations, with the group, with observations, with the State Department. We work with a voluntary disaster assistance program. We have projects ongoing now with the reconstruction of Afghanistan. We just participated in International Geologic Congress and we are also active in the Circum-Pacific Council.

Indeed, some of the many national and international resource issues transcend jurisdictional boundaries -- issues such as SARS, avian influenza, climate variability, sea level rise, invasive species, drought, volcanic corruptions -- I could go on and on. Collaboration of partnerships are the cornerstone for conducting a wide variety of science and information activities to address these trans-boundary issues.

Let me give a couple of examples here -- I mentioned earlier the Circum-Arctic study that we had undertaken on undiscovered oil and gas for the purpose of assessing what is out there in the Arctic region. And it's part of a larger global study to assess the petroleum basins using standardized and consistent methodology and protocols.

We also have done a study of gas hydrates in 2002. We conducted a gas production test in Mackenzie Delta of the Canadian Arctic, an area of high concentration of gas hydrates. And we conducted by an international consortium of USGS, The Geologic Survey of Canada, Department of Energy, Japan, India, Germany, and Industry Representatives.

We've also done a Global Minerals Resource Assessment. Eight years of cooperative international effort to assess the world's undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources and to develop the methodology for an assessment, new models, and predictive tools for analysis and application of global assessments. We're also very active in International Polar Year Activities and established and operate physical and biological monitoring networks through scientific collaboration within and outside the United States with scientists around the world.

Mr. Suryavanshi: And Bob, I understand that the USGS is participating in an extensive aerial hyperspectral survey of Afghanistan. How can these same advanced techniques be applied to find new and underutilized minerals and resources in our own country?

Mr. Doyle: As part of the U.S. effort to support the reconstruction of Afghanistan, USGS scientists have provided information about the potential energy, minerals, and water resources, important to the development and stability of the Afghanistan economy. A major component of the efforts includes the collaborative effort with NASA and DOD to acquire a hyperspectral infrared imagery of Afghanistan. Hyperspectral imaging allows us to determine the actual composition of rock and minerals at the surface of the earth from a high altitude aircraft traveling a 100 miles an hour.

This technology in data collection process has been an integral part of the USGS Minerals Program for many years. But this is the first time the coverage has been obtained on a national scale. Our work with Afghanistan is also a part of an effort to build capacity in Afghanistan and to train the Afghanistan scientists in the application and use of hyperspectral data.

The Afghanistan experience will allow GS to develop algorithms and data handling techniques to facilitate manipulation of a very large data set. This will allow development of more advanced techniques that can be used to greatly improve resource investigations here in the United States.

This effort in Afghanistan provides a good example of how technology developed by the USGS can be transferred to a distant problem which then feeds back experience to allow the improvement and expansion of a domestic program, for example, applications in Alaska.

This technology is highly accurate and precise and would be especially helpful and flying over the remote areas such as the mountains and wilderness areas of Alaska.

Mr. Morales: So Bob, let me transition to the future of now. Could you give us a sense of some of the key trends that will impact the U.S. Geological Survey in say the next 3 to 5 years?

Mr. Doyle: Well, I would say certainly from a scientific perspective, our science strategy has identified six themes that we think over the next 10 years or more -- provide a good indication of where the future priorities and future focus need to be.

But I would also say that and from the technological standpoint, we see that real-time nature of data demands is going to continue to grow, is going to be an increasing public expectation for current information.

We also see that the public is going to demand free and open access to science data. You maybe aware that the secretary just made a decision recently that the entire archive of Landsat data information that we have been collecting since the 1970s would be made available at no cost over the Internet for the public. And to put that in context, people talked about tetrabytes of data. Now we are talking about petrabytes of data -- there's a tremendous amount of information.

And the challenge will be I think for the -- in the future for all data users is how would we make that information available in a cost-effective way so that people can access it and make use of it. I think that it will have increasing use of modeling and predictive capabilities to better understand the potential impacts of emerging societal issues.

Mr. Morales: So Bob, you certainly have had a very successful career over the past 35 years. As you reflect back on your experiences, what advice might you give to someone out there who perhaps is thinking about a career in public service and perhaps a career in the National Sciences?

Mr. Doyle: Well, based on my experience, I found the public service to still be a noble calling. I found it very satisfying and rewarding personally and a great opportunity for any individual to challenge themselves. The government is a big employer. There are over 2 million jobs in the government. The professions are many. So there's a great opportunity to engage and to be challenged and to have an opportunity to make a difference. And public service affords a rewarding an opportunity to learn more about your government and to get involved n very high levels with responsible work.

So I would encourage any individual out there, that's considering work with the government to think about coming in and sharing and better understanding how the government operates and look for opportunities to make a difference.

Mr. Morales: That's a wonderful advice. Thank you. Bob, unfortunately we have reached end of our time today. I want to thank you for fitting us into your busy schedule.

But more importantly Kunal and I would like to thank you for your dedicated service to our country across the many roles that you've held across the federal government.

Mr. Doyle: Well, thank you both for the opportunity to share with you stories about the USGS and about its capabilities and its science, history. As an organization the USGS certainly has strong, proud history and tradition to do in quality science and science that's important and meaningful to this nation.

I certainly want to thank all of the employees of the USGS who have worked so hard to maintain that reputation and continued to do a quality work. I'd I like to close with a little story that I want to share with you.

Back in 2006, the USGS was a recipient of an award for the national Partnership for Public Service. They received the Service to American Medal for community service. And it originated out of the events that occurred with Katrina, down in the Gulf of Mexico. And like many federal agencies, the people who live down there and worked down there will remember the communities and they were affected by that national tragedy.

Many of our employees used the boats that we have down there, used the equipment to participate in the searching rescue and activities and you might recall that. During that effort, the - rescue teams were somewhat frustrated in their efforts because the high-water tended to obliterate the street signs, covered the street addresses, destroyed many of the landmarks.

And so the rescue teams that were in there, many of them from out of state, were not familiar with the area and they had the regular maps that they were using to try to locate people who had called in on their cell phones -- people who were in attics that were trapped, people who were on rooftops -- and they gave them street addresses, which didn't help because the normal maps were not functional.

But our cartographers were able to take those maps and convert them to latitude and longitude so that the rescuers were able to get the calls that were coming in on their cell phones and using GPS technology were able to give them a latitude and longitude location. And so the Coastguard and other rescuers were able to key off of that. It's a very small example that I think of how science can help, improve and make a difference, can improve the quality of the life of people.

And I was there that night and receiving the award on behalf of other survey and I remember the eve in the event remarked into my wife saying that I was proud to be a federal servant. Proud to hear people talk about the contribution we made as public servants to make things a little bit better.

And so I think that's symptomatic of the kind of people that we have working at the survey and the kind of work they do and the kind of contributions they can make to improve the lives of people in this country.

Mr. Morales: That's a wonderful story and certainly puts a sharp point to your message around call to service and federal service. Thank you very much.

This has been The Business of Government Hour featuring a conversation with Robert Doyle, Deputy Director of the U.S. Geological Survey. My co-host has been Kunal Suryavanshi, Associate partner in IBM's Federal Civilian in District Practice.

As you enjoy the rest of your day, please take time to remember the men and women of our armed and civil services abroad who may not be able to hear this morning's show on how we're improving their government, but who deserve our unconditional respect and support.

For The Business of Government Hour, I'm Albert Morales. Thank you for listening.

Announcer: This has been The Business of Government Hour. Be sure to join us every Saturday at 9:00 a.m. And visit us on the web at businessofgovernment.org. There you can learn more about our programs, and get a transcript of today's conversation. Until next week, it's businessofgovernment.org.

* * * * *

Originally Broadcast May 3, 2008

Washington, D.C.

Announcer: Welcome to The Business of Government Hour, a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The Business of Government Hour is produced by The IBM Center for The Business of Government, which was created in 1998 to encourage discussion and research into new approaches to improving government effectiveness. You can find out more about The Center by visiting us on the web at businessofgovernment.org.

And now, The Business of Government Hour.

Mr. Morales: Good morning. I'm Albert Morales, your host, and managing partner of The IBM Center for The Business of Government.

The constant and efficient movement of people and goods across the U.S. and around the globe is critical to the economy and our lives. Today, our vital transportation infrastructure is showing signs of aging, and we are experiencing unprecedented congestion in our nation's highways and railways, at our airports and at our seaports. Overcoming these challenges will increasingly rest on the development and the deployment of new technologies and cutting-edge solutions.

With us this morning to discuss his department's efforts in foraging a transportation system for the 21st century is Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, or RITA, within the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Good morning, Paul.

Mr. Brubaker: Good morning, Albert.

Mr. Morales: And joining us in our conversation is John Nyland, managing partner of IBM's Global Business Services Public Sector.

Good morning, John.

Mr. Nyland: Good morning, Al.

Mr. Morales: Paul, let's start by providing some overall context for our listeners. Could you take a moment and share with us a sense of the history and mission of the U.S. Department of Transportation? When was it created, and what is its mission today?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. DOT, the Department of Transportation, was created back in the Johnson administration, and came into operation, it was signed into law late 1966. And the first day of operation was April 1, 1967.

Mr. Morales: Could you perhaps provide us a little bit more specifics on how the Department is organized, the size of its budget, number of full-time employees, and perhaps a sense of your operations across the country?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. Well, it is a national department here. We've got operations in all 50 states basically. And we have 60,000 employees and a $70.3 billion budget for air, maritime, and surface transportation missions.

Mr. Nyland: Paul, most of the agencies within the Department of Transportation are modal agencies. That is, they cover a mode of transportation, be it aviation, highway, railroad. But your administration is different. Could you tell us why this is the case? But more importantly, what are your responsibilities and duties as the RITA administrator? And can you provide us some specifics of your organization and how it supports the broader mission of the DOT?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. You're correct in noting that most are considered modal agencies. And interestingly enough, we were created to really be a cross-modal organization, to look for innovative technologies that could be applied across the transportation modes, which is an exciting mission.

The other thing that we are tasked with doing is actually coordinating the Department's $1.2 billion research investment portfolio under the Norman Mineta Research and Special Programs Improvement Act, which actually stood us up. My role as RITA administrator is to make sure that there is a process in place to manage that portfolio, to make sure that we are acting as the portal for new technologies into the Transportation Department, and that we actually take a very cross-modal, multi-modal view of the transportation infrastructure in terms of moving passenger or freight.

Mr. Nyland: So regarding your responsibilities and duties, what do you see as your top three challenges that you're facing right now, and how are you addressing these challenges?

Mr. Brubaker: Well, RITA's a relatively new organization, so when I basically inherited RITA, there were some basic process issues that really needed to be dealt with, some organizational alignment issues. And what we did is we stood up a process by which we could achieve our statutory obligations under the Mineta Act, and we're in the process of doing those things right now. So I would say linking the research investment to the departmental priorities was a definite challenge that I think we've done a good job of standing up a process to address.

Achieving organizational alignment around sort of our overall strategic plan and our overall strategic objectives was important. I wanted to make sure that everybody in the organization really kind of understood what their role was, what the mission of the organization was, how they played a role in managing on a day-to-day basis, and how they contributed to the function of the mission and the performance of the mission. And also important was to make sure that people understood how they were going to be managed and measured with respect to organizational objectives.

Mr. Morales: So, Paul, I understand that you came to the Department after serving some time in the private sector as well as a previous career in the public sector.

Mr. Brubaker: Serving time, Albert? It makes it sound like --

Mr. Morales: Serving time, yeah.

Mr. Brubaker: It makes it sound like prison, so. It's not, believe me. I enjoy every moment of it.

Mr. Morales: Could you take a few moments and sort of describe your career path for our listeners and kind of tell us how you got started?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. I came to government as a GS-7 GAO evaluator in the Atlanta Regional Office, so I worked for the General Accounting Office at the time, now the Government Accountability Office, and was trained to really perform cost schedule and performance audits of government programs. So it was great, great background. And after serving in GAO, which I loved, they spent a lot of time training us and providing us with a lot of really good professional development in terms of being able to kind of walk into a project or a department and really getting smart in a relatively short amount of time on what it took to make it tick, and then offer some suggestions for improvement. And that background has really served me pretty well here.

Then after I spent some time at GAO, I worked on Capitol Hill for -- at first I did a GAO detail to the Senate Appropriations Committee staff, which was pretty exciting, and I learned a little bit about the Hill and how things operate. And then I wound up working full-time on Capitol Hill for then-Senator William S. Cohen, a Republican from Maine, on his Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, which was a subcommittee of the Governmental Affairs Committee. And there, I was hired on as chief investigator and then became the Republican staff director and worked on things like the Klinger-Cohen Act, which, you know, being a Senate guy, I would tell you that probably should have been named the Cohen-Klinger Act. But at any rate, I worked on that and then spent time at the private sector.

And then Secretary Cohen asked me to join him at the Pentagon to work in the information technology arena and actually, you know, I think his line to me was that, okay, you know, you helped draft this legislation, come over here and help me implement it. So that was a lot of fun and was very rewarding.

And then I went out into the private sector for a number of years and bought and sold a couple of small companies and was engaged in running marketing of a really fast-growing systems integration firm called SI International in Reston, and was working in a small start-up that was focused on collaboration and collaboration capabilities and driving those into leading organizations, both in government and the private sector.

And then I got a call from the White House and asked me if I was interested in joining the administration.

Mr. Morales: That's fantastic.

So Paul, as you kind of reflect back on all these experiences, say, your role as a DoD deputy CIO and perhaps your role as the CEO of a private entity, how have these experiences prepared you for your current role and perhaps shaped your management approach and leadership style over the years? And then finally, could you share perhaps some management lessons you've learned and brought to RITA from your private sector experiences?

Mr. Brubaker: Yeah, you bet. Particularly on the government side, though. Let me just address that first, because like the Pentagon and like the role I had in the Pentagon as the deputy chief information officer, we were obligated to execute a statutory requirement. And the same thing is true with RITA. We are obligated to implement the Mineta Act and all the requirements that underlie it. So what was real important when I walked through the door was to actually read the Mineta Act and understand it, and then make sure that we were aligned as an organization to achieve those objectives. So that was job one. And that's something that you only get if you've really kind of been in government and really understand how to navigate the statutory requirements.

Drawing from both the public sector background and the private sector background, what I knew had to happen was we had to get really clear about what the vision of the organization was. And that's easy because it really kind of reflects -- in a government organization, it really reflects the statutory requirements that you're obligated to meet. But you've got to have not just a vision, but you've got to have a plan. I mean, really kind of what are you going to do from a people, process, technology point of view, organizational point of view? How are you going to align to achieve your objectives? Not just -- when I'm speaking about resources, too, I'm also thinking in terms of people. How do you align your people? How do you align your budgets? And how do you make sure that you put the organization on a path that you can actually achieve and produce some sort of measurable results for the taxpayers?

So those lessons were really, really important. I recognized out of the gate, particularly from the private sector, that you've got to have really clear focus. You've got to be aligned to achieve your organizational objectives. You've got to have a strategic plan, be clear about your mission. And that plan, by the way, drives your process, all your supporting processes, how you align your people and your resources, how you measure effectiveness, and how you reward behavior.

Mr. Morales: So it's really about how to operationalize the vision which is already set forth, largely, in the legislation that you're taking on?

Mr. Brubaker: That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Mr. Morales: Great, great.

What about the DOT's Transportation Vision for 2030? We will ask Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration within the U.S. Department of Transportation, to share with us when the conversation about management continues on The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Morales: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I'm your host, Albert Morales, and this morning's conversation is with Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, or RITA, within the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is John Nyland.

Paul, in our last segment, you outlined some of the key challenges you faced as administrator. If we can just transition a bit here, could you now describe some of the critical transportation challenges facing the country today and perhaps outline for us the current state of this country's transportation system and infrastructure?

Mr. Brubaker: Well, obviously, it's a very aged infrastructure. I don't have to tell the folks sitting around this table or folks listening this morning, probably some of whom are sitting behind a traffic construction site or an accident, that congestion is a major issue in this country. You know, if you talk to our transportation secretary, Mary Peters, she always talks about safety, system performance, and 21st century solutions. And those 21st century solutions are really all about improving the former two. They're all about improving the safety posture, reducing the number of crashes. And as a byproduct of reducing the number of crashes, we can also reduce congestion and actually benefit the environment by reducing greenhouse gases as we keep cars moving. But she also zeroes in on system performance, and that is really related to how we move people and how we move goods across this country.

Again, it's not just about automobile traffic, but it's also about air traffic. It's all about congestion on our waterways and in our ports. And these are really major, major issues. And one of RITA's missions is really to get our arms around, from a measurable perspective, the whole issue of safety as well as transportation system performance. And by introducing 21st century concepts, be it technology or be it economic innovations with congestion pricing, like we're doing through the Urban Partnership Agreements and hope to do it in New York City if the state legislature approves it, as well as San Francisco, I mean, as we begin to look at those types of innovations, it's really going to enable us to use the existing infrastructure much more efficiently and much more effectively.

But even from a research perspective -- I mean, as I mentioned, managing our research portfolio, we're looking at better ways to make informed decisions about resource allocation in terms of replacing roads, replacing bridges, as opposed to sort of the traditional model, which was, we've got a fixed amount of money through the Highway Trust Fund that's, incidentally, funded by gas taxes.

And also, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that through better fuel economy standards, through transitions to alternative fuels, especially if they're hydrogen, and as we introduce plug-in hybrid technology and electric cars to the mix, that old model is not going to stand up to the future. And we've got to figure out how, from an innovative perspective, how we actually come up with some alternatives to the traditional gas tax. And I think some of the technologies that we're working on and some of the innovation and innovative approaches that we're following are really going to enable a different transportation funding paradigm, a different transportation operation paradigm in the future. And that's what's really exciting about this job.

Mr. Morales: Well, Paul, since you talk about the future here, could you tell us a bit more about DOT's Transportation Vision for 2030? To what extent will it guide future investment decisions and research? And how does it coordinate with the Transportation Research, Development, and Technology Program and the ITS Strategic Plan?

Mr. Brubaker: Well, the entire reason we came up with Transportation Vision for 2030 is because we recognized that even though the Department had a pretty broad strategic plan, we wanted to specifically link in an intermodal or a multi-modal fashion the Department's research and development investments towards some intermodal goals, some cross-modal goals. A lot of the modal plans and what have you really focus in on the modes, and we wanted to take a step back at sort of a higher level, specifically as it relates to research, and figure out, okay, what is it that we should be building towards. And that's why we came up with Transportation Vision for 2030.

We laid out a number of goals, a half a dozen goals, very specific goals, around things like reducing congestion and focusing on safety, as well as some environmental goals, improving environmental stewardship. But we did it in an intermodal way. And we actually focused on four main themes. One was passenger movement. Another one was movement of freight. And then we had innovative financing and public-private partnerships. And then the last one, which was really technology, it was how to introduce technology and innovation across the prior three areas and really take the transportation paradigm to the next level in a set time frame, which is -- you know, we chose the year 2030 because it seemed like a pretty reasonable time horizon; that we can actually begin planning today, planning our research investment today, that will support the vision that we outlined for 2030. And that's just really an exciting opportunity to really link research, our research investment, with a strategic objective.

Mr. Nyland: Paul, could you tell us more about the Research Planning and Coordination Program, and how it ensures that DOT is making the most of its billion-dollar annual investment in research and technology? And more specifically, you referred to the concept of applying the CPIC concept, or the capital planning and investment control concept, to research. Could you elaborate on such an application, and is there a formal process in place to reevaluate and shift the RD&T research strategies and priorities accordingly?

Mr. Brubaker: This is really exciting. The capital planning and investment control process is a mature process that really was defined and required, again, going back to the old DCIO days at the Pentagon, but even more importantly, before that, to the Hill when I got an opportunity to work on the Information Technology Management Reform Act, or Klinger-Cohen, which actually required the development of a CPIC concept, our CPIC process for the federal government.

And my friends accuse me of only having one good idea in my life and I just keep trying to apply it to everything. And there's a certain element of truth to that, but I looked at how we were managing the research portfolio at the Department, and it really lent itself to this type of a process. So rather than reinvent the wheel, we were able to leverage best practices that had been developed over the last decade or so through the CPIC concept, including leveraging GAO's ITIM Guide, Information Technology Information Management Guide, which lays out a really robust maturity model for selecting, controlling, and evaluating information technology capital projects. And we just applied that same maturity model to what I'm calling RPIC, or the research planning and investment control process. It's based on best practices. It's a very mature model. And in some ways, I find it a little easier to apply to research than I do information technology investments, because the business cases are slightly different.

I still would like most of the research or virtually all of the research to really be outcome-based, which is consistent with what CPIC really tries to drive home. So we looked at this model and we thought, you know what, we can really tee this up and manage through our governance process. We've got a governing body called the RD&T Planning Council, and we're actually about to change that name to the RD&T Investment Board. Really, the whole notion there is that this governance body, which is made up of the modal administrators, will have a say in making sure that the research investments across the Department and even within their modes are consistent with the strategic objectives that we seek to achieve as a department. It's criteria-based, it's fairly objective.

We're developing portfolios. We've got nine portfolios that we've developed, all around from a multi-modal and intermodal perspective, dealing with things like human factors research, dealing with things like materials, logistics and supply chain, and really focusing the research investment on an intermodal basis, which is very, very exciting. It's unprecedented, and we're pretty thrilled to be standing up a relatively mature process in a department that really hadn't done it yet. And it's an exciting time for the research community in the Department to really sort of rally around this and take it to a completely different level.

Mr. Nyland: Let me switch gears on you here. From a strategic perspective, could you describe the vision behind the concept of intelligent transportation systems, or ITS?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. It's real simple: We want to build vehicles that don't crash, and provide drivers with mobility solutions and assistance, presented in a user-friendly manner that doesn't distract the driver, that offers him value added. I mean, imagine if you will going out to your car in your garage, lifting up the garage door, getting in the car, turn the ignition, and then having the car basically tell you, look, John, it doesn't really make any sense for you to drive in the Clara Barton Parkway today; there's been an accident. Your best bet is to drive to a Metro station and get into work that way, and this is about how long we think it's going to take. And by the way, we've already -- you know, if you want, we can prepay your parking and buy you a farecard. So that's the kind of stuff that we're looking at from a mobility perspective.

From a safety perspective, I mean, we've seen a lot of evidence and a lot of research in this area. We actually have technology today that would prevent cars from crashing into each other. The trick is to fine-tune that, make sure that the legal privacy issues are dealt with, install it, deploy it, bring the cost down, and actually work with the OEMs and the automobile manufacturers and the after-market manufacturers to begin deploying these types of solutions. But they exist and they are out there, and we find it very exciting, particularly from the safety perspective.

I mean, if you look at the fact that we have 6 million vehicle crashes every year in the United States, at an economic cost anywhere -- if you look at the AAA study that was just released, I think they said $167 billion a year is the related economic cost of these crashes. We did a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study back in 2000 that suggested that that annual cost was somewhere in the neighborhood of $204 billion. Either way you cut it, it's a very large number. And if you think about it, it's fatalities, it's injuries, it's medical bills, it's repair costs, it's increases in insurance premiums, it's lost work. There's a huge economic cost that is attributed to these 6 million crashes, not to mention the fact that non-recurring congestion is often the result of a fender-bender somewhere, an automobile accident or a vehicle crash. So the important thing to note there is we can actually, by leveraging these ITS solutions, intelligent transportation solutions, on the safety side really improve mobility.

And also, we know from research that's been done at a number of our university transportation centers that moving vehicles contribute a lot less in terms of greenhouse gases than those who are sitting in traffic, so it actually benefits the environment. So I think the time is right to really energize the intelligent transportation systems program around the safety issue, with the real goal of significantly -- and by "significantly," I'm talking somewhere in the neighborhood of -- you know, this isn't official policy here, but it's what I'm using to sort of drive the discussion inside the Department and outside the Department -- but saying, you know, can we reduce those 6 million crashes by 90 percent over the course of the next 20 years or so? That is a laudable goal.

And if you think about it, if we could reduce those crashes, we could also reduce the number of injuries, and certainly the 42,000 people who lose their lives on the nation's highways every year. You know, if you reduce that by 90 percent, you've got a lot less sad families out there. There's a very clear and compelling business case around intelligent transportation systems.

Mr. Nyland: Staying with this theme, could you elaborate on the national ITS architecture? To what extent does this provide a common structure for the design of intelligent transportation systems and provide overall guidance to ensure that systems, products, services are all interoperable without limiting the design options of the stakeholder?

Mr. Brubaker: Yeah. And as you probably guessed as an IT guy, I haven't met an architecture I didn't love, so in this case, we view it as a real positive. I mean, we want to have a national ITS architecture to ensure interoperability. Most of these projects are going to be rolled out at the state and local level, so we need to make sure that folks are building to appropriate standards.

The only thing that I'm a little concerned with with the national ITS architecture, and we're taking steps to address this, is that it's a little bit rigid in the sense that it hasn't really taken into account advances in communications technology. So we periodically update that, obviously. But it's really kind of wedded to a couple of technologies that, just to get specific, DSRC, dedicated short-range communication, radios, which will absolutely and always be a part of the ITS architecture, but it doesn't take into account things like wifi and mesh networking and Internet Protocol Version 6, which is going to allow self-healing networks and a lot of communications on the move, if you will.

And we're also not necessarily looking toward some lessons learned. And this is also the beauty of having been at the Defense Department. I mean, I look at what the defense community does in the area of Blue Force Tracking and communications on the move, and I truly believe that there are some lessons there that we can take into our national architecture that could really enable some of the outcomes that I described earlier.

Mr. Morales: That's great. So sticking with this sort of theme of congestion, according to a recent Texas Transportation Institute report in 2005, the nation's urban congestion problem resulted in about 4.2 billion hours of travel delay, 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel, and a net urban congestion cost of nearly $80 billion.

Could you tell us about the DOT's national strategy to reduce congestion on America's transportation network, which is also known as the National Congestion Relief Initiative?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure, I'd love to tell you about it. Yeah, the TTI, Texas Transportation Institute, report is done by a researcher, led by a researcher down there by the name of Tim Lomax, who is just a first-class individual and has done a lot to really drive home and quantify the debate around congestion and congestion management.

Congestion is one of the single largest threats to our nation's economic prosperity. I mean, there's just no doubt about it. It takes people away from their families, but it also has a huge economic cost. It drives up the cost associated with operating our supply chain, and it is just eating away at national productivity. So we really need to get around this and get around this quickly. And both Secretary Mineta and Secretary Peters are committed to this congestion initiative, which is premised on the fact that there are existing innovations and strategies that can really provide relief now. And we want to leverage some experiences -- overseas, for example, the London Congestion Initiative, which has been very successful in reducing congestion -- and taking those best practices and then adopting them in the United States.

So we can't be all things to all people, but what we wanted to do was essentially identify a number of leading communities that would really compete for the opportunity to have demonstrations funded in their areas. And what we're interested in is better signage, everything that ranges from like better signage to traffic incident management to traveler information to better signal control, and some advances in that area. And we're just really excited about some of the initiatives that we've undertaken under the congestion initiative, and we're already beginning to see some benefits to the dialogue.

And once we begin to roll these out and get some HOT lanes built, like, for example, in Miami, which is one of the cities that we've funded through the Urban Partnership Agreement, you know, we'll see some benefits, some measurable benefits. Once we can see congestion pricing in New York City, I think you're going to see a significant reduction in rush-hour congestion. And we're just very, very excited about the program, and we think we're going to -- well, we know we're going to produce measurable results for the taxpayer, and that's what it's really all about.

Mr. Morales: That'll be fantastic. Paul, in preparation for our discussion here, I came across something called "SafeTrip-21." What is SafeTrip-21, and to what extent will it contribute to the restructuring of the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Program? Specifically, how will it accelerate the testing and deployment of safety and congestion-reducing technologies? And to what extent will SafeTrip-21 incorporate lessons learned in operational tests currently underway in partnerships with automakers, OEM suppliers, and state and local governments?

Mr. Brubaker: You bet. Well, SafeTrip-21 is really an exciting operational test that is going to deploy soon, November of this year at the ITS World Congress, which is going to be held in New York City the week of November 14th. It's actually an operational test of existing ITS-related technologies, intelligent transportation systems technologies.

VII, vehicle infrastructure integration, is a subset of intelligent transportation systems. So what we've actually done is we've gone out and we've asked the private sector, academia, think tanks, practitioners, state and local governments to bring us ideas and best practices and technologies that they're currently using. And industry's really done a phenomenal job of stepping up to the plate with some really compelling innovations. And what we're attempting to do is integrate these existing technologies and show that we can measurably improve safety and transportation system performance, or mobility, through the integration of existing technologies. And SafeTrip-21 is really designed to do that, to demonstrate that through better use of information, navigations, communications, technologies, and protocols, that we can really make a measurable impact.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

How is DOT advancing bio-based and alternative fuels? We will ask Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, to share with us when the conversation about management continues on The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Morales: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I'm your host, Albert Morales, and this morning's conversation is with Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, or RITA, within the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is John Nyland.

Paul, I understand that one of the major divisions within your administration is the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. Can you describe for us what its mission is and how it's different from a data center or a research group?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. The Volpe Center could best be described as a transportation think tank. It's an internationally recognized center of transportation and logistics expertise. And they do a variety of projects for both the Department of Transportation and other government agencies, private sector organizations, and even some international governments and organizations. So they don't have any direct appropriations. They're a fee-for-service organization. So 100 percent of their operating budget comes from sponsored work. So it's really entrepreneurial. It could best be described as sort of a government professional services firm, but really zeroed in, focused on research.

And it's located in Cambridge, a couple of blocks from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I think that's your alma mater, isn't it?

Mr. Morales: It is.

Mr. Brubaker: So we're interested in making sure that Volpe has the best and the brightest folks, if you will, and well-trained people, well-trained research professionals in the area of transportation, logistics, supply chain, safety, mobility. And actually, those folks are sort of taking the management lead, if you will, or the deployment lead -- I shouldn't call it "deployment," I'll call it "operational testing" -- the operational test lead on the SafeTrip-21 project that we just spoke about.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

So transitioning a bit here, Paul, there's been a lot of discussion regarding alternative fuels. Could you tell us a bit more about your research in advancing bio-based and alternative fuels, including hydrogen, which you mentioned earlier? Specifically, what role is DOT playing in meeting the President's commitment to developing a hydrogen-powered transportation system?

Mr. Brubaker: Okay. Well, as you know, in 2003, the President during his State of the Union Address announced a Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, talking in terms of our addiction to foreign oil and the fact that we really need to be researching some alternatives. What's exciting now is that a lot of this technology has advanced to the point where the vehicles are going through a low rate of initial production. And Honda, for example, has 100 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that they're putting out on the market out in Southern California. The reason why they're focused on Southern California is because that's where the fueling infrastructure is. In fact, they're focused on three specific cities: Torrance is one, Santa Monica, and I forget the third. But they're focused in on exactly where the fueling infrastructure is because that's what they have to do.

GM, likewise, has a program where they've got 100 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles out on the road being tested in Washington, New York, and Southern California again, because that's where the fueling infrastructure is. We've got a station over on Benning Road, which many of you have probably been by, and we actually have an operational hydrogen fueling facility here in D.C., which is fairly accessible.

So we're doing a lot in the area. And we're very bullish on both biofuels, hydrogen, as well as battery technology that's being developed to really improve the operation of vehicles; reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which is, frankly, job one; and then also it's going to improve the environment. So it's sort of a triple whammy, if you will. It's really exciting to see the developments in hybrid, electric, gasoline-powered, plug-in hybrids, plug-in hybrids that use biofuels, that can use gasoline, that can use -- although our objective long term is to get off gasoline, but can also use hydrogen.

GM at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January rolled out something called the Cadillac Provok, which is a concept vehicle, but it's something that's built on a platform, a very flexible platform, that they can build hybrids on. And it's a plug-in hybrid hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that has photovoltaic cells on the roof. Now, these are planned to be on the market in the 2014, 2015 time frame. But you got to understand that there's a lot of research that's done in support of that.

And frankly, hydrogen is ready for prime time. The long pole in the tent here, which is what we're also experiencing on the biofuels and the E85 area, is the infrastructure, is that fueling infrastructure that needs to be built. And we're right now doing some research and promoting some innovative thinking around how can we actually jump-start the deployment of the infrastructure in a meaningful way so that we can compress the timeline that the vehicle manufacturers currently have to make these vehicles available. And I think we're going to be pretty successful in doing that.

Mr. Morales: That's great. Now, Paul, there's a direct correlation between the volume of freight transportation and an increasing population and increasing economic activity. In fact, during the course of one year, over 19 billion tons of freight valued at over $13 trillion was carried over 4.4 trillion miles within the U.S.

Could you describe the trends in freight transportation and identify the key research being pursued to improve freight safety and reduce congestion?

Mr. Brubaker: Yeah, I'd be delighted to. Obviously, that is critical to our economic well-being as a nation, and it's something that we've been devoting a lot of time and energy toward. You know, as you mentioned, your statistics are spot-on. And our port capacity, our infrastructure around the ports, are creating some pretty significant bottlenecks that really need to be addressed. And the level of innovation and what we've been funding in terms of innovative research is really going to come up with some of the strategies and some of the new ways of moving freight and clearing freight through ports and speeding it to market.

But the congestion, this has also played into the whole congestion equation, particularly as our population's going to continue to grow. Demands for goods and services are going to grow. You know, the value of foreign trade increased nearly 200 percent in the last two decades, including a huge 1,200 percent growth in U.S.-China trade between '89 and 2007. And then you look at in the context of NAFTA and you look at some of the border issues that we're dealing with, we're trying to figure out how we can speed goods into the country and out of the country on our export side, but really making sure that the freight flows freely throughout the country. Because as it gets clogged up, there's a significant problem. So we're funding research right now to really understand, to better understand where those bottlenecks are occurring.

Obviously, I mean, anybody who drives by Long Beach can tell you that there are some infrastructure issues around Long Beach and around the Port of Long Beach. But at the same time, there are some non-obvious bottlenecks that we're aware of based on some research that we're doing at Georgia Tech and some other universities, where freight winds up sitting on rail spurs or on the docks for inland waterways. And we need to really be cognizant of exactly how the logistics system works in the United States. And what we can do -- and we want to make sure that we have the strategies that are based on the real problems, not some of the perceived problems.

So we've done things like we've got the congestion initiative, obviously, which I spoke about earlier, but we've got Corridors to the Future Program, which really gets at a lot of those freight corridors and the movement of goods, both on rail and on the highways, as well as our National Cooperative Freight Research Program, or NCFRP, which we manage. We try to look at the whole freight industry objectively, like I mentioned. We leveraged some of the research that we're doing at the universities to ultimately ensure that freight flows freely across the United States.

Mr. Nyland: Paul, there's been a lot of discussion around the theme of collaboration. And as we noted, the RD&T program emphasizes partnership, coordination, and information sharing across the federal government and with universities, state and local governments, industry, and other organizations. What kind of partnerships are you developing to improve operations or outcomes at RITA? And could you describe some specific success stories that illustrate this approach in action?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure. I can tell you what we're -- one of the key elements of our strategic plan going forward is improved collaboration. And we're aligning, like I mentioned at the outset of the program, to ensure that we're focused on collaboration capability.

I mentioned the portfolios, the portfolio management process that we're engaged in through the RPIC process, research planning and investment control. And I mentioned that there were nine communities of interest. Well, likewise, I mentioned the Volpe National Transportation Center. We're reorganizing the Volpe Center into eight Centers of Innovation. And the reason why there is eight is because there are -- I mentioned nine portfolios. One of the nine portfolios is materials. Well, Volpe doesn't do any materials research, but the remaining eight communities of interest really translate well into the Centers of Innovation that we're standing up, but they're identical.

The whole reason for this is so that we can begin to share knowledge across organizations, be it universities, be it the private sector that we've engaged in in conducting some research, or whether it's the Volpe National Transportation Center around these communities of interest so that we're doing a much better job of collaborating, of sharing knowledge, of increasing the level of research that the Department funds through collaboration and knowledge sharing.

And oftentimes, what I found when I walked into this role is that research kind of gets done on an island. And the folks who are conducting the research, particularly on the university side, aren't necessarily sharing that knowledge with another university who may be engaged in similar, very similar, or in some cases identical research. And what we want to make sure of is that we have a collaboration capability that's built leveraging commercial, off-the-shelf software that we currently own as a department. But we want to create a collaboration capability where we can begin to share that knowledge across what have traditionally been sort of research stovepipes, if you will; or as we call them here in Washington, silos of excellence.

But that's the whole notion behind these nine communities of interest, is really create a framework by which we can actually effectively collaborate and share knowledge among the researchers. And we're doing it out of necessity as well. As I go out and I talk to folks in the universities and in the research community, particularly the younger folks, the Generation Y folks, they really expect collaboration. These are the folks who IM and, you know, instant messaging and are used to wikis and really collaborating. And we've got to provide that kind of capability to them if we're going to attract sort of this next generation transportation worker into this field.

Mr. Morales: Now, Paul, I only have a minute left, but I want to continue this theme. Could you tell us a bit more about DOT's largest university programs, or the University Transportation Centers, otherwise known as UTCs? To what extent does the recent expansion of the UTC program present new opportunities to make even greater contributions to transportation research, education, and technology transfer?

Mr. Brubaker: Well, it's a vital element of our department's effort to make us more competitive in the global marketplace. You know, we mentioned the operation of the supply chain. And what we really want to do is -- and congestion and safety and a number of other issues, and what we really want to do is we want to make sure that we're attracting the best minds in the country to these problems; that we're asking them to develop solutions; and that we're also really training the next generation of transportation leaders in this country. And that's what the UTC program's really all about.

We have -- I've been to a number of these. The Department invests about $77 million every year to fund the UTC program. And in the last 20 years, that program has grown from about 10 regional centers to about 60 centers, involving 120 universities today. So this is really an opportunity for us to basically build a knowledge base, a research base, and a tradition of strong transportation research around the country through this investment.

It's amazing. We require a match on all these investments. And it's amazing that the states have stepped up, the private industry has stepped up, and a number of other organizations have stepped up to match our contribution to the UTC program. And to go out there and listen to these graduate students who are working on some of the most incredible projects -- I was just at UC Berkeley not that long ago, and there was a whole host of Ph.D. students who were presenting their dissertation topics, and it's everything that we just talked about in terms of the major challenges. So they're doing really relevant research and developing some very interesting concepts.

And heretofore, you mentioned -- we were talking about collaboration a minute ago. You know, heretofore, those dissertations would get written and they might wind up on somebody's MySpace page in a virtual library somewhere. But oftentimes, they didn't get to the people, the decision-makers, if you will, to really affect changes in policy and process and thinking that are really going to help us solve these problems going forward. So the UTCs present a phenomenal opportunity for us to reach in to really innovative minds -- both young and old, by the way; there are a number of non-traditional students in these programs -- and get their thinking on how we can best address these solutions. Because Washington, despite our best efforts, we don't have a monopoly on good ideas. So these ideas often come from these universities.

I was just out at Missouri Science and Technology University. That was incredible. The stuff that they were doing. There was a fellow out there who actually invented a hydrogen reformer that takes ethanol crude beer, which is a preproduction or pre-distillation step of biofuels, of ethanol, and he takes it and he converts it, or reforms it, if you will, into hydrogen, pure hydrogen, that can be used in a vehicle. And to me, that's a phenomenal development, because it's a technology that leverages the whole ethanol area, the whole biofuels piece. But it does it in such a way that when it's in the crude beer form, it's not a hazardous material, so it's easy to ship. And that's in the middle of Missouri. I mean, who'd have thunk it, you know? Except those folks from Missouri, who -- it is after all the Show Me State.

But it's phenomenal. It's just absolutely phenomenal. And there are pockets of that kind of innovation all over the country. So we've got to collaborate with those folks. We've got to know what they're doing. I mean, we're funding it, so we ought to do a much better job of figuring out how we can use what they develop and figure out how we can inject that thinking into our transportation plans.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

What does the future hold for DOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration? We will ask Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, to share with us when the conversation about management continues on The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Morales: Welcome back to our final segment on The Business of Government Hour. I'm your host, Albert Morales, and this morning's conversation is with Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, or RITA, within the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is John Nyland.

Paul, transitioning now to the future, could you give us a sense of some of the key trends that will impact the U.S. transportation system in, say, the next three to five years?

Mr. Brubaker: Sure, I'd be delighted to. You know, one is the financing of the infrastructure. That is going to be very, very critical going forward. As I mentioned before, as we move to alternative fuel vehicles, of plug-in hybrids, of battery-powered vehicles, the traditional source of funding, the Highway Trust Fund, is going to be really significant. So we're going to have to be very, very innovative irrespective of who wins the next political contest for President. We're going to have to be very, very creative in how we address these things long term.

Energy efficiency is going to be a key issue; you know, environmental stewardship. Congestion is just going to continue to affect freight and passenger modes. And we are really focused on those three areas in terms of what we're going to do in terms of innovation, new technology going forward. The other one, of course, is intelligent transportation systems, which enable really kind of all three of those areas.

For example, some of the things that we're doing with transponder technology can really impact -- you know, people can be contributing to the transportation infrastructure through user fees that are mileage-based, and that's an intelligent transportation system application. That will help us address some of the funding issues that we've got with the gas tax as people begin to use less gasoline. Again, ITS impacting energy efficiency, as I mentioned before. Also, the alternative fuels and hydrogen and battery-powered vehicles are going to be pretty significant in terms of energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, and finally get us off sources of oil where we buy it from people who don't particularly care for us or our way of life. And then, again, ITS really will play a role in reducing congestion.

Mr. Nyland: Paul, on a broader basis, what are some of the major opportunities and challenges your organization will encounter in the future? And how do you envision RITA will evolve over the next few years to meet them?

Mr. Brubaker: Well, the first thing, of course, is just people. You know, the people that we hire, the people that we can attract, the people that we can bring on board and get folks interested and involved in sort of that whole transportation research world. I mean, how do we attract the best and the brightest is definitely a challenge that we're looking at from an organizational perspective.

The other piece is really accommodating the velocity of technology. I mean, Moore's Law is alive and well in the technology arena and -- named for Gordon Moore, the former chairman of Intel. And it basically says that the computing capacity doubles every 18 months and the price gets cut in half. Well, accommodating sort of long-range strategic plans in a government organization that's really sort of born out of the industrial age in an information age environment is always going to be a challenge. And the research community, as we sort of lay out two-, three-, four-, five-year research plans, we've got to understand that they need to be flexible enough to adjust. And that's going to be a challenge to not just our organization as RITA, but as DOT and as the United States government as a whole tries to take sort of its industrial age structure and achieve information age results.

Mr. Morales: So, Paul, you've had a very successful and extensive career within the public service. What advice might you give someone who perhaps is thinking about a career in public service?

Mr. Brubaker: I would just encourage them to do it and to be patient. The reason why I say "be patient" is, getting a job in the U.S. Federal Government, particularly if you've got a lot of talent, is hard relative to the other options that you have. The process is slow. It's somewhat cumbersome. You know, you still have to fill out an SF-171. You know, we haven't done a particularly good job of streamlining the hiring process for federal employees, whereas we're competing with the same people. Particularly when we're looking to achieve some of our hiring goals, we are often competing with the private sector, who can do on-the-spot hires of people who they recognize as being very talented and have the right resume for the job.

I had a circumstance like this a few days ago, where I was actually talking to somebody about the potential of joining the federal government. The person had a number of offers on the table. And I said, well, you've got a great resume. You've got a great background. You'd be ideal for this. But I've got to have you -- you're going to have to go through a competitive process. And as much as we like you, you may not get this job. And that tends to -- that's frustrating for all parties.

I mean, we've got a mission to achieve. And we've got to make sure that at least in the future and this will be a problem for another administration, although, you know, I definitely have some views about it, so I'd be happy to talk to whoever winds up getting the OPM job, but we've got to really streamline that process and make it a lot more agile and a lot more responsive to what the hiring realities are out there in the world.

And if there are jobs to be had, then, you know, the federal government is kind of, you know, the hirer. And we can sort of look at our processes and say, yeah, that's fine. But -- and we're accomplishing the mission and being able to hire folks. But as I say this out on the road all the time, I say to work in the U.S. Federal Government at this point, you've either got to be incredibly dedicated or exceptionally incompetent, one of the two, to wade through that process and wait the kind of time frames that we're asking you to wait on in order to get hired.

So I view that as a competitive disadvantage. But if somebody wants to work here, it's the best job in the world. I mean, nowhere else can you -- and I go back to my days as a relatively young GS-7 working at the U.S. General Accounting Office, and I think there is nothing better than that kind of an experience for a young person, or even somebody who's mid-career or thinking about a second career, to get involved and roll up your sleeves and really make a difference for the American taxpayer. There's nothing more rewarding than that.

Mr. Morales: That's wonderful.

Paul, unfortunately, we have reached the end of our time. I want to thank you for fitting us into your busy schedule. But more importantly, John and I would like to thank you for your dedicated service to our country, both in your roles at the DoD and now the Department of Transportation.

Mr. Brubaker: Yeah, my pleasure. It's just been a delight to be here and talk about these things that are obviously pretty near and dear to us as we head out and we try to make a difference for the taxpayer. If anybody has any questions, I'm fairly easy to reach: paul.brubaker@dot.gov. And if you have any questions or comments or want to take a look at more about what we do, hitting our RITA website is a good place to do it. And Transportation Vision for 2030, which we talked about a lot, is actually on that site. So if you go to www.rita r-i-t-a .dot.gov, you can access our website.

Mr. Morales: That's fantastic.

This has been The Business of Government Hour, featuring a conversation with Paul Brubaker, administrator at the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, or RITA, within the U.S. Department of Transportation.

My co-host has been John Nyland, managing partner for IBM's Global Business Services in the public sector.

As you enjoy the rest of your day, please take time to remember the men and women of our armed and civil services abroad who may not be able to hear this morning's show on how we're improving their government, but who deserve our unconditional respect and support.

For The Business of Government Hour, I'm Albert Morales. Thank you for listening.

Announcer: This has been The Business of Government Hour. Be sure to join us every Saturday at 9:00 a.m., and visit us on the web at businessofgovernment.org. There, you can learn more about our programs and get a transcript of today's conversation.

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