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 April 12, 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. This is Albert Morales, your host, and managing partner of The IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Today, scientific discoveries are emerging at an accelerating pace in virtually every field, transforming the science and engineering landscape and opening entirely new territory for exploration. As one of the premier federal agencies supporting basic research at the frontiers of discovery across all fields, the National Science Foundation plays a critical role in keeping the U.S. competitive in the sciences. The success of such a vital national mission rests on the pursuit of an effective resource management approach and workforce strategy.

With us this morning to discuss NSF's strategic efforts in these areas is Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and NSF human capital officer.

Good morning, Anthony.

Mr. Arnolie: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Mr. Morales: And joining us in our conversation is Solly Thomas, associate partner in IBM's Human Capital Practice.

Good morning, Solly.

Mr. Thomas: Good morning, Al. And good morning, Anthony. Good to see you again.

Mr. Morales: Anthony, let's start by setting some context for our listeners. Could you take a few minutes to provide us a general overview of the National Science Foundation, including its history and its mission today?

Mr. Arnolie: Certainly. The National Science Foundation is an independent federal government agency created by Congress in 1950 to, at that time, promote the progress of science, to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare, and to secure the national defense. Today, we fund basic research in scientific disciplines such as biology, geosciences, computer sciences, engineering, and education. And we fund researchers in all 50 states through grants to about 1,700 universities. And each year, we receive about 42,000 competitive proposals, and award about 10,000 new funding grants each year.

Mr. Morales: That's a fairly competitive statistic. Could you perhaps share some additional details to give us a perspective on the organization, such as how the Foundation is organized, the size of the overall budget, number of full-time employees and contractors, if you have such a mix?

Mr. Arnolie: The Foundation is run by a director and a deputy director who oversee the staff and management responsible for program creation and administration, merit review, planning, budget, and day-to-day operations. We also have a 24-member National Science Board that establishes the overall policies for the Foundation.

This year, our current budget is about $6 billion. And at present, we have a total workforce of about 1,700. That includes about 1,200 career employees, about 200 scientists from research institutions on temporary duty, and about 300 contract workers. And we're located in Arlington, Virginia.

Each year, NSF supports an average of about 200,000 scientists, engineers, educators, and students at universities, laboratories, and field sites across the country and throughout the world, from Alaska to Alabama and from Africa to Antarctica. You could say that NSF support goes to the ends of the earth to learn more about the planet and its inhabitants and to produce fundamental discoveries.

Mr. Thomas: Anthony, now that you've provided us with a sense of the larger organization, perhaps you could tell us more about your specific program. What are your responsibilities and duties as the director of the Office of Information and Resource Management, and as the National Science Foundation's chief human capital officer? Could you take a moment and tell us about the programs under your purview, how your office is organized, and the size of your staff and your budget?

Mr. Arnolie: Sure. As director of the Office of Information and Resource Management, I'm responsible for ensuring that NSF runs smoothly and efficiently from an operational perspective. Organizationally, I'm responsible for three divisions: the Division of Information Systems, the Division of Administrative Services, and the Division of Human Resource Management. These divisions collectively are responsible for developing and maintaining the technology infrastructure and systems that facilitate business operations, as well as the underlying IT security for managing the day-to-day administrative functions, such as building security, facilities management, proposal processing, conference and events management and visitor services, and also leading the agency's effective recruitment retention, motivation development, and utilization of NSF staff.

I manage about 165 federal employees and well over 200 contractors who work within these three divisions. Approximately 75 percent of the contractors perform information technology services, including application development, data center operations, and help desk support.

From a funding perspective, I'm responsible for a budget of approximately $100 million. And as the chief human capital officer, I serve as the senior strategic advisor for the deputy and the director of the agency on all human capital management issues. I'm accountable for the strategic management of NSF's unique workforce, which includes a large planned turnover of our scientific staff annually.

Mr. Morales: Anthony, if I may, just as a quick follow-up, is your role as director of the Office of Information and Resource Management effectively what people might recognize as a CIO?

Mr. Arnolie: The information technology function falls under my purview, but the CIO function and the Office of the CIO function is a separate function. So my role is a bit broader than just information technology, much like even though I hold the title of chief human capital officer, my role is broader than just human capital management.

Mr. Morales: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Thomas: Anthony, regarding your responsibilities and duties, what are the most significant challenges that you've faced in your position, and how have you addressed these challenges?

Mr. Arnolie: I would say the most significant challenge I've faced since I've been at NSF has been funding constraints and competing priorities, which are not unusual to small agencies in particular. We've been evolving from a small sort of off-the-radar agency to a much more highly visible one, which brings with it greater oversight and increased demands. Until this year, our funding for administrative activities has not kept pace with our needs and those demands, although I am beginning to see that change this year, finally, and I'm really excited about what the future holds as a result.

As a result of that situation, we've had to make some difficult choices among competing priorities. So for example, I oversee information technology as well as human capital management. Both of those are funded traditionally out of the same budget. And so there are often times where a decision has to maybe be made between hiring more people or investing more in technology, and clearly both of those are imperative to our mission, and so it does create some difficult challenges.

What I've done in my position is to aggressively work to educate our senior leadership on the importance of the administrative functions to the execution of our mission. And as I said, I think this year, we are finally starting to make some inroads and those messages are starting to take hold and we're starting to see the benefits in terms of a bigger budget.

Mr. Morales: That's fantastic.

Now, Anthony, I understand that prior to joining NSF, you came from the private sector. Could you describe your career path for our listeners? How did you get started, and what brought you to NSF?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, up until 2003, when I joined NSF, I spent my entire career in the private sector working for a number of accounting and professional services firms. I spent most of my career managing IT organizations, providing internal support to the consultants and accountants.

My most recent position was a partner in charge of technology administration at Arthur Andersen in New York. And it's not unknown to most what happened to Arthur Andersen as a part of the situation that took place with Enron. At the time, my wife and I were both partners at Arthur Andersen. We had met and both worked here in the D.C. area. We decided to move back. She continued in the accounting profession. We thought it wise for us to both not make the same mistake twice, if you will. And so I sought to find a challenging yet somewhat more stable occupation in the interest of our family.

Mr. Thomas: Diversification strategy.

Mr. Arnolie: Absolutely. Absolutely. Too many eggs in the same basket the first time around.

I was fortunate that the opportunity at NSF came up because it was similar from a functional standpoint to roles that I had had in the private sector, albeit obviously in a very different sector, which has been quite an interesting experience for me.

Mr. Morales: So as you sort of reflect on these experiences, how have they prepared you for your current leadership role at NSF and perhaps shaped your management approach and your leadership style today?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, I've had the fortune over my career of having six outstanding bosses, all of whom when perhaps I was maybe too young to trust, trusted me with quite a bit of responsibility. I think that what they did and the themes that I took away from working for them are ones that I apply today. The first being communication is critical. They taught me to speak honestly and frankly and expect the same in return.

The second is you must empower your staff and make sure that they take ownership for the success of whatever they're assigned with. Thirdly, that you must support them when they make mistakes and when they're being treated unfairly. And last but not least, as a leader, you must maintain your poise at all times, especially in the most difficult of situations. And as I said, each of my previous bosses exhibited those qualities, and I've tried to employ those in my management and leadership style.

Mr. Morales: Those are wonderful principles.

What is NSF's human resource strategy? We will ask Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at the National Science Foundation, 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 Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at the National Science Foundation.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Solly Thomas.

Anthony, let's talk a bit now about the President's Management Agenda and its focus on the improvement of management and accountability. What are some of the efforts within NSF to meet the requirements of the PMA today?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, when we embarked upon the PMA a few years ago, it really helped us as a small agency to institutionalize some of our important human capital functions and activities. And in particular, it helped us to bring some rigor to our evaluation processes.

NSF achieved green in human capital in 2005, and maintained that green for about two years up until this past June. The challenge that we faced, as I've alluded to earlier, had to do with limited funding. And as a result, we reached a point where there was a divergence between the agency priorities and some of the PMA requirements, and that left us in somewhat of a difficult position. Our funding was limited, and over time, we found it difficult to meet some of the ongoing requirements and still do what senior leadership at NSF was asking us to do.

Now, the good news is we had engaged senior leadership to the point where they had given us quite a list of human capital imperatives that they wanted us to carry out. We were working closely with senior management as well as all levels of the organization. And so while we would like to continue to work with OPM to see if we can get credit for some of the great work we're doing as an agency, and I think our director and deputy would support this, we're proud of the progress that we've been making, and we do credit the PMA for really getting us started down this road of a more rigorous approach to human capital management.

Mr. Morales: Anthony, let's probe on this area a bit more. If we focus on the theme of human capital, could you give us an overview of NSF's human capital strategy, and your efforts to develop a strategic human capital plan? How does the strategy align with and support the Foundation's core mission, goals, and organizational objectives?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, we've recently undertaken an effort to update our strategic human capital management plan, and the basis for that was the most recent update to the NSF strategic plan, so there is a very tight linkage between the human capital management plan and the agency's strategic plan. Our human capital vision is to attract, develop, and retain a diverse world-class workforce that is continually learning and expanding its capacity to shape the agency's future.

To that end, NSF senior leadership recognizes the value of strategic human capital planning as a key component of excellence in management. This is shown through the recent enhancement and ongoing implementation of our human capital management plan. And this plan is aligned to the agency's overall strategic plan as well as outlines goals, plans, and evaluation methods. A working group of senior career federal executives representing all of our key scientific disciplines was formed to update the plan and to ensure its relevancy to the agency's strategic goals and the needs of the strategic and scientific workforce.

Mr. Thomas: Anthony, staying on the human capital topic, as you know, the federal human resources community is changing from a transaction-based environment to a more strategic and consultative role. Could you tell the listeners about your efforts to transform the human resources function within the National Science Foundation? Specifically, how are you engaging the program directorates in order to anticipate human capital issues and improve processes while at the same time operating as consultants?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, under my tenure and under the leadership of the deputy CHCO, we've contracted out, over the last two years, many of our traditionally transaction-oriented duties. What that's allowed us to do is it's provided additional time for our permanent staff to serve in a more consultative role.

Additionally, we've recently implemented a service team concept. And what this entails is while we maintain our traditional functional branches, we deploy customer account representatives - CARs, we call them that are directly aligned to our internal customer organizations. These specialists strive to consult, coordinate, and communicate with their assigned organizations in order to improve our understanding of customer needs and to collaborate more closely for better, faster service. And so far, this concept seems to be working and our customers like it.

In addition, we are engaging senior leadership on a regular basis and discussing human capital issues that are of relevance to the strategic mission of the Foundation. On a quarterly basis, if not more often than that, we have a full agenda at our senior management meetings where we talk about a variety of human capital issues. The important point here is we don't spend a lot of time talking about staffing and classification, but really talking more about how we shape or reshape the workforce to respond to the needs of the scientific community.

And in addition, because we are a highly participatory organization, all of our strategic human capital initiatives are done in collaboration with the program directorates. I mentioned the updating of the human capital management plan as one example, but just about every one of our initiatives from a human capital standpoint is overseen by a steering committee or a working group that consists of representation from all parts of our organization.

Mr. Thomas: Anthony, let's talk a little bit about performance management. Could you tell us about the National Science Foundation's efforts to develop and implement an agency-wide performance management system, and in particular, the focus on aligning employee performance expectations with organizational goals and objectives?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, our performance plans for executives have been aligned to the agency mission for quite some time. In 2004, we expanded this to all general workforce performance plans. We held briefings for supervisors and staff. We set up frequently asked questions, and even created an internal web page to provide information and sample performance plans showing linkage to the mission. And within a short period of time, we had full compliance throughout the agency, and have been pleased with this result. As research shows that when employees see how their daily work supports the organization's goals, then their performance improves, and from there, organizational performance improves.

As far as the executive performance plans, we take a very rigorous and we'd like to think transparent approach to both the evaluation of the plans themselves and their linkage to mission, along with an evaluation of the appraisals and how effective the executives have been at carrying out what's documented in the performance plans. We think that this has been very important, both in terms of making sure that activities are aligned to the mission, and also that our executives are held accountable for delivering on those things documented in their plans.

Mr. Thomas: To accomplish its mission, the National Science Foundation invests in the best ideas generated by scientists, engineers, and educators across all fields of research and education. Could you give our listeners an overview of the Foundation's performance assessment framework? What exactly is the framework, and to what extent does it enable continuous improvement and ensure openness to the research and education communities serviced by the Foundation?

Mr. Arnolie: NSF conducts a wide range of internal and external assessment activities to evaluate and report on our strategic investments and how effectively the strategic plan is being implemented. Since we fund basic research in science and engineering and education, it's sometimes not possible to directly link outcomes to annual investments because the results from basic research oftentimes takes years to come to fruition. Consequently, we believe in assessing the true impact of NSF's activities by utilizing the qualitative judgment of outside experts. To that end, we have a few activities.

One is what we call committees of visitors. We rely on these external committees of experts to evaluate long-term outcomes resulting from NSF grants. The COVs, as we call them, meet every three years to review the program reviews and to provide into two areas: the assessment of the quality and integrity of program operations, and how the research results have contributed to the attainment of NSF's mission and strategic outcome goals.

We also utilize directorate and office advisory committees. The judgment of these external experts help NSF to maintain high standards of program management. They also provide advice for continuous improvement and ensure openness to the research and education community served by the Foundation. Each of our directorates has an external advisory committee that meets twice a year to provide a review of program operations, discuss important current issues, and approve recent reports from the relevant COVs.

Last but not least, we have an advisory committee for Government Performance and Results Act. This external advisory committee conducts an assessment of the entire portfolio of NSF investments in science, engineering, and education. Each year, the committee reviews the Foundation's investments to determine if NSF demonstrated significant achievement under these strategic goals. The committee submits a report to the NSF director, which is incorporated into the Foundation's annual report each year.

Mr. Morales: Now, Anthony, you talked a little bit about the connection between the program leadership and your organization. And I'm sure that the increase in multidisciplinary projects, international activities, and major research projects has increased the volume as well as the complexity of the workload over at NSF. But could you tell us a little bit more about the efforts to analyze these workload requirements? And what can you tell us about a pilot program currently underway to test a new organizational structure and operations model?

Mr. Arnolie: For many years, NSF has been a leading federal agency in leveraging technology to support business processes. With rapid increases in e-government solutions to conduct our core business, we discovered that there were resultant changes in employees' job functions and competencies.

In 2007, we developed a weighted workload model that compares NSF's workload indicators to the staffing levels in our directorates and offices. The trend data allows us to track changes in workload by workload type and by scientific discipline for each directorate and for each program. The model shows a significant increase in overall workload in the last seven years, with only a modest increase in our staffing levels. Further, the model projects continued increases in the coming years, and we continue to refine the model as new data becomes available.

In terms of the pilot, about two years ago we undertook what we called an administrative function study in order to understand and address the impact of changing business process and technology on the program support workforce. The goal was to better align the functions assigned to the administrative staff in support of the mission and to increase professional development opportunities for administrative staff by establishing career paths and learning maps.

The program support staff at NSF represents about 30 percent of our permanent workforce. And recommendations from this study have led to the development of new program support positions that have become part of a clearer career paths with extended professional opportunities that did not previously exist at NSF. In addition to the new positions and career paths, we've developed learning maps that help guide employees through their options for individual competency development, and allows them to target professional development opportunities at the Foundation.

The pilot was initiated in 2007 to test the management positions of this new model we created, and a structured learning and development plan is in place for each of the pilot positions for the duration in order to address the competency gaps assessed prior to the beginning of the pilot. Additional competency gap analysis will be conducted during the pilot. And at the end of the pilot, we will perform a formal evaluation in addition to the rolling evaluations to assess the validity of the pilot and to determine future plans for the new management positions.

Mr. Morales: That's great. It sounds like it's going very well.

Let me switch gears for a moment here, Anthony, and talk a little bit about the NSF Academy. Could you elaborate on how the Academy provides learning opportunities which support the agency's vision and mission? And since we do like to talk about technologies here, can you tell us a little bit about something called "Academy Learn?"

Mr. Arnolie: The NSF Academy serves as the catalyst for the creation of a continuous learning organization at the National Science Foundation. We have a highly educated workforce, and sometimes convincing them that further development and enrichment is necessary. But what we've tried to do with the Academy is, as I said, to simply serve as a catalyst for stimulating discussion and dialogue that might lead to that enrichment.

The Academy promotes organizational excellence through the advancement of human capital by proactively identifying and implementing programs necessary for the development of all of our employees. One unique offering that supports our mission-critical occupations is the Program Management Seminar. This seminar is NSF's orientation for new program officers, many of whom have never worked for the federal government before. In addition to introducing them to federal government requirements, the seminar examines our agency's culture and values centered around NSF's merit review of submitted proposals, and it also raises the new program officer's awareness of the diverse composition of NSF's workforce.

We also offer division director retreats twice a year and division director roundtables on a quarterly basis that are structured around topics of interest to our division directors and our deputy division directors. As an example of how NSF is a highly participatory organization, the planning committees who determine the agendas, the topics, the guests, are all the division directors and deputy division directors, with some assistance from my staff. In addition, the Academy is consistently evaluating and redesigning these programs to better meet the needs of our internal customers.

The NSF Academy is also embarking upon a blended approach to learning that enhances employee learning by allowing individuals to select the learning medium that best fits their individual needs. For example, the Academy provides standard classroom education, but it also provides e-business courses that can be accessed online 24/7 from home or work or while on travel.

We're currently implementing Academy Learn, a learning management system that contains a course catalogue of over 2,000 online courses, has an online technical library, and also has an individual learning plan built in that can communicate the employee's training needs and wants to their supervisor, so that supervisors can more fully support the learning process for our employees.

Mr. Morales: That's fantastic.

How does NSF manage a blended workforce? We will ask Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at NSF, 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 Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at the National Science Foundation.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Solly Thomas.

Anthony, like most organizations, workforce planning must be critical in helping your agency's leadership draw a clearer picture of the nature of the current and future human capital decisions. Could you tell us a bit about your efforts to enhance and institutionalize, perhaps, workforce planning within the Foundation?

Mr. Arnolie: Certainly. There's been quite a lot of activity around this in the last two years. As I mentioned before, our human capital strategic plan also includes a workforce plan as well as a succession plan, and those were recently updated to more closely align with the NSF's strategic plan. We assembled a group of senior executives from across the Foundation who led that effort and drafted a plan that was distributed to all NSF staff for comment, another example of the highly participatory nature even after the plan was developed. And we did this with the strategic plan as well. It was posted for comment for about three weeks for each and every one of the employees to provide feedback, and we did make changes as a result of that. That's somewhat of an aside.

But in any case, the workforce plan itself identifies the steps to align our workforce with our current and projected work requirements. Each year, the Division of Human Resource Management facilitates a workforce planning process with NSF senior management that results in an updated set of goals, priorities, and action strategies for workforce and staffing planning across the Foundation. This structured process has focused management efforts on strategic workforce planning, and I would say that's for the first time in many years at the Foundation.

At the same time, we've implemented a biannual staffing planning process with each directorate and office that focuses specifically on developing work unit staffing plans. The staffing planning process encourages directorates and offices to align their staffing strategies to the overall workforce plan.

Mr. Morales: Anthony, you mentioned succession planning. What are some of the efforts at NSF to ensure continuity of leadership through succession planning and executive development? Specifically, what changes are you perhaps making to the recruitment process that enable you to use flexible compensation strategies to attract and retain employees in some of the mission-critical areas?

Mr. Arnolie: The goal of our succession planning activities is to ensure a seamless transition in all of our executive leadership positions. We strive to enable continuity of business operations and to preserve critical organizational knowledge. Finally, we want to develop and nurture a cadre of executives that can lead the agency into the future. Some of our implementation strategies aim to broaden and deepen NSF's leadership pipeline through the implementation of a comprehensive leadership development program, to prepare leadership transition plans for all executive positions, and last but not least, to establish a comprehensive knowledge management and transfer strategy for all of our executive leadership positions.

Regarding our recruiting strategies, we use two principal avenues to hire staff. The first is the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, that authorized the creation of the agency and also authorizes us to appoint scientists and engineers without competition under the accepted service authority unique to our agency. This appointing authority provides us with the necessary flexibility to fill these mission-critical occupations. Compensation for these scientists and engineers is set within pay bands, and the use of additional incentives can also be authorized. Our administrative staff is hired using the same appointing and compensation rules as other agencies in the Executive Branch.

There are similarities in the recruiting processes for both of these groups and we've made substantial efforts to simplify the process, to leverage technology, and to look for ways to streamline the process. For example, we post our job information on both nsf.gov and USA Jobs. To the extent that there are individuals who are specifically looking for NSF opportunities, they would obviously find those on our website. And there are other individuals who may be seeking opportunities from NSF along with many other alternatives.

We've also adapted our recruiting processes to the needs and expectations of our key target applicant groups. For our professional scientific and engineering community, we use a streamlined application process. And these applicants may submit resumes that are much more in line with the types of CVs typically used in those professional communities. We also have extensive outreach efforts to the various scientific communities through what we call "Dear Colleague" letters, which solicit interest in our vacancies by contacting presidents of universities and chancellors who might know of worthy candidates who would be interested in an opportunity at NSF.

Last but not least, word of mouth is an extremely important tool in filling these positions. We turn over about 30 percent of our scientific workforce each year by design. And it's key for us for those individuals when they return to their home institutions to have had a positive experience, and therefore, be in a great position to recommend the next wave of individuals to serve the country by working at NSF.

Mr. Morales: That's great. It sounds like you're making it easier not only for the applicant, but as well as the managers within the organization who are seeking these candidates.

Mr. Thomas: Anthony, given NSF's mission, you seem to rely on a continual and transparent exchange between the broader science community and the Foundation itself. Could you tell us how federal managers can effectively manage an ever-increasing blended workforce composed of contractors and federal workers? And what are some of the key differences intrinsic to these core groups?

Mr. Arnolie: Our success in engaging the science community is in large part because we interact with them regularly and rely on them heavily to perform many key business functions of the Foundation. We not only recruit them for key leadership and program management positions, but we utilize them for merit review of competitive proposals as well as our performance assessment activities.

Now, while this enables fresh ideas regarding scientific research and the management of the agency, it does bring with it some challenges in terms of managing a blended workforce. When you factor in the increased reliance on contractors to perform many administrative functions, managing the NSF workforce can be challenging.

The good news is we have a very collegial culture, and the career federal employees at NSF provide mentoring support, and most importantly, stability to the agency's operations. One of the things that we try to do is we both try and engage the contractors and temporary staff as part of the NSF family. At the same time, we work closely to establish a strong core among the career executives and staff, because it's important for the contractors and temporary workers to hear and for the messages to be reinforced as to what's important to the Foundation.

And so we find that it's the permanent staff that allow us to do that. We have a very dedicated and committed staff, and they really make it possible for this rotation of temporary workers to come in and out and still allow the business of the Foundation to continue.

Mr. Thomas: As you know, Anthony, the younger employees have different attitudes, behaviors, and expectations for their careers and the workplace. In general, they tend to be more flexible and more mobile, and therefore, we expect them to change employers and jobs several times. They also typically look for more flexibility from their employers and greater support at the workplace.

Could you tell our listeners about the National Science Foundation's efforts to meet the challenge of this changing workforce?

Mr. Arnolie: In part, I think we're meeting the needs of this group by expanding our use of the Federal Career Intern Program as well as the Presidential Management Fellows Program. In addition, as you know, we're widely recognized as one of the great places to work in the federal government, and we offer many amenities, such as an on-site fitness center, an on-site child care center, on-site health services, on-site caf�, library services, and proximity to a shopping mall.

We also offer detailed assignments that offer interesting developmental opportunities for our employees. For the last six years, the number of telework agreements on file at the Foundation have increased, and telework is clearly one of those areas that's appealing to employees of all ages. That said, NSF is in a somewhat unique position because for many of the positions we try and fill, the requirements greatly limit our pool and our opportunities to go after some of the younger employees, in that a Ph.D. with six years of experience after attaining it is often a requirement for many of our program management positions. And so we look to leverage as best we can the opportunities to attract younger employees for those positions that they would qualify for.

Mr. Thomas: The NSF is also co-managing partner and a consortium leader for the grants management line of business. And you recently launched a web portal called research.gov. Could you tell us about this specific effort, and to what extent does your office support systems necessary to manage the Foundation's grant-making process?

Mr. Arnolie: Certainly. NSF is a single-mission agency that fulfills that mission by issuing grants, so it's critical that our IT investments support and enable those business processes. Research.gov is a new initiative that supports the grant-making process by providing a menu of services tailored to the needs of the research community, and enables NSF to comply with recent government-wide mandates and guidelines.

We were selected by OMB to lead the research focus grants management consortium because of our successful track record with our existing grants management system, FastLane, our leadership position in the research community, and our high standards and performance for our customers. Research.gov allows us to leverage FastLane's capabilities to deliver common grants management services, and allows us to serve as a lead partner for federal research-oriented, grant-making agencies with a shared vision of increasing customer service for the research community while streamlining and standardizing the business process among the partner agencies. Research.gov provides public-facing services for the broader research community, and business services for institutions that apply for and receive grants from participating federal research agencies.

The first of many business services that we offer is grants application status, and we recently released this in a beta mode. It will allow applicants to check the status of grant applications submitted to NSF and any of its research.gov partners in one single location. As this initiative matures, research.gov will continue to develop and implement additional services in support of the science, engineering, research, and education mission.

Mr. Morales: Anthony, in the past year, we've seen a surge of federal agencies and a variety of communities launching their own version of a Wikipedia or a blog. Could you talk about efforts within NSF to leverage these new social networking ideas and technologies such as blogs and wikis? And specifically from perhaps your vantage point, how can such tools enhance NSF's ability to collaborate and communicate?

Mr. Arnolie: NSF has several methods by which we interact with our communities, both internal and external. There's active interest among our scientists and engineers to explore and use various collaboration tools, and our connection with the academic community keeps us on the constant lookout for the latest technologies.

Regarding wiki technology, we launched the first NSF wiki in 2005, and it has been in agency-wide use for over the last two or three years. Currently, we have about 20 distinct groups that use the NSF wiki for a variety of purposes, such as project updates, meeting minutes, notices of interest, and posting and updating standard operating procedures. Right now, we're exploring the development of a wiki that can be used for both internal staff and their external communities for collaboration. All these tools can help NSF to better communicate and collaborate. We also have the luxury internally of being located in one location, which facilitates a lot more face-to-face collaboration, which is not always an option for some other organizations.

Mr. Morales: Let me switch subjects here for a moment. A major cyber security concern with the federal government these days is employees perhaps not thinking about the risks and being careless about personal information and data security. What steps have you taken to create or cultivate a culture of accountability and protection for sensitive personal information?

Mr. Arnolie: We strive to balance security and privacy considerations, such as the protection of personal information and data, with the open and collaborative environment that's central to the scientific research and discovery. User education we think is the critical success factor in maintaining this appropriate balance.

Our key message establishes accountability. Each employee is responsible for recognizing personal information and avoiding inappropriate access, use, or disclosure. We hold annual security awareness training, which is required or all employees and other on-site staff. We also hold ongoing outreach activities to remind employees of their responsibilities with respect to protection of personal information.

Keeping users informed is just one component of NSF's security and privacy strategy. NSF's information systems are designed to facilitate work processes while providing appropriate levels of protection for security information, which is not a trivial task given that we receive 42,000 proposals each year for research, education, and training projects, and we receive several thousand applications annually for graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

One of the things that we've done recently, in 2007, we stopped collecting Social Security numbers from individuals that conduct business with the Foundation, and assigned unique NSF IDs to replace those SSNs for all individual accounts in our grants management system, and this constituted over 350,000 records. We also implemented other technical controls, such as data encryption and secure access mechanisms that are employed where appropriate to provide additional layers of protection for sensitive personal information.

Finally, our security and privacy program could not be successful without the involvement and dedication of senior management, particularly the director and the deputy director. When senior leadership makes it clear that security and privacy are priorities, then the Foundation listens.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

What does the future hold for the National Science Foundation? We will ask Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at the Foundation, 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 Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at the NSF.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Solly Thomas.

Anthony, in addition to your role at NSF, I understand that you're also the chairman of the Small Agency Council. Could you tell us more about the Council and its charter? Specifically, what kinds of agencies are represented on the Council and what are the goals of the Council?

Mr. Arnolie: Sure. The Small Agency Council is a voluntary management association of sub-cabinet independent federal agencies. It was established in 1986 with the purpose of achieving three major goals: the first, to ensure that federal policy oversight agencies consider implications to small agencies when developing management policies; the second, to exchange approaches for improving management and productivity at small agencies; and the third, to share management resources so as to strengthen the internal management practices of small agencies.

Now, the loose definition of a small agency is an agency with less than 6,000 employees. Currently, the Small Agency Council has over 80 member agencies representing about 50,000 federal employees, and each of those agencies is represented by a principal management official who generally oversees agency management functions such as personnel, budget, procurement, finance, and information resources management. The full Council meets at least two times a year to discuss a variety of management issues of concern to small agencies.

The Council also has a number of committees that represent small agencies on specialized issues, including information technology, finance, procurement, training, and administrative services. Personnel from these agencies who work in these functional areas sit on these committees and help to widen the overall scope and effectiveness of the Council. In addition, we're also represented on many federal policy oversight organizations such as the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, the Federal CFO Council, and the Federal CIO Council.

Small agencies that have joined the Council are responsible for managing a wide array of federal programs and implementing various statutes. Members have diverse program responsibilities, including private and public sector employment, commerce and trade, energy and science, transportation, national defense, finance, and cultural issues. Almost half of the Council is divided among regulatory and enforcement agencies, and the remaining half is divided among grant-making, advisory, and uniquely chartered organizations. There are many sized agencies represented, including several so-called micro agencies with less than 100 employees.

During my tenure as chair, I believe the Council has further advanced the cause and unique issue of small agencies through the power of its collective voice and membership, which is really the main charter of the Council. For those who are interested in learning more about the Small Agency Council, please visit www.sac.gov.

Mr. Morales: Great.

Now, as a follow-up, could you tell us more about the efforts on the part of the Council to establish a human resources training academy? What is this training academy, and how might it operate?

Mr. Arnolie: Actually it's not the Small Agency Council, but the Small Agency Human Resource Council that has created the human resources training academy for small agencies. The "SAHR C," as they're called, operates independently from the Small Agency Council. However, because my deputy division director for human resource management is a co-chair of this training committee, I can actually tell you a little bit more about it.

Two courses have recently been held, and both were well-attended. And at this time, instructors are being sought among the different small agencies to train on a wide variety of topics within the HR arena, such as workforce planning, labor relations, and benefits. I should also mention that the Small Agency Council administers a training program each year through voluntary contributions from member agencies. This program allows us to pool and leverage funding from across the government agencies to make training opportunities available to small agency personnel. This is particularly beneficial to some of the micro agencies and other really small agencies that would otherwise not have the opportunity in some cases to provide their personnel with required training.

Mr. Thomas: Anthony, let's come back to your role at the National Science Foundation. In transitioning to the future, how do you envision NSF's human capital needs evolving in the next two to three years? And how do you envision your office evolving over that same period of time to support this transition?

Mr. Arnolie: I think what we'll do is we will continue our aggressive push to hire more staff. We're in desperate need, and we'll continue to focus on that. We plan to continue our efforts to redefine the NSF workforce and equip them with the skills and competencies that they need to be successful and to carry out the agency's mission. We'll continue to look for ways to leverage technology solutions to improve our work processes. And we'll also continue to implement work-life programs that improve both the quality of work and the quality of life for our staff.

My office will continue to strategically align itself with our customers, listen intently to their needs, and work closely with them to create and customize our service offerings and deliver the services and solutions that help the agency carry out its mission.

Mr. Thomas: Now, there has been much discussion about the pending retirement wave in government and what type of impact it will have on agencies. What are you seeing within NSF, and what plans are in place to mitigate its effect?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, as it turns out, our retirement projections aren't as grim as the federal government overall. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 50 percent of all federal employees and 70 percent of all federal senior managers will be eligible to retire by 2010. At NSF, by contrast, only about 20 percent are eligible today, and 39 percent will be eligible in 2011. In addition, and maybe more importantly, NSF staff tend to work longer into their retirement eligibility years.

With the recent adoption of the updated NSF strategic plan and the importance of aligning the agency's human capital management with the Foundation's strategic goals and priorities, a succession planning working group was tasked to update key elements of the human capital management strategy, including leadership succession planning, goals, and strategies.

Some specific succession planning concepts being implemented include identifying best practices in leadership transition and knowledge transfer, providing hands-on learning and mentoring for potential leaders, and appraising senior leadership on their succession planning efforts. And we believe that focusing on those particular areas will put us in the best position to handle any retirement wave that we might face in the years to come.

Mr. Morales: Anthony, you previously talked about how NSF has received the honors as one of the agencies titled as the best places to work. And in fact, you've obviously ranked consistently near the top on that list. So other than some of the things that you've mentioned, what do you think are some of the keys to your success as a best place to work?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, I'd like to take a lot of credit for that since it's the Federal Human Capital Survey that yields those results, but the truth is it's the NSF staff that make NSF a great place to work. It's very participatory, as I said before. Every individual believes that they have a voice and that what they have to say can influence the agency's priorities and the agency's strategic direction. I think that that is an important factor in people coming to the Foundation and wanting to stay at the Foundation.

In addition, I think that we have a very unique and very important mission in terms of funding basic research. We promote science and innovation through all types of science disciplines, and I think it's critically important. Two items that might not directly be connected to NSF in the public's eyes would be the initial investments we made to lead to the creation of the Internet, or the investments that we made in a small group of principal investigators who later went on to found Google. So those are two of the things that as an employee of NSF, you recognize that the work we do really in the near and the longer term future promote incredible innovations in science, engineering, research, and education that are critically important to the country.

As I said earlier, one of the other reasons I think we are considered one of the best places to work is we do all that we can to provide a variety of work-life programs that are meaningful and beneficial to our staff. I mentioned the on-site child care center, the on-site fitness center, the on-site health services, along with retirement counseling and tuition assistance. We continue to try and add to our portfolio work-life programs to the fullest extent possible.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

On that same note, Anthony, we have a number of listeners who may be thinking about a career in public service. Now, given your own federal experience and the transition from the private sector, what advice might you give someone out there who's perhaps considering a role in government?

Mr. Arnolie: Well, there are a number of agencies with different missions who serve this country in different ways. I would suggest that you explore a bit to find a fit between what you value and what you're interested in and what your strengths are and what those agencies do. I know that agencies are working hard to be more flexible in terms of work schedules and work assignments, so don't assume there isn't a good fit for you. Finally, understand that there's nothing more important than service to your country, so lend us your talents and you might find a rewarding, challenging, and personally enriching opportunity awaits you. That was certainly the case for me, and continues to be the case for me at NSF.

Mr. Morales: That's wonderful advice.

Unfortunately, we have reached the end of our time. I do want to thank you for fitting us into your busy schedule, but more importantly, Solly and I would like to thank you for your dedicated service to our country in your roles at NSF.

Mr. Arnolie: Thank you. And I guess I'd like to finish by saying a recent study said that there was a very positive impression of who NSF was, but by that same audience, not a clear understanding of exactly what we do. So what I would encourage you to do is to go to www.nsf.gov and learn more about what the Foundation is all about, the areas that we provide funding for, and the types of activities that might be of interest to those of you seeking employment in the federal government.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

This has been The Business of Government Hour, featuring a conversation with Anthony Arnolie, director of the Office of Information and Resource Management and chief human capital officer at the National Science Foundation.

My co host has been Solly Thomas, associate partner in IBM's Human Capital 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 Saturday, June 2, 2007

Washington, D.C.

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.

President George Bush's mandate for defense transformation was "to challenge the status quo and envision a new architecture of American defense for decades to come."

Over the past several years, it is becoming increasingly clear that defense transformation is not simply a response to global terrorism, but rather a way to leverage the core strength of the U.S. armed forces, which is its ability to adapt and change.

As the rate of change of technology continues to accelerate, it will be even more important that the U.S. military keep pace.

With us this morning to discuss this critical challenge is our special guest, Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources.

Good morning, Terry.

Mr. Pudas: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Mr. Morales: And joining us is in our conversation is Chuck Prow, IBM's Defense Industry leader.

Good morning, Chuck.

Mr. Prow: Good morning, Al, Terry.

Mr. Morales: Terry, to provide our listeners an overall context on the subject of military transformation, could you give us a sense of the history, mission, and evolution of the DoD's Office of Forces Transformation and Resources, as well as its predecessor organization, the Office of Force Transformation?

Mr. Pudas: Sure, I'd be glad to. Let me just sort of go back in time, so maybe 5-1/2 years ago, when we first embarked on this journey. The President had declared transformation as a key priority. Secretary Rumsfeld clearly was charged was transforming the military for the new world, the new global security challenges in the 21st Century. And so my former boss, the late retired Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski, was asked to take the challenge up. The way we did that initially, of course, was we created an office that was intended to be a catalyst and a focal point for transformational thinking, and tried to jump start that kind of activity within the Department.

And so we went from that idea to creating a fairly modest office of about 15 people or So began to develop concepts of transformation. What was it, first of all? Everybody was kind of confused by this word. What do you really mean by transformation? And why do we need to do it? And of course, change is always very frightening for a lot of people -- how is it really going to affect me? And so that was a lot of the work we did in the first several years.

And besides just sort of the developing the concept, we tried to look at what are some alternative views of the future, perhaps with some alternative logic for the decision-makers as we run through this transformational activity. And then we actually created some sort of what we called experimental articles along the way as sort of tangible examples of those things.

So we went from there to last year, when we realigned the office within the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to continue that kind of work within the Department. So essentially, we went from sort of this what is this and how is this going to affect me to the culture of the organization actually changing in a way where you can move this activity from outside and more closely align it with the formal processes within the building.

And so that's where we find ourselves today. We're a fairly young organization, obviously, but we're getting our portfolio together and developing the new relationships and making decisions about where you engage in certain processes and the things you can do to continue the work.

Mr. Morales: Now, certainly this area of transformation is very broad, so I'm curious, what is the size of the budget that you manage, and have you moved up from the 15 employees in your organization today than you were 3-1/2 years ago?

Mr. Pudas: Well, actually, the budget's remained fairly constant over the last several years, and it's fairly modest. I mean, we have probably around $5 or $6 million dollars that we use to catalyze projects with and research and studies and war-gaming kinds of events, and we always do that in collaboration with other partners, so we don't embark on these with ourselves. We try to develop a large community of interest in these things.

And the size of the office is about the same. We have about 15 to 20 folks comprised of sort of government employees and military officers as well as some outsourcing support, which we've done.

And so the question is, how do you do this with such a modest budget and few people? Well, you develop a lot of relationships with other folks. And so we have relationships with many of the think-tanks in town, and FFRDCs, or Federally Funded Research places, as well as academia, and quite frankly, with industry. We have -- all the large industries have groups of people that think about strategy and the future, and so we try to team with them as well. So you leverage a small amount of people and build a large virtual team.

Mr. Prow: Please describe your specific responsibilities and duties as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources.

Mr. Pudas: Well, I'll try to be as definitive as I can. The vision is really to align the transformational thinking, mainstream it within the Department, as I said, and be connected to some of those formal processes that look at the future strategic environment, think about what future capabilities might look like, and then participate in the processes along the way that lead to the fielding of those kinds of things. And so that's a major undertaking. As well as to continue to sort of push the envelope and look at alternative futures, look at alternative capabilities, look at what technology opportunities might be out there from a policy perspective.

And then part of my tasking is to be sort of the policy point of contact for all of those good transformation issues that are going on at the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, and of course, Allied Command Transformation down there as well.

So that takes up a significant amount of time, and then, of course, we want to look broadly across all the general purpose forces to look where those interdependencies might be, and highlight those kinds of things.

Mr. Prow: What are the top few challenges you face in your position, and how have you addressed those challenges?

Mr. Pudas: If you've ever worked in a large organization, which I'm sure both of you have, that catalyzing change is always very, very difficult. And so that's one of the specific challenges, obviously, to do that. A large organization has a tendency to be bureaucratic, and so you have to find ways to deal with that and still be effective.

For me personally, not having been within the mainstream here for some time, that's a challenge for me to understand how that works, and so we're doing that. And then of course, it's always a challenge because there's very many competing priorities. But we are not necessarily charged with worrying about the near term. Our job is to be somewhat custodians of the future. And so to have that mix and still be relevant to some of the current things that are going on is always somewhat of a challenge.

Mr. Morales: Terry, we had a few moments prior to our show to talk a little bit about your career, and some time that you spent with the German Navy. I'm curious, how did you get started in your career, and how did you start with Defense Transformation?

Mr. Pudas: Yes, it's very interesting. I had a career as a naval officer for 32 years. At one point there during Desert Storm, I was working for a fellow named Capt. Art Sebrowski, who I got acquainted with very well in a particular job that I had, and it was very interesting. And anybody that knows of him or has been around him knows he's a very unique individual. And so that was the beginning of my association. We then parted ways and went on our own careers, and we ended up working together again up at the Naval War College in his capacity as president, and he asked me to be somewhat of a special assistant.

At the time, his charge was to sort of catalyze transformation in the Navy, and so we worked very closely together for two or three years, and then of course, he was asked to come and take this post, and he asked me if I would be willing to help him do that. And it's pretty hard to pass up a chance like that, to really have a chance to contribute, and of course, it's very hard. He used to talk about what he had spent his professional career doing, and he used to describe it as working at the intersection of national security and large-scale change. And there isn't any more difficult task, but there also isn't one that's more rewarding than that.

That's sort of how I've evolved into this position, and then of course, he stepped down a few years ago, and then I became acting for a couple of years, and we continued the mantra, and then I ended up where I am today.

Mr. Morales: Well, that sounds like a very busy intersection you just described there.

Mr. Pudas: Yes, it is.

Mr. Morales: You used the term "catalyzing change," and so I'm curious, how has your previous experience, your 32 years as a Navy officer and as a pilot, how do you think that's prepared you for your current leadership role and informed your managed approach and leadership style?

Mr. Pudas: Well, first of all, to be a good leader and manager, you have to have some competence in a particular subject, which is always key. And I learned a lot from my former boss, obviously -- you've got to be able to craft a vision for people. And then you have to be able to inspire them towards that vision. And so those three big pieces right there are the areas you have to work very hard at.

I had been in leadership positions in the Naval service and large organizations, and so I had some experience with managing people and different things. I alSo of course, had a history of making my own changes. And so some of the things that I learned were that you have to make change a very inclusive activity; you can't expect people to sit at their desks and wait for permission to think. And so what you do is you invite people into the process, you try to inspire them towards this vision, and then you invite them in to help craft their own future or participate in the transformation. And so I think some of those things that I learned while I was in Naval service, some of those I learned with my former boss, but those have been things that have sort of served me quite well.

Mr. Morales: That's great.

What is the Defense Transformation?

We will ask Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources, 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 Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources .

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Chuck Prow, Defense Industry leader.

Terry, could you define transformation and transformation rate within the military context? What are some of the keys to transformation, and how has transformation changed from when then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld first established the transformation office?

Mr. Pudas: Well, defining transformation is somewhat difficult. I think what I'd like to do is maybe try to describe it for you.

Our concept at Transformation is really about doing those things that allow you to continue to have a competitive advantage. And so the concept is really based on the fact that if you are in a competitive environment, whether it's in a national security context or whether you're in industry, and you're not doing this thing called transformation or constant creativity and improvement, you soon find yourself in a very big pickle here.

You are essentially a strategic fixed target. And if you think about it, there's lots of industry examples, and of course, in history in our nation-state examples. So the concept is to this continuum of constant innovation and creativity, seeking those things that are going to be the source of your competitive advantage. And it's really at the high level, it's really about strategy. It's really about choosing a competitive space and then going about the work of creating organizations, capabilities, policies, those sorts of things that influence that competition in the space.

So if you think from your side in industry, it's really the same thing, right? You're not interested in chasing the emerging market; you really want to create the next market. It's about creating the future. The future that you would like. So that's the competitive space. So essentially all the activities come under that sort of large, large strategic concept.

There's a number of things you do. You try to understand the future security environment. People like to look at it through the lens of technology. But it's really much broader than that. It's about new concepts, new organizations, doing things differently with different technologies. It's about trying to understand underlying principles, right? Which all strategists do; they look out there and they say that's really interesting that this is happening, but why is it happening? And is there a way that I could influence this particular trend in a useful way to my advantage?

So things like that. What's going to be the source of perhaps your next competitive advantage kind of thing, and there's some big examples in the past. There's the one from the Army that I always usually use is when the Army, several decades ago, said we want to own the night. Okay, well, we turned that vulnerability into an enormous competitive advantage for the U.S. today.

And it's looking for things that are game changers, changing the game and changing the rules. Changing the basis for competition. When we, for example, decided to compete on the basis of precise navigation and timing, that yielded GPS, Global Positioning Satellite, right? It not only changed the battlefield, but it changed the world. So are there things like that out there that we should be thinking about as well?

But really, and this gets to your question about rate, but it really is about people, it's about the culture of the organization. And all senior leaders know that that's where the real competitive advantage comes from. And so the ability to facilitate what you call a learning organization, one that has the ability to outlearn your competition, so this is about learning rate. And then of course, taking that learning and translating that into some kind of actionable kind of capability or organization or something. That's a real key to it as well, and if you listen to what very successful industry CEOs have done and other people, they really do focus on this learning rate piece.

Mr. Morales: That's interesting.

Now, recently, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has underscored that military transformation, and I quote, "is a major charge from the President that must continue."

I'm curious, how does the recent realignment of your office within the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy support this charge?

Mr. Pudas: Well, I think that we're there now to -- we're more closely along the line with the processes. We were more -- I guess I would characterize us as an influence organization, which would try to create some new logic and try to influence the larger processes, where now we are more closely aligned with the formal processes, and so it really has changed.

I mean, since I've been at this from the beginning, I remember trying to participate in certain forums to try to provide some alternatives, and that was met with mixed success sometimes. But now it's accepted. The views may not be accepted, but the views are always welcomed. And so I think that's a big change in the Department's culture, and so as I said, we're supposed to continue to do this. I mean, my job is to always be somewhat dissatisfied and impatient.

Mr. Morales: You just let out all your secrets.

Mr. Prow: Terry, the core of the U.S. defense strategy focuses on force security challenges outlined in the Department's national defense strategy.

Can you describe DoD's ongoing shift to enhance capabilities and forces needed to address irregular catastrophic and disruptive challenges?

Mr. Pudas: Yes. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of work going on here. Clearly, we had focused on what we called the traditional challenge. The Department of Defense is very, very comfortable in that particular quadrant and sort of took ownership of that, but when you step back and look at the larger competitive environment, you'll see that there's a dynamic that happens, and that is, as you create more and more capability to deal with what we call the traditional challenges, competition moves to the others. And that's part of what you're experiencing now. And so the question is, what kinds of capabilities and organizations and those sorts of things -- you need to deal with those, and so that's a great deal of the work right now. And of course, it's very complicated.

The traditional challenges were usually owned by the Department of Defense. The other three had a larger national security component to them where you now operate in interagency kinds of constructs, and so the team is much larger, so lots of work going on in developing those relationships and what do they look like, how do they contribute? And in many cases, you go from what people talk about as kinetic solutions to non-kinetic solutions, because it's really about behavior.

So what are those kinds of things that we need to be able to do to be more successful in that particular area? I mean, you hear lots of people talking about strategic communications, which is sort of the term of art today, but how much do we really know about that? How do we know about the cause and affect of those things. So that leads you to say, well, if we really want to understand that, then perhaps we need to bring in this group of cognitive sciences and cultural anthropologists to help us understand that particular dynamic.

The catastrophic things, those things are of course very troublesome because we are in a very globalized construct in the world today, where we are very interdependent, which brings with it an enormous amount of brittleness. What might trigger a shock through the system that we hadn't thought about? I sometimes refer to the SARS event in Singapore, right, which was in 2003. Our major focus was preparing for the Iraqi campaign. But the result of that had major disruptions in economics around the world. I think we had a couple of major airlines here in the U.S. that were on the brink of bankruptcy, and we all know what happened to the tourist industry in Canada. And so this catastrophic, cataclysmic kind of stuff is quite troublesome, so how to think through what might be the consequence management of those things.

Disruptive challenges are sort of another category. How do you think about those, and what kinds of things could you do deliberately to help mitigate those kinds of threats? And we have a construct, and if you're interested, we could share it with you. I know time is limited, but this is where rate of change comes in. If you're on a linear sort of path of modernization, a prospective opponent can get a bead on you at some point and disrupt whatever that is you're trying to create, and so being able to modulate rate of change becomes a very useful construct.

Mr. Prow: How can the U.S. military reduce its vulnerability to disruptive threats by increasing investments in programs that accelerate transformation?

Mr. Pudas: Yes, I just sort of touched on that a little bit, but clearly, there's lots of work going on in the Department to work on the processes. I mean, I don't think anybody would come in and say that we're really happy with our processes now and they're just fine, we don't need to change them. Because everybody acknowledges that the rate of change is causing us to re-look at how fast we can do things. So that's going on.

But how do we do other things that help influence our thinking about what are the kind of capabilities that we might want, and how would we use them and that sort of thing, and so this notion of experimentation really becomes a very powerful tool; creating sort of tangible capabilities or experimental articles, as I like to call them, putting them in the hands of operators, bringing the science and technology community together; and then on a very rapid cycle, the developing concepts and requirements and that sort of thing. And so I think that that's a very powerful activity which is very useful, this experimentation business.

Mr. Prow: Can you please elaborate on the concept of transformation chairs?

Mr. Pudas: Sure. I'd be glad to. That's something that sometimes is underappreciated and overlooked, but I talked about it briefly in the opening segment, which was this notion of culture. How do you fundamentally get at the culture of an organization? And of course, one of the key levers of that is education.

Several years ago, we said what could we do to effect that, and so what we decided to do was help facilitate the creation of transformation academic chairs at all of the departments, institutions, and as most people know, we have junior- and senior-level colleges. We have the academies; we have Naval post-graduate school; we have acquisition universities, a whole number of these.

So how can we catalyze transformational thinking in those institutions as sort of a focal point to insert certain things in the curriculum, help influencing how people think about things? And the chairs are interesting, but the real interesting piece is that they come together every quarter and they collaborate with one another, and they share experiences, and so it's sort of a large community, and it's been quite successful.

Mr. Prow: Very good. It sounds like you're creating new models in dealing with the academies and researchers.

Mr. Pudas: Yes. Yes, that's exactly the idea. This notion of collaboration is a different kind of construct in the Information Age. It means different things. And so to be able to facilitate that in this transformation chair network -- and we also have some affiliate chairs, both international and from other folks, too. So it's taking off.

Mr. Morales: Terry, you've used terms like "rate of change," modulating change, you talked about learning, you've talked about behaviors in culture. So I'm curious, to what degree has the DoD developed metrics for measuring the capabilities of transformed military forces and the effectiveness of transformational military services, and is DoD using these metrics in making decisions about programs and resources?

Mr. Pudas: Yes. Of course, that's really the hard question, isn't it; right?

If you're in industry, you can measure bottom line, but here, you're measuring behavior or outcomes that are very difficult to quantify, so they're normally qualitative, subjective kinds of things. And so there has been a significant amount of effort on doing that. It's difficult. We need to continue that effort.

We, of course, were great advocates, and continue to be, of this notion of networkcentric operations, or whatever term you want to use. Everybody seems to buy into that, and they like that, and it's no longer debated; it's how do you actually do it? But then of course, you always run into the question with the resource people, right, and everybody has this: so tell me about the return on investment. Okay, so you have to try to articulate that. And so we've done a number of case studies sort of things to look at different units and how their effectiveness was changed and different things, and so that's been a useful activity.

I actually have a personal metric that I use. And it's used to sort of judge the culture of the organization. Language conveys culture. So the words people use say a great deal about how they've changed, their attitudes about things. And so when I think back when we started, a great deal of talk always about coordination and deconfliction and those sorts of things, but you don't hear that anymore. You hear sharing and collaboration. People use those terms a lot. We used to talk about interoperability, and now we talk about interdependence of those systems. And so for me, that's a fundamental metric for judging how the culture is changing.

This is a tough subject. Metrics have always been the Holy Grail. But we continue to work at it.

Mr. Morales: Well, as you mentioned, it's really all about driving behaviors, and behaviors historically have always been difficult to measure and quantify.

Mr. Pudas: Absolutely.

Mr. Morales: What about efforts in military innovation?

We will ask Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources, 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 Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Chuck Prow.

Terry, the Defense Science Board recently released its summer study on 21st Century strategic technology vectors.

Could you elaborate on this study, and what are your views on some of the key recommendations outlined in the study, specifically on the Board's new version of Observe, Orient, Decide, Act?

Mr. Pudas: Over the last decades or so, we had been very, very successful in sort of creating some sort of vectors in terms of precision, stealth, and a couple of others, which really, really served us well. But as we've been talking about, the world changes and the rate of change continues to grow. And so what are those things that we ought to really be looking at?

My personal view is that there are a whole number of exciting technologies out there which some people are calling revolutions in science, and in that category are things like robotics, nanotechnology, bioenergy information, and those are all really, really exciting. But historically, many times, the big advances have come when two or three or those collide in a very clever way or intersect, and you are able to do things that you didn't imagine before.

So I think we always want to be looking at these sorts of things, and I'm glad that they did this, and I'm sure that's going to be very useful to the Department to get their views. These are some very, very bright people who've got a lot of experience and are grounded in these sorts of things. But my view is that sometimes we also need to look at the intersections of these.

Mr. Morales: So do you have a perspective on what some of these new vectors should be, going back to precision stealth joint operations and so on?

Mr. Pudas: Well, these are personal views, but I think that there are things that are going to be very interesting in the future, and perhaps some small investment might be very, very useful.

For example, I already mentioned sort of this notion of the cognitive sciences. I mean, I believe there are many people that believe that is real science now. There were a lot of skeptics that wouldn't allow those into the scientific club, but I think that that's becoming less of a problem. I think that if we don't begin to look at things that affect logistics and sustainability, those sorts of technologies, that we're going to find ourselves out of balance. We have invested enormously in networking the force to allow the force to operate differently in sort of this large dispersed way, and so what are the things that are inhibiting us getting the maximum return on investment out of that?

And then I think that one of the things that of course is going to be extremely disruptive in the future are things in the category of directed energy. Anybody that follows that knows that it's a very interesting area, and lots of work going on there. You just have to look at the reports in the open press to know that there I think have been over 400 incidents of commercial laser kinds of things trying to dazzle airline pilots that are being used by criminals and things like that. And so I think that's an area that's going to be interesting to follow.

Mr. Morales: So again, it goes back to the novel ways of trying to drive behaviors, whether that's in a kinetic or a non-kinetic fashion.

Mr. Pudas: Right. Exactly.

Mr. Morales: Great.

Mr. Prow: Terry, have the fundamental rules of combat, meaning mass surprise, logistics in unity of command, given way to the rules based on information and knowledge?

Mr. Pudas: Yes. I mean, that's a very interesting question. I think that we're beginning to learn more about that. I mean, most people in uniform or that have been in uniform intuitively know that battles are won and lost in the minds of your opponent. It doesn't necessarily have to do with kinetic sort of stuff unless your strategy is attrition. And so what are those things then that affect the cognitive domain of your opponent?

Being surprised, being outmaneuvered, creating closely coupled events. Confronting someone with a situation for which they have no mental model, and so it is really about this notion of creating an information advantage and turning that into a competitive advantage. And so we have I think done a lot in that area.

There's still a lot to understand. It's really interesting to talk to commanders who have been in command of large network organizations and how they have admitted that they had to kind of think through their philosophy of command. All of a sudden, we have the ability for these chat rooms to pop up, and the horizontal sharing of information at lower levels, which isn't necessarily the old command paradigm, when things went up and down the chain. Now they can go across.

And so I look for sort of manifestations of different behavior kinds of things to give me clues to that. What do commanders want to command now? Commanders now want to command bandwidth, which is quite interesting, right? It used to be a back office function, moved to the front office because there's so much -- that's a source of power, and so I guess the rules or the goal hasn't necessarily changed, but I think the way we use information as a real source of advantage has become more appreciated, and people now are understanding how to use that.

Mr. Prow: Given your projection of future challenges to the nation's national security, what is the proper balance between conventional and special operations forces?

Mr. Pudas: Yes. I guess I couldn't give you an exact answer, but if I look at what happened most recently over the last several years and you see how those two conventional and unconventional forces have been operating in concert in many ways, we've always talked about being able to be more soft-like. I mean, that's been sort of the term.

What does that really mean? Well, I mean the ability to -- ease of employment and sustainment, having an appreciation for the local area that you're operating in. I mean, the Special Operations Forces have spent a lot of time doing that sort of thing. I mean, I don't know what the right balance is, quite frankly. I mean, we have to make sure that we have enough sort of capability to deal with any potential high-end kind of thing. And at the moment, of course, we're doing very labor-intensive kinds of operations, and I mean, there's been a lot of emphasis on language training and cultural awareness skills and those sorts, and those are all really, really good things.

I can tell you, though, that there are a lot of people engaged in this particular question. What exactly is the right balance? Are there synergies between the two, et cetera? And so I'm not trying to duck the question, but I don't have an exact answer for you.

Mr. Morales: Okay. Terry, I want to take us back to something that we talked about earlier around this notion of a return on investment. And certainly, calculating the potential cost of defense transformation is not a non-trivial matter. And skeptics have argued that the cost of transformation, both in the near-term and long-term, are uncertain, and that transformation therefore might not necessarily be less expensive than, say, routine modernization.

Could you elaborate on the efforts to really understand the costs associated with transformation within the military, and is it possible to reduce the defense budget and improve the Department's ability to carry out its current and future mission simultaneously?

Mr. Pudas: Let me answer it this way: I think that associating transformation to cost may not be the right metric, because it's really about making choices. Some of the choices that you make have enormous payoff to be able to operate differently than you could before, but are relatively cheap in terms of the overall system. And of course, there are some legacy things that very hard choices have been made over. I mean, you remember the big debate about Crusader and Comanche and all those sorts of things, so it's not necessarily tied to more money, it's tied to the choices that you make.

I'll give you a personal example here: so I'm trying to make the decision on my internet connectivity in my house, so the decision was do I buy this new computer, which was fairly expensive at the time, or do I invest in the high-speed internet? So I invested a modest amount in the high-speed internet, and the productivity in the household went up enormously. So it's not necessarily about buying some new high-end piece of stuff, it's how you use it that really makes a difference, and so making specific choices and understanding the return on investment I think is the real key here.

Mr. Morales: So it sounds like people are drawing an equation that transformation is equal to cost reduction, and that's not really what this is about.

Mr. Pudas: No, not necessarily. Transformation can allow you to do things more efficiently. And that's what the question is about; it's not about numbers, it's about capability. A brigade combat team today can do significantly more than one could a decade ago. And it's just like with airplanes. We used to have 200 sorties per target in World War II, and now we have targets per sortie. And so yes, you can create some efficiencies and effectiveness as you go down this transformational journey.

Mr. Morales: Terry, I only have another minute left, and we talked a little bit about this, so I'm curious, how are we using joint professional military education to transform the mindset and culture of the U.S. joint force community, including our allies and our industry partners?

Mr. Pudas: Well, of course, we talked a little bit about the transformation chairs, and that's a good thing, but one of the things that we also do is we sponsor what we call a transformation short course, which the National Defense University puts on for us. And of course, we invite everyone in the Department, as well as the other agencies, as well as members from industry, but it's pretty much opened up to just about anyone, and to sort of help catalyze this transformational thinking.

So that's been really successful, and most recently over the last -- I would say half year -- we also began a course on what we're calling stability and reconstruction. There's been a great deal of dialogue about that kind of capability and what it really is and how to think about that. And so education is a really powerful tool, I think, to get at this whole piece.

Mr. Morales: Great.

What does the future hold for the DoD transformation efforts?

We will ask Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources, 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 Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources.

Also joining us in our conversation from IBM is Chuck Prow, IBM's Defense Industry leader.

Terry, we talked a little bit about behaviors and habits, and so I'm curious, how do you make something like transformation a habit? And given your efforts over the years, could you elaborate on DoD's culture of innovation?

Mr. Pudas: You're right. I mean, people are creatures of habit. It's difficult to catalyze change, and you have to remember that the product of the Department of Defense is national security. And so you have to be careful. I mean, you have to do the appropriate due diligence and all those sorts of things, because it is a really big deal.

But I think the Department's leadership has done a lot over the 5-1/2 years when I look through my lens, in empowering people to propose alternative solutions and different -- my experience is that everybody probably at every desk has some ideas on how to improve things. And so having the ability to listen and empower those people to go ahead and make some change, and be able to do informed risk taking I think is very powerful, and so when you look on the industry side -- I don't like to use too many industry examples because I get criticized for that -- but other large organizations, they're successful, they have that sort of culture. That's what they try to instill, so I think that great strides have been made. It's something that you always have to pay attention to because it's very easy to retrench, and of course, that's not what you want to do.

Mr. Morales: Terry, the integration of the DoD policy directorate was just one of the many changes to take place within the DoD policy directorate. Can you tell us about some of the other changes, and how these changes illustrate the core transformation principle of creating a more adaptable organization?

Mr. Pudas: Well, I can try. I mean, I'm fairly recent to the organization, and this effort was started sometime before we actually arrived, but I know that the leadership of the organization felt that there hadn't been a major transformation within that organization for quite some time. There was sort of some evolutionary steps that were done, and so I believe that they felt that it was time to sort of realign the organization to reflect the global environment of today post-Cold War, and be able to be much more effective in the future, as well as looking at things that could be done to make the organization more effective from a business perspective and management perspective.

And then also, there's a human capital strategy component of this. And so the idea was then to create a different organization that would be much more effective and perhaps more efficient for the future, as well as to create an organization which we call somewhat adaptable. The ability to then change as things unfolded or as new requirements came up and to create an organization where the whole is greater some of the parts.

Mr. Prow: An emerging area of DoD's vision for defense transformation are actions to reduce DoD's energy requirements and to develop alternate energy sources.

What is your role in this effort?

Mr. Pudas: Well, this is something we took an interest in probably three years ago, perhaps even longer than that, because it was our sense that at some point we were going to have to start thinking seriously about this issue, and so we did a couple of modest efforts, a couple of studies, and we actually co-sponsored with Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics a seminar series that meets once a month. It's open to anyone that wants to attend, to look at the energy issues broadly, and it's a very complex thing.

Clearly, there are technology issues, there are policy issues, there are cultural issues. There's a whole number of things involved, but you can see that if you look just on the operational side of the house, how it's becoming a significant deal. It's part of the logistics burden I talked about earlier. And so what we'd like to be able to do is operate in this very dispersed sort of network environment that we've created, but we don't want to spend all of our time protecting convoys of petroleum, for example. So it's both a cost issue and an effectiveness issue.

And then of course, lots of people are talking about peak oil and when is peak oil really going to come, and how's that going to affect the world economy, and there's a competition for energy resources, so there's many dimensions of this, as well as environmental and all of those things. So we are still working on this. I have a couple of studies going on right now that they're trying to look at this through different lenses, trying to create some data for the decision-makers on how to think abut this big issue.

Mr. Prow: Transformation creates new competitive areas and competencies. What qualities will be needed in the warfighter of the future?

Mr. Pudas: We talked about the complexity of the potential future competitive space. Right now, we see our folks being put in very, very complex environments. They're very, very difficult. And so I think there are a couple of pieces of this.

One is clearly, there's a cultural dimension on all this stuff with language training and different things, and how do you think about these complex environments? And then also, of course, there's a capabilities piece of this, something which I call sort of how do you move from binary solutions to something that has a scale of effects? So we give our folks very, very good binary solutions, put them in very complex environments, and then perhaps they have to accept either enormous risk or they do something and there's unintended consequences. And so I think that things in that particular category that have a capability from sort of a non-lethal to a lethal capability would be somewhat useful.

Now, having said that, that is not a simple issue. There's incredible policy issues and cultural issues that go along with that when you start going down that trail, but I think that's an area that we have to start thinking about.

Mr. Prow: It sounds like there are significant human capital issues associated with this subject. What is the Department doing to attract and retain the highest quality workforce?

Mr. Pudas: I think they're doing a lot. I mean, I am not that familiar with the national security personnel system that was just put in place recently. But clearly, that was an attempt to be able to manage the human capital better, because everybody recognizes that that's really what we have to pay attention to. And so how can you unburden some of the previous burueaucratic things and large organizations have those, and so people don't necessarily want to be subject to those and in that kind of environment, so to make the environment much better, and I think that they're working very hard to attract people into government.

Mr. Morales: Terry, we're coming to the end of our time here, but I do have one more question I'd like to ask you.

You've had a very successful career in the Navy, and now supporting the DoD transformation efforts. I'm curious, what advice could you give to a person who perhaps is considering a career in public service today?

Mr. Pudas: I would tell them to do it, because I think there's no higher calling than to serve your country, whether in uniform or in the civil side. And it's very, very rewarding. It's difficult in some cases, but I believe it's a very worthwhile effort, and no matter what kind of day I've had at the office, at the end of the day, I always feel good about that I was contributing to something that was very worthwhile, so I'd like people to consider it very seriously.

Mr. Morales: That's fantastic. Thank you.

We have reached the end of our time, and I do want to thank you for fitting us into your busy schedule. But more importantly, Chuck and I would like to thank you for your dedicated service to our country both as a naval officer, and now leading the DoD's transformation agenda.

Mr. Pudas: At the end of every time I talk to someone or give a presentation, I always like to put a little plug in for our website. You can find us at www.oft.osd.mil, and we're always looking for your comments on our website. We try to keep it updated, and we do answer the mail that people send to us.

So thank you very much.

Mr. Morales: Great.

Thank you, Terry.

This has been The Business of Government Hour, featuring a conversation with Terry Pudas, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources.

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 can't hear this morning's show on how we're improving their government, but who deserve our unconditional respect and support.

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

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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