According to Paul C. Light's controversial new book, The New
Public Service, this January's 4.8 percent federal pay increase
will do little to compensate for what potential employees think is
currently missing from federal careers. Talented Americans are not
saying "show me the money" but "show me the job." And federal jobs
just do not show well.
All job offers being equal, Light argues that the pay increase
would matter. But all offers are not equal. Light's research on
what graduates of the top public policy and administration graduate
programs want indicates that the federal government is usually so
far behind its private and nonprofit competitors that pay never
comes into play.
Light argues that the federal government is losing the talent
war on three fronts. First, its hiring system for recruiting
talent, top to bottom, underwhelms at almost every task it
undertakes. Second, its annual performance appraisal system is so
inflated that federal employees are not only all above average,
they are well on their way to outstanding. Third and most
importantly, the federal government is so clogged with needless
layers and convoluted career paths that it cannot deliver the kind
of challenging work that talented Americans expect.
None of these problems would matter, Light argues, if the
government-centered public service was still looking for work.
Unfortunately, as Light's book demonstrates, federal careers were
designed for a workforce that has not punched since the 1960s, and
certainly not for one that grew up in an era of corporate
downsizing and mergers. The government-centered public service is
mostly a thing of the past, replaced by a multisectored public
service in which employees switch jobs and sectors with ease.
Light concludes his book by offering the federal government a
simple choice: It can either ignore the new public service and
troll further and further down the class lists for new recruits,
while hoping that a tiny pay increase will help, or it can start
building the kind of careers that talented Americans want.
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