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GCN Home > 11/18/02 issue

James: building a new culture for federal work

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

At the very top of President Bush’s management agenda is developing strategic management of human capital. “We must have government that thinks differently, so we need to recruit talented and imaginative people to public service,” Bush has said. As director of the Office of Personnel Management, Kay Coles James is one of the principal leaders in the administration’s efforts to transform government. The federal IT work force will play a critical role in administration’s management revolution, James says. GCN staff writer Richard W. Walker recently interviewed James in her Washington office about government IT work force problems and how the administration plans to pass the daunting tests ahead.

GCN: How critical is the role of the IT work force in accomplishing the items on the administration’s management agenda and to transforming government? Where does solving the crisis of the shrinking IT work force fit into the agenda?

JAMES: It’s absolutely critical. Where does it fit? If not at the top, near the top of the list. We are facing critical shortages in a wide variety of job categories. Given the emphasis this administration is placing on e-government and on streamlining our processes and making them more efficient, it should come as a surprise to no one that IT executives are a very sought-after commodity in this administration. They are an important part of what we’re trying to get done. We are experiencing a crisis, as some describe it, in the strategic management of human capital, and it is an area I believe should and is getting a great deal of attention.

We’re looking at ways of recruiting new faces to the federal work force and retaining the IT workers that we have in a very competitive market.

GCN: What is the administration’s vision for the government’s IT work force?

JAMES: Our overall vision is that we need to have a highly skilled, highly motivated work force and we need to have the systems in place that will attract them and keep them. We also have to provide a work environment IT workers will want to work in and provide them an opportunity to serve their country in ways they could never do anywhere else.