Champion Those Who Inspire and Inform: the Academy's Fellows and Talented Federal Employees
The National Academy of Public Administration (the Academy) has nearly 1,000 Fellows who provide thought leadership to help government leaders solve their most critical management challenges. They bring their experience and expertise to guide public administration decision making, coming from local, state, and federal sectors and across the public, private, academic, and non-profit arenas. Choosing one champion for federal employees would be extremely difficult – if not downright impossible – for those who work for or engage with the Academy. The studies and initiatives that the Academy undertakes provide daily opportunities to support the federal workforce and establish foundational paths for improvement.
While the Academy’s dozen Grand Challenges in Public Administration connect with the crucial work that federal employees do each day, one in particular looks to directly impact the future of public service. The Grand Challenge to Modernize and Reinvigorate the Public Service convenes Fellows and thought leaders to identify ways to ensure federal employees can adapt to a rapidly changing workforce and set of public sector demands.
The Academy’s recent report, Elevating Human Capital: Reframing the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Leadership Imperative, certainly serves as a vehicle to champion the federal employee and addresses issues of underinvestment in building workforce capabilities and advancing strategic human capital management. Authored by five Academy Fellows, this report was drew upon over a dozen additional Fellows’ expertise. The collective experience of this group of study advisors is steeped in a commitment to empowering federal agencies established to help the federal workforce achieve their aspirations as they serve the American people.
Academy reports also address federal employee issues within more focused spheres of public administration. For example, another Panel of Fellows recently authored a report providing findings and recommendations to guide the U.S. Secret Service towards improved employee engagement. The report describes an agency that executes a no-fail mission to protect the President, Vice President, and dignitaries, ensuring for the American people and foreign counterparts that their elected leaders will be safe. The Secret Service also conducts investigations of crimes against financial systems that threaten the essential workings of the nation’s economy. The Secret Service brings to bear advanced technologies, tried and true strategies and tactics, and a robust network of field offices – but it is the people’s energy, drive, and determination who make this organization work.
As the Panel addressed the Secret Service’s challenges through a lens of enduring commitment, each Fellow utilized their own federal employee experience in human capital management, law enforcement, performance management, and strategic planning to develop a series of recommendations. These included concepts that can catalyze employee engagement, create a better work-life balance, and help develop the next generation of secret service employees. The report is clear – improving the experience of the employee drives all other outcomes.
In addition to all the Fellows who guide the Academy’s work, the Academy Study Team members are fortunate to encounter so many committed, highly talented federal employees through their research. These leaders at all levels of the federal government exert enormous energy to enable, empower, and champion their colleagues. They do so in big ways and small, and these efforts are captured in Academy reports – often without attribution or fanfare but with the evidence of demonstrated outcomes. We are grateful for all of these champions and look forward to our continuing engagement with so many former and current federal employees who inspire and inform our work, as champions for federal employees.
The column from NAPA is part of the FEDforum, an initiative to unite voices across the federal community. The FEDforum is a space for federal employee groups to share their organizations’ initiatives and activities with the FEDmanager audience.
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