Advanced Planning For Reorganization and Layoffs at NASA?
NASA Internal Memo: Presidents Management Agenda and upcoming GSA led satisfaction survey for mission support services
“This HR Message is being delivered to you via HRMES On Behalf Of: Krista Paquin, Deputy Associate Administrator. I am sending this note to provide you with some information on the recently released President’s Management Agenda and to let you know about an upcoming GSA led satisfaction survey for our administrative services functions. On March 20, the Administration released the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). This Agenda lays out a long-term vision for modernizing the Federal Government in key areas, improving agencies’ ability to deliver mission outcomes, provide excellent service, and effectively steward taxpayer dollars on behalf of the American people. The Agenda lays out a plan to advance progress at the junctions where three key drivers of change intersect:
– Modern information technology (IT) will serve as the core function for Government to meet the needs and expectations of Americans while keeping sensitive date secure.
– Data, accountability, and transparency will provide the framework and data to deliver better outcomes to the public and hold agencies accountable to taxpayers.
– A modern workforce will drive needed civil service reforms to empower everyone from senior leaders to front-line managers to better align staff skills with evolving mission needs.”
I could support this if I had any confidence at all that this interest to “provide excellent service, and effectively steward taxpayer dollars on behalf of the American people” also included the military, but I do not.
It seems pretty generically worded…not aimed only at NASA.
Yes, it has a lot of the elements of the Clinton Administration’s attempt to reform the Civil Service. Remember their whole “Reinvent Government” campaign in the 1990’s?
It would probably be fun to get some of President Clinton’s statements (“end complancy, make civil servants more accountable, eliminate waste), claim President Trump said them, and watch the Democrats explode ??
But I don’t think that President Trump will have any more success than President Clinton had. On a side note, Administrator’s Goldin’s attempt to implement some of those changes led indirectly to NASA Watch.
ya but didn’t trump say them BEFORE Clinton? I mean trump invented priming the pump .. maybe he invented all of clinton’s dialogs;
He was a Democrat then and played golf with Bill Clinton so it’s possible President Clinton got some ideas from him…
Remember, President Trump supported Hillary Clinton when she ran against President Obama and only changed parties in 2009 after the election.
Points well-worth remembering, especially when assessing his so-called “positions’.
And there was a “President’s Management Agenda” under George W. Bush, as well, although that appeared to be mainly a way of reclassifying work done by civil servants so it could be done instead, and more expensively to the taxpayers, by contractors who just coincidentally had contributed to the RNC. (Not, of course, that Democrats don’t pull similar, if not identical, tricks.)
I know I’ll regret the answer, but… The full text of the email refers to “administrative services functions (Contracting, Human Capital, Financial Management, and IT).” Do I want to know what “human capital” is? The dictionary definition for “capital” I get is, “wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization…” I don’t think it’s a good sign when an organization describes its employees as an asset they own.
It comes from economic theory, specifically the “Chicago School.” The collective skills, knowledge and other intangible assets of individuals which can create economic value. Education adds to their value and productivity.
The Chicago School of economics is neoclassical, rejecting Keynesian economics.
In other words, they’re so far right the only way they can think of the people in an organization is in economic terms. Fair enough for economists; in general, sadly misdirected when it comes to actual human beings in real organizations.
No, It’s not right or left. Labor as been part of economic theory as one of the basic inputs since the 1700’s. Keynes wrote about them as well when he wrote on Microeconomics.
Which is why Management was developed as a separate field in the early 20th Century, taking a psychological approach instead of an economic one to studying how organizations really work. The same was true for marketing and finance. The emerging field of Complexity Economics that views industries as “evolving ecosystem” is also moving beyond the simplistic models of traditional economics.
You are confusing Marcoeconomics (Keynesian, Neoclassical) with Microeconomics (Enterprise Management). The two are as different as Quantum Mechanics and Relativity. One focuses on economic systems, the other on economic decision making. And Economists have had as much problems as Physicists have had with Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.
Wait. Didn’t Stephen Hawking (based on work with Zel’dovich and Starobinsky) unite QM and relativity? Maybe economics hasn’t yet had anyone quite as bright as he was.
If you mean general relativity, no. Reconciling that with quantum mechanics is still an open issue. There are a number of theories, none perfect, and serious problem with a lack of experimental tests. Hawking worked on the subject but this isn’t a solved problem.
A little off topic:
Relating the Big and the Small remain (perhaps) the thorniest of all issues in physics.
Physics – and especially Cosmology – is the King of the Sciences, in my view; and probably the road to an eventual understanding of the Universe. What other science deals with issues as large as the creation of the universe? (Well, there’s Philosophy, of course, and the seminary folks, but still).
The Standard Model, as it exists now, manages to explain what’s seen experimantially, and it has on severl occaisions managed to make excellent predictions (as in Higgs). But it is a bloody mess, about as inelegant as any theory; it does not explain why anti-matter lost the Battle of the Big Bang, for instance.
And it’s not as if the current notion of the Big Bang doesn’t have problems (I’m looking at you, inflation). But it explains what we observe (COBE), and it makes excellent predictions. On the other hand it only deals with baryonic matter, so there’s that.
And the big kahuna: where is gravity in this mess, anyway?
Which leads me here: given the weakness of current theories regarding ‘dark matter’, and given the weaknesses of the Standard Model, I remain ever hopeful that someone, someday, will figure out the whole thing, giving us answers to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Chicago is the “freshwater school” versus the “saltwater” (harvard etc) and it’s macroeconomic theory moved away from Keynesianism in favor of monetarism. *freidman* then it moved to ‘new’ classical macroeconomics and rational expectations.
Right. The problem I have with economics is simple: the school you accept is the one most matching pre-existing political predilictions.
I like Dr. Krugman. And I’m a Democrat, left-wing. Pretty predictable, making questionable to economic arguments from each ‘school’.
I long for the good Dr. Asimov’s fact-based history and economics…
I am not a follower of the chicago school . I am more keynes then what the conservatives believe..
Except much of what is referred to as Keynesian Economics was really developed by Paul Samuelson. The actual writings by Dr. Keynes are much more pragmatic.
For example he predicted in the 1930’s that as soon as politicians recognized government spending more than it takes will boost the economy they would get addicted to it and run up high national debts, counter to what he actually proposed which was to offset Debt in bad years with budget Surpluses in good years resulting in an average balanced budget over a period of years, say a decade. He was also indifferent to how Debt or Surpluses were created (spending or taxes).
That’s a prediction of political behavior, not economic.
History isn’t ever truly fact based. It is usually written by the winner in cases of conflict. First hand accounts of history are almost as biased as the works of scholars years later. Just about everything in this world is viewed with some bias and the distortion of time. Asimov’s fact-based history was pure fiction based on his biases. I do love his books though.
As for Paul Krugman, in October of last year he finally admitted his biases led to predicting economic calamity and a crashing stock market on election night on 2016. He said the market would crash and never recover under Trump. Humility never comes easy to these soothsayers.
Here are some of the many predictions of economic calamity from a range of economic experts:from late 2016 and early 2017: https://www.investors.com/p…
I’m not a great fan of economists from any school. They think they know more than they do. Put 20 economists in a room and each one is convinced they’re the smartest one in the room by a long shot. Economic modeling is just like sports prognostications. It’s a lot easier to do after the fact. Each of the economic theories have some truth to them, but there are just too many unknowns that can pop up and change everything to be that reliable of a guide for the future as economists would want us to believe.
I recall the good, old days when a series of Pat Oliphant cartoons during the Nixon administration depicted the President’s Council of Economic Advisors as a group of unruly chimpanzees. Good times.
“Human Capital” is a term which refers to the people working for an organization, and their skill sets, being a valuable component of the organization to be invested in, developed through training, and maintained through positive incentives, competitive pay, and respectful treatment.
I know. I guess there was some sarcasm in my comment that didn’t translate into ascii very well. I’ve never liked “human resources”, since the term implies (or encourages) the idea that employees are objects rather than people. Now they’ve gone to a term that implies a commodity which can be owned or traded.
In economics resources are the inputs needed to produce the output. In classic terms it was labor, land and capital. In business today it includes technology. The higher the quality of you inputs the higher the quality of your outputs.
This means ensuring you are hire individuals who are qualified, train them as needed, and provide them with the incentives and respective to be productive. That is were the term Human Resources originated. At Bill Housley pointed out that means managing them with same care you put into managing the firm’s other investments. This is the opposite of the commodity approach, as a commodity by definition is easily replaceable as the unskilled workers were in the old economic paradigm.
Incidently, as usual, government is one HRM paradigm behind. In business HRM now the term being used is Talent Management, recognize that individuals have unique talents that need to be encouraged and developed for the good of the enterprise.
In my own (very)small business, I’ve found tht individual employees make a huge difference in the characterization of my firm; so much so that they color the types of commissions I will accept or can execute.
So in that sense, while I do have something of a ‘vision’ for where I want to go, in reality I find the very smartest candidates and then follow them.
Could I be onto something here, Dr. M? Is this a characteristic that separates proprieter-shops from larger, more organized business ventures, do you think?
Actually that is one of the things Jim Collins advocates in his latest book “Great by Choice”, making sure you hire the right employees to make you firm great. The more automation replaces routine jobs the more important this will be. It’s also going to be a challenge for the K-16 education system to produce those employees.
Maybe it’s too simple. But I look for folks that will treat my business as thier own business. And yes, I know this is a poor expectation, but it is useful, none the less.
It was my own inability to do exactly that that led me to start my own design business.
If good people really are key to the future success of an endeavor, then any management plan that doesn’t treat them like a vital asset is negligent.
Wow, that typed out pretty good. You can put it on a poster if you like. 😉
I think his point was that when management starts using terms like “human capital”, it’s usually a good sign that it actually “doesn’t treat them like a vital asset”.
Perhaps a sharper focus: they arent treated as *individuals*?
I didn’t say people weren’t vital or this wasn’t something management needs to pay attention to. But there are good and bad ways to do it, and I think this particular term either implies doing it wrong, or predisposes managers to think about it in the wrong way.
Mr. Spencer has a good point about people being individuals. That’s an inconvenience for managers, a source of inefficiency _and_ one of the greatest virtues of having people do a job rather than automating it. The balance depends on the specific job, and that’s a whole different discussion. But I don’t think this is what was bothering me. Everything in an art gallery’s collection, for example, is unique and individual. Calling them art objects doesn’t bother me.
I think I dislike terms like “human resources” and “human capital” because of what they say about volition. The Pleiades supercomputer at NASA Ames is a vital NASA resource. So are the people who keep Pleiades running and fiddle around to optimize its performance. But a node on on the supercomputer can’t decide to quit, go down the street and start working for Google. A person working at NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing Division can.
At some level, the relation between employees and employers is always voluntary and a two-way street, because the employee can always leave. That’s a fundamental difference between managing people and managing objects (inanimate or animate). That can be inconvenient for managers and inefficient, but I think it’s also an inherently good thing and worth the inefficiency. Some managers prefer to structure things to make the relationship as much of a one-way street as possible; I don’t think that’s a good idea. So I don’t like terms that imply people are just another sort of object to be manipulated by management.
It is a leadership paradigm that is sometimes just tossed about, but sometimes it is actually applied to great effect in improving the competitiveness of an organization.
Human cattle, er, capital management is current gummint buzzspeak for what used to be called personnel, before it was called human resources. In NASA, one of the characteristics of OHCM in recent years has been the disappearance of specialists at the Centers in favor of the impenetrable NSSC Website. Fortunately. however, the skilled and dedicated NSSC HCM staff put on Webcasts every month of topics of interest, and answer questions from the people at the various Centers.
Capital is an Asset … Human assets ..
From the terminology in this letter this is addressing office services and HR kinds of functions. Maybe they will further outsource these sorts of functions. That wouldn’t be all bad since there is lots of politics at play. Maybe if they moved it out it might improve? As far as NASAs technical ranks, generally they are great, capable and willing participants in what could be a great adventure. Its not the technical ranks that needs fixing; it is the leadership. The top leadership knows nothing about managing a program. They get lost when you say words like plan, architecture, goals, requirements, processes, strategy. The next echelon down blindly follows the top. If anyone wonders why NASA has been going no place for decades.
Glenn is already floating the idea of reducing FTE headcount by 300 and replacing them with term hires.
If you want to make NASA great again, remove all civil service job protections and give them the same conditions as contractors. Establish a code of conduct and ethics with zero tolerance. NASA civil service employment is like a club. Look at SLS, JWST, Ares, CxP, or just about any big program and understand why they have issues. Any reform is welcome, sweeping reform is preferred.
NASA is a part of the Federal Government. You cannot remove civil service regulations.
But those jobs could be outsourced, no? As un ULA?
Moving at least the scientists out of the civil service and into a university association (think AURA, UCAR, &c.) has been discussed in the past. Don’t know about recently.
In 2010 (give or take a year), Los Alamos did something very similar. Technically, they offered a large number of scientists a very generous early retirement package. In effect, the scientists just took jobs at universities or companies like Planetary Science Institute, and transferred their contracts and grants. Some of them even got some sort of associate status with LANL so the change was nearly transparent.
Los Alamos was operated by the University of California until a consortium that includes the University, Bechtel and a couple of other outfits got the contract in an open competition. I don’t believe the scientists were government employees at any time.
NASA researchers also act as contract technical managers and offer their expertise in many areas that are intrinsic to the civil service. Moving the scientific expertise out of NASA would transform it into another DoD, but with less money.
There are reasons, including ones you cite why such a move would be a bad idea. But having scientists spend close to 100% of their time on science, rather than taking an endless round of SATERN courses, training (five days!) as CORs and acting as COs because someone decided responsibility creep was a good idea, participating in budget reviews, providing slides for HQ briefings that are forgotten as soon as they’re over, &c., &c., &c.
So you have to ask yourself: What does NASA need scientists for? Whether it’s being project scientists or doing the research necessary to be able to ask the questions that drive the development of the next generation of instruments, their time could be better spent.
Perhaps remove constraints that prevents decision making, procurements, submitting reports, attending conferences, etc. Obviously keep code of conduct and ethics as that is good practice for both govt and private companies (even though we read of abuses caused by those in power). The “zero tolerance” is a bit harsh, no need to fire someone just because he didn’t get proper signature or correct JO when purchased a $27 adapter for a DVR.
I see a new round of early retirement buyouts coming,
The short sighted with this type of “cost savings” is that a good chuck of the early retirees will turn around quickly and come back as (more expensive) contractors.
Contractors who then require extra oversight.
Not all contractors are more expensive than civil servants.
Hard to tell, in many cases: Once upon a time, NASA had IT professionals who could actually, you know, code. For decades, we’ve let those folks return or kicked them upstairs to management jobs, and hired contractors as needed. They’re in high demand and short supply right now, so yes, we do pay more for people with some years’ of experience (e.g. with older languages) than we would if they’d been civil servants.
For what it’s worth, I suspect it’s an attempt to get more low-paid recruits into the ranks of (among others) the CIO’s organization, in order to complete the work of transforming IT at NASA from an annoyance into a real impedance to the real work of the agency. Go team!
Indeed. I heard a rumor that they were going to disallow checking email on cell phones and on their web site (I’m not sure if that was NASA-wide or just at KSC).
Supposedly that will be Agency wide – you will need a government issued electronic device to access government resources.
That’s going to slow things down. My experience with the Cassini project was that easy access to email and mobile phones really helped. We depended on both quite heavily, and it meant people could get things done when they were traveling on business or even (if it was important) vacation. Instead of rescheduling meetings because some of the key people were at a conference, they could just find a gap in the schedule and call in. You could ask someone a question by email and expect an answer fairly promptly. Unless they are planning on issuing government electronic devices to everyone, we’re back to only communicating between nine and five (with time zone limits), Monday to Friday. With gaps when someone’s on travel.
And how exactly, would a government-issued device insure secure communications, against threats such as: https://www.washingtonpost…. ?
The survalence equipment described in that report was about identifying the localion of cell phone users. If I understand it correctly, the equipment doesn’t record or relay the content of the messages.
So requiring government-proveded devices to access email would not make a difference. Personal devices would allow the same sort of covert monitoring.
But when it comes to someone intercepting the content, insisting on the use of government-owned devices could help in two ways. First, the data could be transmitted in an encrypted form (or, more correctly, with better encryptions.) Second, by limiting the number of devices and the number of people using them, less information would be transmitted and therefore less could be intercepted.
Unfortunately, the whole thing implies that security is more important than efficient communications. In the case of military work, that may be correct. But in the case of a civilian space agency such as NASA, I don’t think that’s true.
Please take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… , under “Active mode operations.” Item 5 is “Interception of communications content.”
And yes, voice could be encrypted, but it’s not by default, nor is it offered by Google or Apple, so it has to be implemented with third party apps. Aside from the additional cost, are you really going to claim that a third party is going to make voice communications more secure?
As for e-mail, NOMAD already requires TLS, so that doesn’t require government ownership/configuration of the mobile device.
If this move is like the discussions of it in the past, it is about securing the at-rest contents of mobile devices (something Apple already does pretty well, unless you buy a cracking tool…. just ask the FBI; Google, not so much). One of the ways they do that is installing a management profile that will automatically wipe the entire contents of the device after a certain number of unsuccessful login attempts. (Pro tip: don’t ever leave a device configured/managed that way within reach of a toddler.) Pretty much means you need to carry separate government-issued and personal phones, to prevent Big Brother from wiping those cute pics of your kids, cat, or whatever.
I can’t begin to describe how much texting and cell phones have changed my business. Particularly the former: for instance, I routinely text before calling if it’s important, wanting to be sure the other guy has time to talk. It’s respectful, too, and it allows everyone to better manage time.
Why I hate email so much remains a mystery.
It’s probably sad that I’m OK with that: when I go home, or on government travel, I won’t be bothered with a constant stream of e-mail blather. We’re allowed to maintain a mission/science ops mailserver for our project so NOMAD outages can’t mess us up, and I’ll continue to receive mission-critical mail that way. Virtually nothing that arrives via NOMAD is worth reading, much less getting upset about not having immediate access to.
It is worth stating that I’ve been hearing this rumor for something like three years.
Too bad there is nothing in there regarding accountability, honor, dignity, responsibility, ethics, true sustainability or actual goals to be factually accomplished. Just more signs and symptoms of a society and culture in decline.
Decline?
We brought this on ourselves.
We – I mean ‘we’ in the sense of you, and me, and all Americans – we have assiduously diminished the federal government while at the same time both showing our true nature and hurting ourselves.
And we ask why? Why schools and roads are third world?
The attitude towards our career Civil Service stands as an example. Government employees – many reading this site – are characterized as lazy, or incompetent, or unable to get a job in the ‘real’ world. It’s much, much worse over at HHS.
What happened to our admiration for those who sacrifice, the people who really know they can contribute, who want to work for the greater good, in honorable civil service jobs? How did honor turn to shame?
Criticising the federal government is a time-worn exercise in America, going back to the Revolution. But this is deeper – it is visceral. And it is driven by a mean, selfish, NIMBY spirit. We are disrespectful to one another. And to ourselves.
What happened to the heart of this great country? The one that looked out and saw poor, and uneducated, and longed to give them a hand up? What happened to our sense of decency when we let people die for lack of medical care? Or let Dreamers squirm, month after month, pawns in a political game?
We once saw our great, imperfect Federal Government as a positive way to benefit from the riches we have generated, a way to assure a level playing field, protect the environment, make sure anybody could rent that apartment. It is gone: we now use the courts to enforce looser environmental protections, and to paint bulls-eyes on the backs of our very poorest; payday lenders may now take aim, assured a clean shot.
The bottom is nowhere in sight. We have allowed a vile, sickening sensibility to become the American touchstone.
Probity has fled public discourse. Hate, no longer universally reviled, demands both respect and an unwarranted, natural place in public discourse.
I’m ashamed of what we are doing to our great country.
And we deserve it.
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