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Government Leader home > August 2005 issue
August 2005; Vol. 1 No. 3
PRESIDENT’S MANAGEMENT AGENDA: Labor sets the pace on road to green
By Jason Miller
When the Labor Department connected the final dot on the President’s Management Agenda, officials were seeing green. No, not green with envy, but the green of becoming the first agency to earn passing grades on each of the five PMA categories—budget and performance integration, competitive sourcing, e-government, financial performance and human capital.
Labor, which beat out the departments of State and Energy to be the first to go five-for-five on the scorecard, reached PMA nirvana by devising a plan that built the foundation for achieving green one item at a time.
“It was a question of pacing ourselves,” said Patrick Pizzella, Labor’s assistant secretary for management and CIO. “We had a game plan to get to green on human capital and the other components fell into place. Human capital impacts every other item so you can connect the dots that way.”
The Office of Management and Budget handed out the mid-year report card last month and grades were mixed. Most agencies still earned yellow grades in most categories and the number of green scores dropped to 33 from 41 over the three-month period ending June 30.
“[Labor secretary] Elaine Chao and [deputy secretary] Steven Law spend a lot of time on management issues,” said OMB deputy director for management Clay Johnson. “They wanted to be the first agency to green. They didn’t have a complex set of issues as other agencies, and they made it priority and had tremendous follow through.”
Labor got over the hump for the last green by completing 12 competitions under OMB Circular A-76.
Pizzella said the key to achieving five green scores was twofold—management continuity and full acceptance by the career employees.
“The continuity helped us keep pace and the secretary set up monthly meetings where we discussed management issues for one hour,” he said. “The career employees also took personal pride in working on a presidential initiative. It was something people across the department had in common that they could discuss.”
Labor also set up an office of performance planning and results to track PMA progress.
Pizzella said remaining green, achieving what OMB calls “breakthrough performance” and working on the new PMA items, improper payments and managing real property, are now the focus of the agency.
“You have to break a sweat to get to and maintain green,” he said. “We have some internal initiatives that reinforce us staying on green.”
But before getting started on their next set of goals, Labor officials and employees celebrated this success.
—Jason Miller
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