What the federal workforce can glean from the State-of-the-Union Address

State-of-the-Union speeches rarely contain surprises. But people sift through them to look for clues to future policy. President Biden didn’t say a lot about the federal workforce, but there were some items to glean. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked about the SOTU with the new vice president for Government Affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, Jenny Mattingly.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
All right. So a couple of nights ago, the President gave his State of the Union speech and there was the usual Republican, Democratic stuff in there and all of the shouting. But there were some things that stood out to you, that presage what the federal bureaucracy, if you will, that has to carry out a lot of the stuff, can expect. What did you see in it, or hear in it?

Jenny Mattingly
Well, I like what you said when you first did the intro about, kind of parsing through the speech. Because again, things aren’t always, I guess, every so often, there’s something about federal workforce or Federal management, largely. But a lot of times we’re reading the tea leaves of what we’re hearing in these speeches. And a couple of things stood out at me. One was, really talking about President Biden talked about the programs that they had passed, bipartisan bills that were passed over the last two years. And obviously, for us, those hold a lot of information around implementation. This now moves to the executive branch, in terms of having to deal with the checks, bill, bill IRA, all of these different massive pieces of legislation that have many agencies involved. And, sometimes, those are really implementation focused. And obviously, the partnership has a lot of work, in terms of research and programming that helps agencies enable that work. But also, sometimes, there are other policy barriers that haven’t been addressed in these. And so, will those conversations continue as we see how those play out? Another theme I heard was about, bipartisan collaboration. And clearly, that’s important when we start talking about some of the legislation and policies that we see. I mean, there’s a lot of talk around, IT modernization and government, broadly, around customer experience. And those are bipartisan issues. So the more we hear, kind of this nod to working in a bipartisan way, I think that’s something that we’re eager to keep moving forward with.

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Tom Temin
With respect to those bills that passed, they showered, literally, trillions of dollars into the economy and into the federal government. Way beyond what’s appropriated, yearly, for the operation of government for acquisition and procurement and paying people in grants. And so, I get the sense that agencies are still finding their way to how to handle all of this money. Look at all the fraud that happened under some of those COVID relief programs, billions of dollars worth. And so you get the sense that, it’s a great thing, but there’s people down in the trenches, still saying, how the heck am I going to handle all of this?

Jenny Mattingly
And I think not only handle it, because we do want to make sure, coming from a government perspective. I know this idea of, making sure the programs work for the American public and making sure that we’re good stewards of taxpayer dollars, that’s on people’s minds. Sometimes, it’s about the tools that they have to deal with this. It’s about getting the staff in, because obviously, with more programs and more funding, you might need more people to do the work. And so obviously, this idea and the conversations I’ve heard a lot of, how do we get the right talent in the door? And what’s going to enable agencies to do that? And that takes time too. And so there’s this tension, naturally between, trying to get the money out to the people that need it and the programs that need it. But making sure you have the right people in place and enough people to enable that work.

Tom Temin
Yes, because a lot of agencies have really, specifically, staffed up because of that spending. Small Business Administration, not so much the IRS. Their money is yet in the future, I guess that was the infrastructure bill that got them money. But this whole idea of enlarging government, that’s pretty much on people’s minds right now?

Jenny Mattingly
Enlarging governments one way to say it. I like to think about, what’s the mission you need to do? And what’s the right amount of skill sets and talent that you need there? I know for a lot of this when I was in government, one of the things we were working on was, pooled hiring actions. So the agencies working on similar issues, could band together, hire talent at the same time. And so that we weren’t doing all these one off actions, actually allowed people to look for the skills they needed, that are kind of consistent across these positions in government. But also leverage economies of scale, so we’re not taking so long to bring people on board. And so some of it was just getting up to speed and doing that. And really sitting down and saying, we need grants managers, we need IT folks, we need customer experience folks, data analysts. And so those were some of those, identifying those skills and just making sure that we could actually band together and hire the right people for that.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Jenny Mattingly, vice president for Government Affairs at the Partnership for Public Service. And trust in institutions, is something the President mentioned. And it gets down to, you hear phrases, those unelected bureaucrats doing this or that or the people in Washington not going to work, etc. And so that’s part of that trust component.

Jenny Mattingly
Yeah. And I think it’s really important. And I was, actually, glad to hear that, focus on trust and institutions. And I think we’ve seen, various polls out there that say, maybe there’s a lack of trust. There’s also a difference between, trust in Congress versus trust in federal agencies. And so, that’s a little more nuanced than anything that was said last night. But I like to think that this idea of, focusing on trust, is something that should drive us in terms of, how do we deliver? And that when we were just talking about implementation and having the right people with the right skills. Having agencies that can deliver customer service, they can deliver on these programs, they can do the money out the door in ways that are responsible and respectful of taxpayer dollars. Those are things that help enable trust and help keep the trust going. And so I know, in the partnership, we’ve done some work around trust in government and how to report and some data that came out about a year ago, in that space. And really finding out, part of what I’ve found too in the trust piece. And this is something I really appreciate about the partnership, is storytelling. There’s actually a lot of good work going on in government and a lot of great people. Those stories don’t get out. We always hear, there’s this sometimes, this trend towards the big stories that maybe aren’t as positive. And then we forget a lot of the positive stories. And so this idea of really sharing. And that’s something we hope to do with Congress this year, is bring up stories of where things are working, where things might need help. But also just keeping that storytelling aspect to bring it back to, here’s the people and here’s the work they’re actually doing.

Tom Temin
And as a more practical matter, on the short term, the debt limits that the President brought up the other night. And, of course, federal employees are well aware that extraordinary measures are underway right now by the Treasury, including using TSP G-fund dollars. And there’s going to be some sort of reckoning, if this isn’t resolved in time by June. So what’s your feeling there? And what should people take away?

Jenny Mattingly
Yeah, I think in the Federal space and we’ve seen this before. This isn’t the first time, over the years, that the debt ceiling has been a conversation and that extraordinary measures have been taken. But I think, what my take away usually is when these conversations happen, is it makes it hard for federal employees to sit there and do the work they need to do. It takes some of the focus away from mission. And there’s this, should we get to a point where there is a debt ceiling? People start worrying about government shutdowns. We’ve had that before in the past. And I don’t know that we’re gonna get there this time. My hope is that bipartisan spirit continues, in terms of making government operations front and center. But I do think we just want to keep focusing on, we need government working, because that’s what the American public trust they deserve. They rely on the services. Our focus has always been, let’s make sure government can keep operating. And so, I think the more we can have those conversations, again, about why we need government doors open and government workers able to deliver. Is important piece of that debt ceiling conversation.

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Tom Temin
Yeah, he didn’t mention the return to the office and so forth. That’s a big debate, with the mayor of Washington. But to the public, sometimes, it appears as if well, if those buildings are empty downtown, they must not be doing anything. And it gets very fine grained. Because it’s the answer that someone got, if they got an answer. Calling IRS or the resolution of something if they walked into a social security office. And there’s still a lot of people, that want to walk in and sit down and have that, help in person at Social Security, just to name one. For many people. It’s what happened the other day? In their interaction with a federal agency. Fair?

Jenny Mattingly
Right. And that’s where a lot of times you, actually, do see that nuanced. Both in this idea of, do I have a person to talk to? But when you look at surveys around understanding government and trust in government, a lot of times people will say, have one view of government writ large, but they like the interactions they have with that person. And so I think that’s that. Again, that’s where I go back to pulling up those individual stories is important, because it’s easy to get lost in the big picture discussion of this. But I do think to, also being really transparent and communicating, who’s teleworking? Who’s not? We’ve got a lot of federal employees who have been on the job five days a week, through most of the pandemic. You’ve got National Security folks, you’ve got health care workers. You’ve had a whole lot of folks who are out there working and interfacing with the public every day. And so I think just making sure that we’re able to tell those stories and to talk about, what makes sense. Because these are all mission business decisions. And private sector is dealing with this too. We’ve kind of come to a whole different way of doing business in the pandemic, just different conversation people are having.

Tom Temin
But bottom line, the Republic looks like it will survive at this point.

Jenny Mattingly
I hope so. That’s what we’re all going down that path.

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