No Time to Wait, Part 2: Building a Public Service for the 21st Century

When the national debate turns to the size of the federal government, its employees are frequently the focus. This debate, however, often misses two important points. First, the number of federal employees has remained relatively constant since the 1960s. Second, the quality of government—the government’s ability to serve its citizens and to deliver value for taxpayer dollars—depends, to a degree seldom-recognized, on the talent and skill of federal workers. Over time, the alignment between the government’s mission, strategy, and tactics on one hand, and the capacity of its workforce on the other, has fallen further out of sync. The result has been an accumulating series of program failures that have grown into a genuine national crisis.

In its first report in this series, No Time to Wait, which the Academy released last July, a panel of experts examined the roots of this problem and the steps that must be taken to fix it. In January of 2018, the Academy appointed an expert panel of five Academy Fellows, led by Dr. Donald Kettl, to advance the recommendations made in the first No Time to Wait report. The Panel received invaluable support from a professional study team.