At every level from the bureaucracy to Congress, the United States government is weighed down by a seniority system that privileges people who have been around the longest over the most capable.
Repeal the 17th amendment! Restore the spoils system.
The spoils system was a check/balance against permanent mediocrity. Government jobs should be insured (parachutes provided), but they should not be assured (we can’t get rid of you). The goal of each administration should be to purge the incompetent/disruptive, keep the able, and put in place the loyalists. The people who stay, stay because they are able to be sieved through the upsets. For those, each administration becomes a renegotiation opportunity for promotion.
Ultimately, game theory will win the day on the spoils system.
I agree that in a high-performing, elite team, there's a good overlap between the "favorites and protégés" and "high performers." However, in a low-performing unit or branch, the favorites might be "drinking buddies of manager" or "college buddies of leader."
Regarding performance-based promotion, how do you propose that the US public service do this fairly? One risk is that US managers might give the highest performance ratings to their favorites and protégés--who might not be the highest performers. How about making promotion based, at least in part, on how well candidates do on a centrally-administered* exam. This would act as a bulwark against the promotion of mediocre protégés.
[* Centrally administered by an HR team to prevent managers from giving the answers to their favorite protégés. This isn’t fearmongering--it happened in a major police force recently.]
This is a great question and the answer largely depends on the specific agency - USPS is different than the Fed - but my gut is mostly to just trust managers more. I think promoting favorites and protégés on average is better than what we have now since it is closer to true merit than seniority.
Ideally you would be able to tie them to outcomes as closely as possible but the government is there to solve problems the market can’t and so this is a bit of a fools errand.
Fed gov jobs were, until the Trump admin, extremely competitive despite weak salaries for the education level, attracted way above average grads who are public service minded (and also somewhat personally risk averse), and on a person by person basis do not end up being staffed by dregs.
Repeal the 17th amendment! Restore the spoils system.
The spoils system was a check/balance against permanent mediocrity. Government jobs should be insured (parachutes provided), but they should not be assured (we can’t get rid of you). The goal of each administration should be to purge the incompetent/disruptive, keep the able, and put in place the loyalists. The people who stay, stay because they are able to be sieved through the upsets. For those, each administration becomes a renegotiation opportunity for promotion.
Ultimately, game theory will win the day on the spoils system.
Creative destruction is good 😤
I agree that in a high-performing, elite team, there's a good overlap between the "favorites and protégés" and "high performers." However, in a low-performing unit or branch, the favorites might be "drinking buddies of manager" or "college buddies of leader."
Regarding performance-based promotion, how do you propose that the US public service do this fairly? One risk is that US managers might give the highest performance ratings to their favorites and protégés--who might not be the highest performers. How about making promotion based, at least in part, on how well candidates do on a centrally-administered* exam. This would act as a bulwark against the promotion of mediocre protégés.
[* Centrally administered by an HR team to prevent managers from giving the answers to their favorite protégés. This isn’t fearmongering--it happened in a major police force recently.]
This is a great question and the answer largely depends on the specific agency - USPS is different than the Fed - but my gut is mostly to just trust managers more. I think promoting favorites and protégés on average is better than what we have now since it is closer to true merit than seniority.
Ideally you would be able to tie them to outcomes as closely as possible but the government is there to solve problems the market can’t and so this is a bit of a fools errand.
Fed gov jobs were, until the Trump admin, extremely competitive despite weak salaries for the education level, attracted way above average grads who are public service minded (and also somewhat personally risk averse), and on a person by person basis do not end up being staffed by dregs.
I don’t get where this belief comes from.
Basically we need to bring back the Chinese imperial exam