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The Department of State (State) is implementing most of the 17 reform projects it reported to Congress in February 2018, but a few are stalled or discontinued. State completed one project streamlining policy formulation, and continues working to implement 13 projects on topics including human resources, information technology, and data analytics. Progress on two projects related to overseas presence has stalled, and State has discontinued a project to consolidate real property management. State has not addressed certain key practices related to leadership focus and attention in implementing its reform efforts. Multiple transitions in State's leadership and changing priorities contributed to uncertainty about leadership support for reform projects.Top leadership is expected to drive any needed transformation by clarifying priorities and communicating direction to employees and stakeholders. In March 2018, the President replaced the Secretary of State, a transition that created uncertainty within the agency regarding the future of ongoing reform projects. While some officials stated that the new Secretary had expressed support for data analytics and cyber security reform efforts, other officials said they were unclear as to whether their projects remained a priority. According to senior officials, the current Secretary has focused on critical needs, such as ending the hiring freeze and increasing recruitment, and on launching new initiatives. In April 2018, State disbanded the dedicated teams overseeing its reform efforts and shifted responsibility to bureaus and offices. In some cases, officials assigned to lead reform projects reported receiving little or no direction from department leadership. GAO's prior work has highlighted the benefits of having a dedicated team to manage agency transformations. In addition, State officials indicated that the challenges posed by these transitions were compounded by a lack of Senate-confirmed leadership in key positions. Specifically, during the first 2 years of State's reform efforts, bureaus and offices responsible for implementing 12 of State's 13 continuing reform projects reported directly to one or more officials serving in an acting capacity. For example, State did not have a Senate-confirmed Under Secretary for Management from January 2017 to May 2019, which, according to senior officials, hindered State's reform efforts. According to State officials, taken together these leadership transitions led to several projects being scaled back, slowed down, or both. Although uncertainties exist about leadership priorities regarding the reform efforts, the bureaus and offices responsible for implementing reform projects have taken steps to manage and monitor them, consistent with key practices. Each of the continuing projects has implementation plans that include milestones and deliverables, and some report their progress publicly. For example, State reports on the progress of some projects in its annual performance plans and reports. The lack of a dedicated team to manage the reform process, however, could slow State's overall efforts. Why GAO Did This Study In 2017, State initiated a series of reform efforts in response to an executive order by the President and guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget aimed at reorganizing and streamlining the government. GAO's prior work has shown that successful agency reform efforts follow key implementation practices, such as establishing a dedicated team to manage the implementation of reforms, and ensuring transparency by setting public goals and milestones to monitor progress. This report examines (1) the status of the reform efforts that State reported to Congress in February 2018 and (2) the extent to which State addressed key practices critical to the successful implementation of agency reform efforts. GAO reviewed State's reform plans, proposals, and related documents; met with officials involved in State's reform efforts; and assessed implementation of the reform efforts against relevant key practices identified in GAO's prior work. What GAO Recommends The Secretary of State should (1) determine which unimplemented reform projects, if any, should be implemented and communicate this determination to Congress and appropriate State personnel, and (2) establish a single dedicated team to manage the implementation of all reform efforts that the Secretary decides to pursue. State generally concurred with the recommendations.
In 2017, State initiated a series of reform efforts in response to an executive order by the President and guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget aimed at reorganizing and streamlining the government. GAO’s prior work has shown that successful agency reform efforts follow key implementation practices, such as establishing a dedicated team to manage the implementation of reforms, and ensuring transparency by setting public goals and milestones to monitor progress. This report examines (1) the status of the reform efforts that State reported to Congress in February 2018 and (2) the extent to which State addressed key practices critical to the successful implementation of agency reform efforts. The Secretary of State should (1) determine which unimplemented reform projects, if any, should be implemented and communicate this determination to Congress and appropriate State personnel, and (2) establish a single dedicated team to manage the implementation of all reform efforts that the Secretary decides to pursue.
This classic text, originally published in 1948, is a study of the public administration movement from the viewpoint of political theory and the history of ideas. It seeks to review and analyze the theoretical element in administrative writings and to present the development of the public administration movement as a chapter in the history of American political thought.The objectives of The Administrative State are to assist students of administration to view their subject in historical perspective and to appraise the theoretical content of their literature. It is also hoped that this book may assist students of American culture by illuminating an important development of the first half of the twentieth century. It thus should serve political scientists whose interests lie in the field of public administration or in the study of bureaucracy as a political issue; the public administrator interested in the philosophic background of his service; and the historian who seeks an understanding of major governmental developments.This study, now with a new introduction by public policy and administration scholar Hugh Miller, is based upon the various books, articles, pamphlets, reports, and records that make up the literature of public administration, and documents the political response to the modern world that Graham Wallas named the Great Society. It will be of lasting interest to students of political science, government, and American history.
Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101 provides guidelines on developing emergency operations plans (EOP). It promotes a common understanding of the fundamentals of risk-informed planning and decision making to help planners examine a hazard or threat and produce integrated, coordinated, and synchronized plans. The goal of CPG 101 is to make the planning process routine across all phases of emergency management and for all homeland security mission areas. This Guide helps planners at all levels of government in their efforts to develop and maintain viable all-hazards, all-threats EOPs. Accomplished properly, planning provides a methodical way to engage the whole community in thinking through the life cycle of a potential crisis, determining required capabilities, and establishing a framework for roles and responsibilities. It shapes how a community envisions and shares a desired outcome, selects effective ways to achieve it, and communicates expected results. Each jurisdiction's plans must reflect what that community will do to address its specific risks with the unique resources it has or can obtain.
This engaging case study approach brings together a diverse set of contributors to help students question motives, consider alternatives, and analyze outcomes in many of the most controversial foreign policy issues now confronting the United States. Many actors―from the president and members of Congress to interest groups, NGOs, and the media―compete to shape U.S. foreign policy. While previous editions of this popular text focused more on national security issues in the wake of 9/11 and the War on Terror, the 13 case studies in this edition deal with a wide range of policy areas: national security, homeland security, diplomacy, trade, immigration, epidemics, climate change, and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Many reflect how the demarcation between foreign and domestic policy has become even more blurred and polarization has come to plays a significantly increased role in American foreign policy.
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.
The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.