Star search: a million federal jobs are about to open up for young Americans. Will the government lure the best—or the rest?

Washington Monthly, June, 2003 by Nicolas Thompson

JOINT DIRECT ATTACK MUNITIONS, OR JDAMs, are a marvel of economy and engineering. Strap the $20,000 electronics kit onto the tail of a standard-issue dumb bomb, and you've created a deadly precision weapon that can be guided to its target by GPS satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above. The first generation of JDAMs are vastly cheaper than laser-guided missiles--price tag: $250,000 to $1 million apiece--yet are even more accurate than most of the munitions used during the first Gulf War. In this spring's campaign, JDAMs allowed U.S. warplanes to obliterate Iraq's armed forces with little risk to our pilots and troops and a minimum of collateral damage, moving Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to assert that the technology had given U.S. bombs "a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of in a prior conflict" By the time Saddam's government collapsed last April, JDAMs--like stealth fighters, the Patriot missile, and the 14th-century English longbow--had achieved weapons superstardom, treated to glowing profiles in Newsweek and Slate and pictured as lovingly as any supermodel.

But JDAMs weren't the brainchild of crack scientists toiling in some defense contractor's generously funded skunk works. The person most responsible for their development was a 57-year-old Department of Defense program manager named Terry Little. Several years ago, Little was charged with coming up with finding a contractor and a contract to create something that could make dumb bombs smart. He didn't want to go through the normal Department of Defense procedures: After eight years in the Air Force and nearly two decades in the Pentagon, he'd seen dozens of projects end up over bud get and underperforming. So when it came time to develop JDAMs, he set about doing things differently. Instead of demanding that contractors meet highly specific and technical requirements, Little, realizing that prices would drop if he just told potential contractors what the department needed in plain language, was able to call for a rebidding on the main JDAM contract, and see the competing companies come up with their own innovations, the price dropping by nearly half.

The modest Little refuses to take much credit: "Most of the real work was done by other people. I just had a vision and a willingness to do battle with the system." Others think him too humble. "It's really this one guy, Terry LiMe, who's responsible," says Steve Kelman, who ran the Office of Federal Procurement at Bill Clinton's Office of Management and Budget.

Smart bombs, it turns out, require smart bureaucrats. But federal workers like Little are a vanishing breed. "There are lots of DOD contracts that mn into big trouble," Kelman points out, "and one of the main reasons is that there aren't enough good people coming in" For years, LiMe didn't have anyone learning at his feet. Because of budget restrictions and lack of forethought at the highest levels of the Pentagon, he wasn't allowed to hire a single person between the time he joined the JDAM project in 1993 and the time he left in 2001 to head over to the Missile Defense Agency. By 2001, in fact, he didn't have anyone under age 30 on his 70-person team.

This problem exists all over government. For most of the past decade, the federal government, its hands tied by a hiring freeze, has done a terrible job of recruiting highly talented young people--and it's paying the price. The federal civil service now employs more people in their 60s than in their 20s and, in five years, half of the civil service (Including Little) will be eligible to retire. In short, the federal government is now at a recruiting zero hour.

But as Little points out, the current situation is "both a challenge and an opportunity."

If the government does a good job of bringing in people, it could transform the relationship between itself and the taxpayers who support it, at a time when it plays a more important role in people's lives than at any point in a generation. If the government does a bad job, that, too, will transform the relationship between the government and taxpayers--by making it dramatically worse.

Fortunately, a few agencies have recognized the problem and are actively working to fix it. The General Accounting Office, for example, has developed a terrific record of recruiting and retaining, and other agencies, including the Department of Defense, have started working to lower some of the bureaucratic obstacles to effective hiring currently written into law. But these pioneers will need to teach the rest of the government a few lessons it seems reluctant to learn.

Talent Show

Three big problems make it hard for the federal government to attract top talent. One is that very few people are aware of government jobs that match their skills and goals. Another is that those people who do learn about and apply for such jobs are forced through a Byzantine and demoralizing application process. And finally, those who do get hired are often herded into stultifying grunt work and saddled with a pay and promotion system that seems created for 1950s clerks--which it actually was.