We are significantly improving the way federal department and agencies are managed. The past two years we've been planning and strategizing and determining what is possible. Now we're implementing those plans, to better attract, develop, utilize and retain valuable civilian employees, to better account for the people's money, to better use information technologies to most effectively serve our citizens, and to better determine how each federal program can be made to be most effective.

This past quarter nine agencies improved the status of their management practices, to where they could demonstrate that they were managing a key area significantly better than before. This is the most change in status that has occurred in any one quarter since we first started measuring agency management practices two years ago; and department leaders say they are poised to improve similarly in the quarters ahead.

This progress is of great value to citizens and taxpayers, Congress and the President. As importantly, it should be of great value to federal employees, as it means more attention is being paid to:

• how they might be trained and mentored to help fill key skills gaps, i.e., how they might be developed to take on new responsibilities;
• having qualified managers in place at all times; so they, the employees, don't have to suffer from the leadership absences that could result from increased retirements;
• the fairness and quality of the competitive sourcing process; so employees understand the only interest is in best managing programs for the taxpayers;
• IT investments that can help them be more effective and efficient;
• providing accurate and timely performance and cost information; so employees and managers can better attend to their programs' effectiveness and efficiency

Everybody wants to be part of a successful team. The President's Management Agenda helps departments and agencies and their employees be more successful.

Congratulations to EPA (Christy Whitman, Linda Fisher and Linda Combs) and the Social Security Administration (Jo Ann Barnhart, Jim Lockhart and Dale Sopper) for moving to green on Financial Management. These two agencies can say they use the accurate, timely/on demand financial information available to them to make day-to-day decisions: they have the information when they want it and most importantly, they use it. None of the major agencies could say this two years ago. At least half of the major agencies are working to be able to say it about themselves a year from now.

Yours truly,
Clay Johnson