Government's Sustainability Moment - CGI Initiative for Collaborative ...

CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT’SSpring 2011EnvironMEntGovernment’sSustainabilityMomentMartha Johnson GSARobert Peck GSAGregory Jaczko NRCWilliam Borchardt NRCMary Glackin NOAAJoseph Klimavicz NOAARichard Spires DHSInitiative forCollaborative GovernmentCOLLABorAtivEGov.orG/LEADPartnering for Mission Results

You Need IdeasThat Work – FastYou’re reshaping programs to fit analways-on, right-now, personalized, mobile,app-driven world. You’re innovating on therun to stay within ever tighter budgets.You need to make sense of information fasterto solve complex problems that threatenlivelihoods, and even lives, in the United Statesand around the world.We put ideas to work for you – now.The CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government■■Leadership interviews featuring practical management approaches and insight fromtoday’s top senior executives.■■Collaborative Government Today, a free e-newsletter bringing you the hottest news,best reports, and smartest analysis first every day.■■Issue briefs, in-depth analysis, in-person events and webinars about challenges youface today.www.collaborativegov.orgInitiative for forCollaborative GovernmentPartnering for Mission Resultswww.collaborativegov.org

Editor’s NoteWelcome to the inaugural issue of the CGIInitiative for Collaborative Government’s executivejournal, Leadership.Leadership gives voice to thoughtful executives whoare creatively and effectively addressing the most importantissues confronting the United States and theglobe.Each issue will focus on a theme that challengesleaders in every organization, featuring profiles of executiveswhose practical insights and observationsare born of success and are applicable across thegovernment, private and nonprofit sectors.Our hope is that in the pages of Leadership you willfind useful and practical management approachesthat help you tackle the very current and sticky challengesyou face in your own organizations. We alsohope that along the way you gain added insight intowhat makes our featured leaders tick.This first issue, published in April in observance ofEarth Day, focuses on “Government’s SustainabilityMoment.” The journal showcases initiatives andideas from federal leaders in environmental sustainabilityincluding:• the General Services Administration’s MarthaJohnson and Robert Peck• the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s GregoryJaczko and William Borchardt• the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’sMary Glackin and Joseph Klimavicz• the Department of Homeland Security’s RichardSpiresWe are extremely grateful to these leaders for sharingtheir stories and ideas with us in these pages.Thank you to each of you for the time, insight andpassion you shared with us.Each issue of Leadership will also feature in-depthanalysis and perspective on our theme from one ofour CGI Initiative Fellows. We are very excited andthankful that this issue includes analysis from MollyO’Neill, former Assistant Administrator and Chief InformationOfficer at the Environmental ProtectionAgency, and now a CGI Initiative Fellow, Affiliate Professorat George Mason University’s Departmentof Public and International Affairs, Fellow at the NationalAcademy of Public Administration, and CGIVice President. Molly’s analysis of “Government’sSustainability Moment” calls out multiple opportunitiesfor transformation being driven by the push togo green, and challenges readers—that’s us—to usethis focus on sustainability to create a new normal ingovernment.Finally, I feel compelled to give a special thank youto Anne Laurent, whose vision and passion spearheadedthe creation of this executive journal. Thankyou, Anne, for your excellent service and for helpingto launch this new chapter for the CGI Initiative.Now, onward to Leadership!Andrew McLauchlinExecutive Director,CGI Initiative forCollaborative GovernmentS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 1

LeadershipIn This IssueGovernment’s Sustainability MomentThe opportunity for using green governmentas a platform for broader transformationis now within grasp.410 Aiming HighMartha Johnson, Administrator, GSAIf the General Services Administration meets Martha Johnson’s “moonshot goal,” it will one day leave no environmental footprint.17 Building SustainabilityRobert Peck, Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, GSARobert Peck’s Public Buildings Service shapes a greener, grander andsmaller real estate footprint.COVER PHOTO and This PAge TOP BY ShuTTERSTOCk2 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

SPRING 201122 Safety FirstGregory Jaczko, Chairman, NRCAt every opportunity, Gregory Jaczko hammers home the NuclearRegulatory Commission’s No. 1 goal.30 Man of the PeopleWilliam Borchardt, Executive Director of Operations, NRCFor William Borchardt, trust—earned from the public and shared amonghis staff—is the core of nuclear safety.34 Weathering ChangeMary Glackin, Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, NOAAMary Glackin applies science and service to keep citizens informed ofthe changing environment around them.39 Climate IntelligenceJoseph Klimavicz, Chief Information Officer, NOAAJoe Klimavicz is harnessing vast quantities of trusted environmentaldata and putting it into the hands of the people.42 Running AheadRichard Spires, Chief Information Officer, DHSRichard Spires is setting a brisk pace to push federal technology intothe era of green IT.About the CGI Initiative for Collaborative GovernmentThe CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government is a joint public policy project of CGI in partnership with leading academicinstitutions. Launched in January 2008, the initiative’s mission is to analyze models of government’s collaboration with theprivate and nonprofit sectors in orderS P R ItoNidentifyG 2 0 11best|practicesCOLL ABORin usingATIVEGOV.ORG/LEcollaboration to achieveADmission| Leadershipresults. Website:3www.collaborativegov.org.

Government’sSustainabilityMomentThe opportunityfor using greengovernmentas a platformfor broadertransformationis now within grasp.IMAGE BY SHUTTERSTOCK4 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

By Molly O’NeillIn his January 2011 State of the Union address, PresidentObama declared that the United States faces a “Sputnikmoment,” a crossroad that calls for the nation to reassertits global technology leadership with strategic investmentsin education, scientific research and innovative technologies.Today, the federal government faces a “sustainabilitymoment,” a crossroad in how aggressively to move forwardwith green government initiatives. These efforts, which arebeginning to yield real success, are now poised to domore than just reduce government’s energy usageand conserve resources. Programs driven by a stronggreen impulse—such as green buildings, teleworking,data center consolidation, meteorological researchand many others—have the potential to spark a transformationthat goes beyond green government. Inparticular, they can help modernize government operationsand services, stimulate economic activity,reduce the cost of government, and attract a newcadre of skilled employees to the public workforce.The opportunity for using green government as a platformfor broader transformation is now within grasp—if government leaders recognize and seize thoseopportunities.Citizens Go GreenPeople today understand the profound impact thatenvironmental conditions have upon the economy,our communities and quality of our lives. We recycle.We avoid products that are environmentally harmful.We strive to reduce pollution, conserve energy andprotect natural habitats. From the cars we drive to theway we build and furnish our homes, we are embracinggreen lifestyles and are focused on sustainability.And we are craving access to increasing amountsof environmental information. We want to know whatbusinesses have been doing in our backyards, whetherproducts contain chemicals harmful to our health,and whether the beach water where we vacation issafe. Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, recentearthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand, and the tsunamiin Japan have reminded us just how closely ourlives have become intertwined with the environment.Much of our interest is driven by concerns about energy,particularly fossil fuels. Citizens are well awarethat the nation’s heavy reliance on foreign oil makesus vulnerable to shortages, price shocks and volatileS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 5

Middle East politics. The current unrest in that regionhighlights this dangerous dependence. At the sametime, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf Coastand the nuclear power plant crisis in Japan serveas reminders that domestic energy production carriesits own challenges. And while support is buildingfor cleaner fuels and alternative energy sourcesthat protect human health and the environment, thesealternatives must prove themselves cost-effective incomparison to current energy sources.Consequently, whether a person believes that energyconsumption and greenhouse gas emissions arecontributing to climate change doesn’t really matterfrom this perspective. People recognize that energyis a scarce, costly resource, and so they are trying toconsume it as efficiently as possible.“Green Government” Gets HotAs citizens and businesses became more environmentallyaware and pursued sustainable practices,federal leaders also became more aware of the government’sown activities, not as a regulator but asa consumer of natural resources and energy—oneof the world’s largest, in fact. And so, over the pastfew years, “Green Government” became hot. Wehad Green IT, Green Purchasing and Green Buildings.Government vendors labeled their products andservices as green. Gradually, the government startedtaking a more comprehensive approach, such asPresident George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13423(Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, andTransportation Management) and President BarackObama’s Executive Order 13514 (Federal Leadershipin Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance)mandating ambitious, government-wide reductions inenergy usage.Overall, federal agencies have responded well to thegreen goals and mandates. They are reducing energyusage through data center consolidation and greenbuilding programs, reducing gas usage through teleworkand innovative fleet programs, and encouragingthe acquisition of green products and services.Greening the government is generating cost savingsand conserving resources. It’s also starting to dosomething else. As innovative green technologies areput in place, they are also laying the foundation fortransformative change—in government operations, inhow public employees perform their work, and in howcitizens are using ostensibly environmental or greendata to enhance both their personal lives and economicactivities. In fact, the beginnings of this transformationare already taking shape.U.S. GoverNMeNT eNergy CoNSUMPTIon by AgeNCyTotal and U.S. Department of Defense, Fiscal Years 1975 - 2009TOTALDEFENSE DEPARTMENTSOURCE: U.S. EnERGYInfORMATIOn AdMInISTRATIOn,AnnUAl EnERGY RevIEw 20096 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

The percentage of federal employees whotelework is growing, due in large part to telework’snon-green benefits.Transforming Government OperationsSignificant change often comes during challengingtimes. Today, our nation is buffeted by severe challenges:a struggling economy; two wars and expandingunrest in the Middle East; rising concerns aboutenergy independence and the environment; andmounting budget deficits that imperil government’sessential functions. And so agencies are starting touse green mandates as an impetus for transforminggovernment in ways that address these problems.One prime example is the General Services Administration’sapproach to Green Buildings. New federalbuildings must meet the U.S. Green Building Council’sLeadership in Energy and Environmental Design(leeD) standard. New buildings will follow sustainabledesign principles, such as minimizing non-renewableenergy consumption; using environmentally preferableproducts and services; protecting and conservingwater; enhancing indoor environmental quality; andoptimizing operational and maintenance practices.GSA leaders have proclaimed that they intend to usefederal buildings as proving grounds for green technologiesand techniques.These activities are dramatically transforming notjust the construction of government facilities; theyalso are strengthening the government’s role in supportingsustainable practices and technologies inboth the public and the private sectors. Not only isGSA “greening” its new and old buildings, but theagency is also using this to attract a new workforce.It is reconfiguring work spaces based on the needsof today’s workers—for example, by creating collaborativework environments. These activities help builda modern work environment that will attract enthusiastic,capable and creative employees to the federalworkforce.Another important initiative for shrinking government’sfootprint is data center consolidation. Theconsolidation effort was initially driven by a desire toreduce energy usage and costs. A more streamlinedinfrastructure also aids in security. But once underway,consolidation helped spur the government’scloud computing strategy. How did this occur? Asagencies reduced their IT footprint through virtualization,government leaders saw that they could procureIT services more efficiently in the cloud environment.Instead of buying servers, applications and the associatedmaintenance, agencies could purchase ITservices as if they were utilities. And it supports theshift toward teleworking, another major sustainabilityinitiative.Telework’s green benefits are well known: reducedgas usage and pollution by commuters; and a reducedfootprint for government office space. And thepercentage of teleworking employees is growing, duein large part to its non-green benefits. For example,when icy roads prevented federal workers from gettingto their offices following a recent Washingtonsnowstorm, large numbers of employees workedfrom home using government-issued laptops andlogging into virtual private networks. As the federalgovernment accelerates data center consolidationand implementation of virtualized cloud computing,the shift to telework will accelerate as well. The barriersfor telework will go down. Together, teleworkand cloud computing will change how governmentemployees perform the business of government, enablingthem to work securely anytime, anywhere andfrom any device.Transforming How We Share DataWhen disaster strikes, people want information—andtoday, they know where to get it. During the 2010 Gulfoil spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 7

Green is no longer the province of a few agencies;it permeates all of government.ministration website experienced a ten-fold increasein traffic as people rushed to study weather conditionsand ocean currents so they could monitor thespill’s potential impact on local cities and towns. Whenit was reported that the nuclear reactors in Japanwere potentially leaking, the Environmental ProtectionAgency’s RadNeT website, which displays data fromU.S. radiation monitors, experienced more than onemillion hits. In addition, numerous homemade videosof the tsunami in Japan were posted on YouTubeand other websites, generating millions of hits fromviewers around the globe. Facebook and other socialmedia became avenues for transmitting news and assessingconditions. Although the news and real-timeinformation flowing in from each disaster often approachesdata overload, the overall effect has madepeople more aware of their intimate connection withthe environment.While interest in environmental data increasessignificantly during natural disasters, this data is attractinga growing number of daily users as well. Forexample, scientists and researchers interested in climatechange have been studying weather and climatedata for many years; many are taking advantage ofthe huge storehouse of current and historical and informationcollected by government agencies and researchinstitutions. Builders and city planners can usethe rich spatial data to study the potential rise of sealevels to plan new construction, placement of stormdrains, or areas for urban growth.Looking ahead, the accumulating climate data couldenable researchers to improve weather forecasting tohelp people better prepare for natural disasters andperhaps mitigate their damage. More precise weatherpredictions could enable the airline industry to avoidmany flight cancellations. More climate data mightguide the building of infrastructure along coastalareas that could be subject to sea level changes.Because of the growing appreciation and use of en-vironmental related data, government is transformingits services to focus attention toward providing thisdata in open formats and in ways that are much moremeaningful. This means embracing the concept thatcitizens are better served by a community rather thanjust one government source.Transforming Energy SourcesThe crisis at Japan’s nuclear energy facilities, coupledwith the Gulf oil spill, highlight the complex interrelationshipamong energy, the environment and safety.The United States needs alternatives to foreign oil, butthose alternatives must be safe. Prior to the Japanesedisaster, support for building nuclear plants in theUnited States had increased significantly as Americanslooked to expand domestic energy sources.For example, a 2010 Gallup Poll showed that 62 percentof Americans favored nuclear power as a wayto generate electricity, the highest percentage sinceGallup began measuring the issue in 1994. This renewedinterest in clean energy, boosted by the EnergyPolicy Act of 2005, had already spurred an increase inlicense applications to build nuclear plants. The challengefor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will beto ensure that its licensing and approval process providesthe extremely high level of safety required fornuclear power generation. In particular, the NRC mustincorporate lessons learned from the Japanese experienceas well as from the United States’ experienceusing nuclear power.Although vigorous debate about all energy sources(and not just nuclear energy) will doubtless continue,opportunities to move to new sources and reducegovernment’s energy consumption still remain. Forexample, agencies can move more aggressively touse alternative fuel vehicles in government fleets, asdirected by the President, by purchasing more hybridvehicles and using electric cars. Government alsomay borrow ideas from industry: Many companies8 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

today are reducing fuel consumption by routing theirservices so that vehicles are assigned to customersbased on the proximity as well as availability of the vehicles.Such an approach could help the governmentreduce gas consumption without impacting services.Conclusion—Creating the New NormalAt one time, environmental issues were primarily regardedas the concern of agencies such as the Doeor EPA. But today, when people think of green orsustainability, they think of government-wide initiativesand practices, such as GSA’s Smart Buildingprogram, teleworking, data center consolidation, fuelefficientfleet services, recycling, green products andservices and a host of other initiatives. Green is nolonger the province of a few agencies; it permeates allof government.Green government is not unlike electronic governmentin this regard. At one time, government organizationswere filled with e-gov czars and coordinators.But few of these e-gov titles or organizations remain.It’s not that e-government has disappeared; rather,e-government has so thoroughly transformed governmentand become absorbed within agency operationsthat people no longer identify e-government asa separate or unique process. It’s just a normal part ofgovernment business.Is green government heading down this samepath? It will, if government leaders look beyond justthe energy and environmental benefits to see howgreen initiatives can be a springboard not only to improvinggovernment operations and mission capabilities,but also to attracting skilled workers, creatingnew and valuable services, and transforming howgovernment performs its missions. Ultimately, peoplemay no longer speak of Green Buildings, GreenPurchasing, or Green IT. Like e-government, greengovernment will simply be known as “government,”because that’s how the next generation efficient governmentoperates.Molly O’NEIll is former Assistant Administratorand Chief Information Officer at the EnvironmentalProtection Agency, and now a CGI Initiative Fellow,Affiliate Professor at George Mason University’s Departmentof Public and International Affairs, Fellow atthe National Academy of Public Administration, andCGI Vice President.SHUTTERSTOCKS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 9

Aiming HighBy AMANDA SPAKEPHOTOGRAPHY By JAMES KEGLEYMartha Johnson, administrator of the General ServicesAdministration, has ambitious goals for environmentalsustainability: a 30 percent reduction in the agency’s totalgreenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and ultimately, a “zeroenvironmental footprint.” Johnson acknowledges this is anambitious goal, calling it “this generation’s moon shot.” Noother federal agency has taken on this super-sized slice ofthe green agenda.Johnson’s agency, like the federal government itself, uses astunning amount of energy. Government buildings, vehicles,computers, people and missions consume more energy than10 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

If the General Services Administrationmeets Martha Johnson’s “moon shotgoal,” it will one day leave noenvironmental footprint.Martha Johnson, Administrator, GSAS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 11

any other sector of the U.S. economy. 1 And GSA’sportion of that energy use is significant: The agencymanages more than 370 million square feet of officespace; it operates a third of Uncle Sam’s morethan 600,000 vehicles; and, through its governmentwidecontracts, credit cards and travel services,GSA touches about $66 billion of the federal government’s$500 billion in annual purchases of goods andservices.So taking on an outsized role in steering federal purchasing,building construction, operation and maintenance,and use of the federal vehicle fleet towardenergy efficiency and sustainability is a “must do” inJohnson’s book. “What we [GSA] do about the environmentalfootprint has a huge leverage on howthe entire government functions,” Johnson told theAmerican Council for Technology-Industry AdvisoryCouncil in Philadelphia last May. “Zero environmentalfootprint is this generation’s moon shot. It’s a seriousbusiness. It’s serious in terms of the economy; it’s seriousin terms of the environment; and GSA is in themiddle of that.”Before Johnson walked through the door, GSA hadnot had a confirmed leader in three years and hadweathered five acting administrators. “Just being confirmedwas useful,” Johnson told Government Executivemagazine in a November 2010 cover story. Turmoilat the top, she said, “was really confusing to the organization.”Restoring confidence is high on Johnson’sto-do list.But just as significant is making GSA a leader inthe nation’s move toward a sustainable future. She isamong the handful of people President Obama hascharged with delivering on his promise of a green governmentand evaluating renewable technologies thathe believes can transform the country’s infrastructurein the next decade. “The administration has madeGSA part of ‘the green team,’” Johnson says, alongwith the Council on Environmental Quality and the EnergyDepartment. “We have such a lever with GSA,and this lever was largely unrecognized. Obama set itup, and we took the bait.”Obama’s October 2009 Executive Order 13514,“Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, andEconomic Performance,” 2 gave GSA the added responsibilityof designing all new federal buildings touse net-zero energy by 2030. In addition, 95 percent ofnew contracts are to be awarded for environmentallyfriendly goods and services. The agency is doublingthe number of hybrid vehicles in its fleet and developinga way to give competitive advantage to companiesthat voluntarily measure, reduce and report theirgreenhouse gas emissions.These sustainability goals have infused the agencywith a much-needed commitment to purpose. “Mysense is we unleashed the [sustainability] goal by takinga lot of the senior GSA staff to a company wherethey are striving to be a zero-footprint company, InterfaceFLOR”she says.InterfaceFLOR, the world’s leading producer ofmodular floor coverings, has set a company-widegoal of eliminating all negative impact on the environment—attaininga zero footprint—by 2020. GSA seniorstaff traveled to the company’s headquarters inLaGrange, Ga., for two days to pick managers’ brainsabout the company’s “Mission Zero.” “It galvanized1 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-sets-greenhouse-gas-emissions-reduction-target -federal-operations2 http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/2009fedleader_eo_rel.pdf12 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

the leadership team,” Johnson says. “They saw whatit would do for them. And they recognized that if we atGSA couldn’t do it, then the government can’t do it.”‘Get It Done Now, Together’But Johnson relishes big challenges like this. “To her,the challenges represent the positive parts of the job,and most people see those challenges as negatives,”says Bob Woods, CEO of Topside Consulting and aformer Johnson colleague at GSA. Johnson is pursuingher challenges with a reliance on iconoclasticmethods and unbridled ambition. “She’s focused onthe big picture and the big outcome,” adds David Mc-Clure, GSA Associate Administrator for Citizen Servicesand Innovative Technologies. “With Martha, it’snot ‘should we,’ it’s ‘when are we?’” McClure says.“She pushes the organization to move, as opposedto debating whether to move,” he adds. “She is veryambitious in what she sees as a new vision for GSA.”That new vision is based on three key goals—innovation,intimacy with federal customers, and operationalexcellence—adopted from “The Discipline ofMarket Leaders” (Basic Books 1997). The goals aredesigned to transform GSA into a smart, customerfriendly,lean, green agency, a “green proving ground,”Johnson says, for sustainable technologies that canbe used by business and government alike.Johnson does more than just talk the environmentaltalk. She took the commuter bus often from her homein Annapolis, Md., to GSA headquarters when shewas chief of staff in the 1990s. At GSA’s temporary officein Northeast Washington, where senior staff workwhile the headquarters building is being renovated,she sits in a cubicle, surrounded by her staff. “Shehas no big desk, no huge office,” says McClure.“I need that interaction,” is how she explains her desireto sit in the center of things.Johnson is also a huge fan of instant messaging.She and McClure instant message (IM) one anotherevery morning. “She is trying to break the culture ofusing email as the best way to communicate becausewe are drowning in email,” says McClure. Johnsonwould rather start a conversation on IM and have adialogue. Any staff member at GSA can message her,and she responds. “She’s a quick, interactive person,”says McClure, “and she likes the immediacy and morepersonal nature in this form of communication.”Her attraction to instant messaging fits well with herbelief in the power of spontaneity, the ability of peopleand organizations to be “in the moment,” so they canaddress challenges as they come up and move forward.Johnson’s preference for instant interaction hastaken shape in a new form of decision-making.Johnson is pioneering the “slam” at GSA. “I meantto call it a ‘scrum’ but it came out ‘slam,’” she laughs.This is a mega-meeting, where all the key stakeholdersare slammed into a room, and they simply do notleave until they make the necessary decisions, andform a plan of actions that all parties agree to take.For example, she injected the “slam” into GSA’s ownS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 13

information technology. “We sell [IT] to people, sowe need to be leaders in the field,” says Johnson. “Isaid ‘Let’s get people together.’ I had done this in the1990s when I was part of a Michigan consulting firm,and there was a model about getting everybody in theroom to get a job done. Get it done now, together.I believe in having the meeting in the meeting.” Noprocrastinating, no going off to “study” a problem. “Iforce function,” she says.Virtual’s VirtuesJohnson sees that mobile technology is rapidlychanging the way work is done within GSA, in the federalgovernment, and in the world. She predicts thiswill mean a shift to more virtual workplaces—whichwill result in more sustainable offices requiring fewerbuildings and less commuting. She believes this willbe a positive development for federal agencies, andGSA in particular.Even though GSA’s Public Buildings Service hasbeen leading the agency’s charge toward sustainability[see “Building Sustainability,” page 17] and federalbuildings, on average, are 22 percent more energy efficientthan private sector ones, to significantly reduceenergy use the federal government needs not onlymore energy-efficient buildings, but fewer of them.“We need to move toward virtual problem-solving,”Johnson says. She would like many of GSA’s meetingsand conferences to be virtual. “But that transitionto the virtual piece isn’t yet there. I’m trying to positionour organizational muscle so we are OK about doingit,” she says. GSA has been a champion of telecommutingfor some time. Johnson’s first task as administratorrequired telework: She was sworn in over thephone in her kitchen in the middle of a blizzard.“The virtual workplace has a major impact on theculture,” she says. “It is better financially, environmentally,security-wise, and for wellness.” Fewer buildings,less office space and less commuting will saveenergy and reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution—thosebenefits are obvious. “We have a team ofpeople who are converting their commuting time toexercise time,” she says. “They’re getting thinner andwe hate them. And security involves continuity of operations—westill need to be able to function if peoplecan’t come together. We saw that this year during themajor snow storms that shut down Atlanta and NewYork. The virtual workplace offers that.”Making Organizations WorkJohnson’s ability to successfully negotiate large, complexorganizations and agencies comes from a varietyof sources: her education, her business background,her parents’ values, her role in the family growing upand her personal commitments—to her children, herhusband, and her faith. Despite the demands of runningan agency, she still volunteers at her church inAnnapolis, facilitating some of the congregation’smost heated discussions on topics such as ordinationof gay ministers and the realities of global climatechange.She was born in Connecticut, but says she lived14 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

there for “about a week,” until her father, TheodoreNace, a Presbyterian minister, was re-assigned to achurch in northern California. After trouble in Californiaover his stand in favor of civil rights, the family wastransferred to a church in rural North Dakota.“He was outspoken,” Johnson says. “And thatmeant that I was always trying to find and hold thecenter, trying to keep everybody in the room talking,and not push them to the edges.”For college, Johnson chose Oberlin in Ohio, thesame school her father attended, a college foundedby Presbyterian ministers. Oberlin has a long and distinguishedcivil rights tradition, being the first collegein the United States to regularly admit African Americanstudents (beginning in 1835) and women (since1837). “Oberlin certainly fit with my father’s values,”she says. “It was an extraordinary place to be. It’salso a Conservatory—my mother was a musician, thechurch choir director—so it seemed right in that respectas well.”Johnson’s interest in organizations and businessbegan during a summer job at a human rights organizationin New York. “My father had given me a NewYorker magazine piece about Amnesty Internationalwhen I was at Oberlin. He said, ‘Why not work for Amnestyin New York in the summer?’” So she got a jobthere one summer during college. “I sat in this organization,the hayseed from North Dakota, and I learneda lot. I began to recognize the power of organization.”After graduating in economics and history fromOberlin in 1974, she taught at Tunghai University inTaiwan. Oberlin had a long association with the universityand regularly sent new graduates there. WhenJohnson returned to the United States, she appliedto the department of organizational management atYale. “I wanted to find out how you make organizationswork well. So business school was a way to getat organizations.” She received her MBA from Yalein 1979.While Johnson, 58, was at Yale, J. Irwin Miller, theCEO of Cummins Engine, based in Columbus, Ind.,came to speak to graduate students in business.Miller was a leader in promoting corporate social responsibility,and ran the company during the 1960s,when the Cummins Engine Foundation became activein race and poverty issues. During that time, he wasnamed the first lay president of the National Councilof Churches.Inspired, Johnson landed a job at Cummins, andworked there as a manager from 1979 to 1985, a timewhen the company was committed to the total qualitymovement. Total Quality Management (TQM) holdsthat continuous improvement in a business or organizationis possible when everyone at every level iscommitted to meeting customers’ needs and perceptionsof quality. TQM places a high priority on teamworkand strategic planning to meet ever-expandinggoals, lessons Johnson carried with her into otherbusinesses and to GSA. “Cummins was a huge learningexperience,” she says.In the mid-1980s, the family moved to Boston, whereJohnson became the chief financial officer of EllenzweigMoore, an architectural firm. In 1987 and 1988,Johnson worked as a recruiter for a staffing firm, andthen as a consultant to a diversity recruiting firm. Theflexibility of the work was helpful, because this periodof her career was predominantly “about having kids,”she says. Her son, Lucas, is in college at Stanford,and her daughter, Anna, is a Yale graduate.A 1992 call from the Clinton-Gore transition team“The virtual workplace has a major impacton the culture. It is better financially,environmentally, security-wise, andfor wellness.” —Martha Johnson, Administrator, GSAS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 15

changed her career focus once again. At the time, shewas an executive recruiting consultant for Ben andJerry’s. “I was only there for about four months,” shesays, “but that organization taught me how you cansell your culture.” The incoming administration knewJohnson had done a significant amount of executiveand minority recruiting for major firms. “Clintonsaid he wanted a cabinet that looked like America,”she remembers, “and they thought I could help them.The chance to join something huge, like the transitionteam for a President? I couldn’t pass it up.”Available in the MomentIt wasn’t long before Johnson was working in theWhite House Office of Presidential Personnel, andthen moved to become an associate deputy secretaryat the Commerce Department from 1993 to1996. It was at Commerce that she became friendswith David Barram, deputy secretary of Commerceand a 23-year veteran of Silicon Valley’s largest firms,including Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer, Inc.Johnson and Barram were among the few Clinton appointeeswho had experience in companies that ranfactories and produced goods, as opposed to havingcareers only in white-collar service industries, suchas law or public relations. Barram was also the son ofa minister. “We had a lot in common,” Johnson says.So it’s not surprising that, when Clinton tappedBarram to become the administrator of GSA, Barramasked Johnson to become chief of staff. “It was agood fit,” she says. “I had no policy chops, so there isno reason to look at Energy or EPA because I wasn’tthat person.”Dennis Fischer, the commissioner of GSA’s FederalTechnology Service during the Clinton Administration,remembers a moment from that period that illustrateshow all the major influences in Johnson’s life—herfamily, her faith, her accessibility and her ability tosolve problems quickly—make her the leader that sheis today.“We had something big going on at GSA,” Fischersays, “and I had to call her. It was about eight at night.And we began talking about what we needed to do tosolve this problem and we figured it out on the phone.But there was all this noise in the background and Isaid, ‘Martha, where are you?’ And she said, ‘I’m inthe basement of a church, helping bake cookies, andwatching my kids do their homework.’” This is classicMartha Johnson.She stayed at GSA until 2001, leaving to becomepresident of the Council for Excellence in Government,a good-government advocacy group in Washington.She moved to Touchstone Consulting Group, a federalcontractor in Washington, in 2003, and then onto SRA International in Fairfax, Va., when it purchasedTouchstone in 2005. In 2007, Johnson became vicepresident of culture at Falls Church, Va.-based ComputerSciences Corporation, where David Barram waschairman of the board.When the call came in 2008 to be part of the Obamatransition team reviewing GSA, she jumped at thechance. Though nominated to become GSA Administratorin April 2009, Johnson waited nine months forconfirmation due to a hold placed on her nomination.Johnson continued to work at CSC until she was confirmedin February 2010. When the vote finally came,it was unanimous.Now, Johnson is trying to move GSA to “a posture,an openness and availability, the presence to movewith what comes in the door. Slams evolved thisway—be there, be available in the moment, be in themeeting, the now, that’s Zen.” She has called this typeof organizational transformation “the Zen of change,”the willingness of an agency or business to embracenew ideas, accept human differences, and take departuresfrom tradition so as not to miss key opportunities.Johnson says this is vital if GSA is to test outand take advantage of new green innovations that willallow the agency—and the country—to meet environmentalsustainability goals.“Right now,” Johnson adds, “it’s about trying to takerisks to find new ways of doing things. And I can sayto our people, ‘I have your back.’”AMANDA SPAKE is a former staff writer at U.S. Newsand World Report and the Washington Post Magazine.She lives at the Chesapeake Bay, in Churchton, Md.16 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

BuildingSustainabilityRobert Peck’s PublicBuildings Serviceshapes a greener,grander and smallerreal estate footprint.By Amanda SpakePHOTOGRAPHY By JAMES KEGLEYBob Peck loves government buildings. He loves new, green,sustainable buildings decked out with solar panels, low flow toilets, raingardens and green roofs. And he loves historic buildings—landmarks to agrander, greener time for the nation’s public architecture.Peck, 63, is commissioner of the Public Buildings Service, the part ofthe General Services Administration that builds, manages, leases, buysand sells real estate for the government. The GSA owns or leases morethan 9,600 properties in 50 states and all the U.S. territories—more than370 million square feet of office space, one of the largest commercial realestate empires in the world. Peck’s annual budget is more than $8.6 billion,largely self-funded from income from PBS properties, and his workforceis about 6,700.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 17

While even Donald Trump mightbe daunted by the sheer size ofPeck’s portfolio, GSA’s aggressivesustainability goals and commitmentto greening the government’swork spaces have upped the antefor Peck. “We’re putting ourselvesout there as a green provingground,” Peck says. “We have thisimperative to green our buildings,and one of the things we can bargainwith is to use our money to bea green test ground for the privatesector industry. We think we cantest out things, like how well solararrays work.”At one GSA building in Indianapolis,for example, there arefour kinds of solar collectors onthe roof to measure which onesproduce the most energy. SanFrancisco’s new federal buildinghas no air conditioning, but lotsof windows that open and it’s narrow,so air can easily flow through.Energy reduction in the buildingwill be significant as a result, andcould be replicated in other temperateclimates. “One of the thingswe can do by being a green provingground is get people comfortablewith being an early adopter oftrying things out that aren’t totallyproven,” says Peck. “It’s an innovativeuse of GSA.”Before Sealed WindowsWhen Peck arrived on the job thistime—he actually headed PBSonce before, during the Clintonadministration—senior staff madea series of wry videos to encourageemployees to see the agencyin a new way. In one, he waswearing a crown and cape, andcarrying scepter—the king of thefederal real estate empire, or sohe appeared. Then he threw offthe crown, cape and scepter tomake his point: Edicts were notgoing to be coming from him. Thesustainability goals laid out for theagency required ideas and innovationfrom everyone in PBS, particularlythose working with GSA’scontractors and clients every day.“The video summed up Bob’sleadership style,” explains a staffmember. “He’s businesslike andinclusive, but also showing in hisactions that it’s okay to have fun.”Bob Peck came back to PBS ata very exciting time in the agency’shistory—with $5.5 billion inAmerican Recovery and ReinvestmentAct money to spend on publicbuildings. The mandates weresimple: spend it quickly for projectsthat will create lots of jobs,and spend $4.5 billion of it makingGSA’s buildings greener and moresustainable. GSA planned threecategories of projects for the RecoveryAct funds: limited-scopeprojects in the highest energyconsumingbuildings in its inventory,major systems overhaulsand infrastructure improvements,and new construction. The limitedscope and modernization investmentswill improve the energy efficiencyand performance of thosebuildings and reduce their energyconsumption by approximately 15percent, based on preliminary designgoals.Interestingly, the staff has discoveredthat greening GSA’s 367oldest buildings, built between1800 and 1941, 1 will not be as difficultas it might have seemed.“Twenty-five percent of our buildingsare historic,” says Peck, “likeour own GSA building.” The GSAheadquarters in downtown Wash-1 “State of the Portfolio FY 2009” GSA Public Buildings Service, http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/pbs/SOTP09_Final_Spreads_508_Compliant.pdf18 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

ington, built in 1917, is a granddame of federal office buildings.“We would say now that they createda green building,” Peck says.“They had heat, but no air conditioning,some electric light. Andthey built transoms, so there wasair flow from the windows.”Using all of the original greenfeatures, the GSA headquarters isnow undergoing a $160 million renovationwith Recovery Act funds.“We’re taking this building back tobefore we sealed the windows,”says Peck. “One of the things thisbuilding allows us to do is use daylight.They made big windows andnarrow floors so light could getinto corridors.” Fewer lights alsomake the rooms cooler. There willbe electric lighting, of course, andair conditioning— it’s Washington,D.C., after all, where summers aresteamy. But lighting will be energysavingand automated, so lights goout when no one is in the rooms,and the AC will be controlled inseparate zones. A “cool roof” willkeep out summer heat, and solarwater heating will make use ofWashington’s frequent 90-degreeplussummer days.Net ZeroGSA’s first historic net zero energybuilding—meaning it will generateall the energy it uses—will beThe Wayne Aspinall Federal Buildingand U.S. Courthouse in GrandJunction, Colo. Designed by SupervisingArchitect of the TreasuryJames Wetmore in 1918, thebuilding is the first on the NationalRegister of Historic Places to berenovated to such an aggressivegreen standard.The project has been designedto meet LEED Platinum certification,the highest level of certificationoffered under the U.S. GreenBuilding Council’s rating system,known as Leadership in Energyand Environmental Design orLEED. To achieve LEED Platinum,GSA will install a geothermal heatingand cooling system that usesthe warmth or cold of the groundto control temperature, and a solarpanel array that is projected togenerate enough energy to meetthe building’s electricity demand.Energy produced in excess ofthe amount needed by the buildingwill be exported to Grand Junction’selectrical grid. State-of-theartfluorescent light fixtures withwireless controls will adjust lightingto respond to natural light levels,and storm windows with solarcontrol film will reduce demand forheating and cooling. “We’re prettyexcited about it,” Peck said in aninterview in The Dirt, a blog publishedby the American Society ofLandscape Architects.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 19

An attorney by training, Peckgrew up in a household that respectedand promoted governmentservice. After retiring fromactive duty as a U.S. Army officer,Peck’s father worked for the VeteransAdministration and remainedin the Army Reserve, retiring as afull colonel. Peck followed his father’sexample: Commissioned anInfantry Officer via Army ROTC incollege, Bob served a short stinton active duty and spent 17 yearsin Special Forces in the Army Reserveretiring as a major.After law school, Peck workedin Congress, as associate counselfor the Senate Committee on Environmentand Public Works, and aschief of staff for the late New YorkSenator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.He’s also seen a variety of federalagencies from the inside, at jobsin the Office of Management andBudget, the National Endowmentfor the Arts and the Federal CommunicationsCommission. In hisfamily, Peck says, he was “broughtup to think the government is agood thing. For me, that’s a higherpurpose than trying to makemoney.”But Bob Peck is good at makingmoney. He’s a deal-maker bynature—he worked as a managingdirector of the global real estategiant Jones Lang LaSalle,advising corporations, governmentsand nonprofits on developmentand property investments,before coming back to PBS in2009. And he has made some verygood deals for the nation. Peckhas leased prime office space forfederal agencies at bargain rates.Landlords, suffering from high vacancyrates because of the recession,have been willing to consentto Peck’s terms and agreed tolong-term contracts, guaranteeingfederal agencies low rents for 10or more years into the future.And with the construction industrydownturn due to the economy,Peck and his staff have been ableto contract for renovations andnew construction for less. Theyalready have saved taxpayers$565 million on the 256 constructionprojects GSA planned for the$5.5 billion in Recovery Act funds.For example, the second and thirdphases of the $750 million renovationof the Commerce Department’sHerbert Hoover Buildingin Washington were projected tocost $225 million. Peck is bringingthem in for $185 million, a savingsof $40 million.“You have to give Bob a lot ofcredit,” David Alperstein, a principleat FD Partners LLC, an Arlington,Va., real estate firm toldthe Washington Business Journal.“He’s a real estate guy, and understandswhere the market is andknows they [GSA] have the opportunityto aggressively negotiate onbehalf of the government.”By getting more projects for betterprices, PBS has found fundsto add sustainable features, suchas rainwater collection systems,maximizing taxpayer dollars to getwider green results than initiallyanticipated. In fact, the savingshave been so significant that PBShas been able to get more greenimpact for taxpayers’ money.The border crossing stationat San Ysidro, Calif., is a case inpoint. An estimated 50,000 carsand 25,000 pedestrians travelingfrom Mexico to California crossthe border at San Ysidro everyday. Traffic congestion is legendary,and is expected in increase by90 percent over the next 20 years.Now, ground has recently beenbroken for a 225,000 square footexpansion built to LEED Platinumstandards, with a 700,000-gallonrainwater reclamation system forirrigation, low-flow plumbing fixtures,and solar panels to generatepower.In the LEEDGSA has been retrofitting its buildingsto save energy for some timenow. It has reduced energy use persquare foot by 30 percent since1985, while commercial real estateenergy use has increased by some13 percent. The agency put on itsfirst green roof in 1975, and nowhas more than one million squarefeet of green roofs on federalbuildings. Since 2003, all new GSAbuildings have met standards forLEED Silver certification. Recently,Peck raised the GSA standard toLEED Gold for construction andmajor renovation projects.The problem for GSA is thatnot every building can easily be“greened.” “A big percentage ofour inventory was built in the late‘60s and ‘70s,” says Peck. “Thosebuildings are energy hogs: Theouter envelope is not well insulated,the windows are sealed. Our20 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

iggest challenge is taking thosebuildings to a point where they aremore sustainable.” To do that, PBSis looking at daylighting ideas, andshading buildings with trees, vinesand other vegetation to cool themwith less air conditioning.Some of these “energy hogs”may prove un-greenable, he says,and in that case, GSA plans to getrid of them. The Obama administrationhas ordered a 28 percentacross-the-board reduction ingreenhouse gas emissions for thefederal government by 2020, whichmeans a significant reduction inenergy use. PBS has determinedthat 80 percent of its energy, emissionsand expenses come from 20percent of its buildings, so effortsto reduce energy and greenhousegas emissions will focus on them.Green Proving GroundOne of the best ways to use lessenergy is to have less real estateto heat, light, cool, and run. GSA isworking with the OMB and variousagencies to identify outmodedand unneeded buildings, officesthat can be consolidated, or landand buildings that are best soldor leased to private companies.The agency has projected that 5.5percent of its assets should soonbe sold.“You can’t reduce your carbonfootprint unless you reduce yourfootprint,” says Peck. So Peckstarted in his own office. When hewas shown to the Commissioner’soffice, a space larger than many2 http://www.sftool.orgone-bedroom apartments, he immediatelymoved in office mates.Why lease space for staff when hehad too much for himself? He nowshares the office with PBS DeputyCommissioner David Foley, AssociateCommissioner Desa Sealy,and Linda Osgood, Acting Chief ofStaff. “I hate to be alone in my office,“Peck laughs. “I like to talk.”The reality is that most peopledon’t use their offices all the time.“One of the dirty little secrets weall know is that if you look at thechair, it’s occupied 35-40 percentof the work week. The rest of thetime people are traveling, or onvacation, or sick, or gone to meetings.I’d say less than 30 percentof the time have all four peoplebeen in this office at once.”Within GSA, and workplaces ingeneral, technology coupled withthe need to reduce costs, is forcinga transition to mobile work environments.GSA headquarters,for example, once housed 2,000personnel. When the renovationis complete, flex-spaces, mobiletechnology, and telework willallow it to become a workspacefor 6,000. Internally, GSA’s goal isto have 60 percent of its staff teleworkat least two days per pay period.PBS is advising a variety offederal managers on how to usethese sustainable office practices.The agency has also createda Sustainable Facilities Tool, 2 designedto help building managersmake dozens of small choices thatwill help green their workspacesand save money.If Peck continues at his current“You can’t reduceyour carbonfootprint unlessyou reduceyour footprint.”—Robert Peck,Commissioner, GSA PBSpace, when his time at PBS is over,he will leave the nation with fewerfederal buildings, but better ones,greener ones, models for innovativeways real estate can contributeto a sustainable culture. “I’d liketo be remembered as a thoughtleader, and as an action leader,”he says. “The legacy I hope toleave is that of the green provingground.” One thing is certain, Peckwants to look back at the buildingshe leaves with a sense of pride andawe. As he has put it, “We’re goingback to building buildings worthyof the American people.”AMANDA SPAKE is a former staffwriter at U.S. News and WorldReport and the Washington PostMagazine. She lives at the ChesapeakeBay, in Churchton, Md.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 21

Gregory Jaczko, Chairman, NRC22 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

Safety FirstAt every opportunity, Gregory Jaczko hammers homethe Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s No. 1 goal.By JOHN PulleyOnMarch 11, 2011, Japan’s nuclear powerindustry was shaken to its core by a9.0 magnitude quake followed by a massive tsunami.The 45-plus-foot wave swamped the six reactors ofthe Fukushima Daiichi plant about 130 miles North ofTokyo.In the weeks following Japan’s double catastrophe,Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman GregoryJaczko became the Obama administration’s nuclearpoint man, explaining, reassuring, and reiterating onemessage: The safety of U.S. reactors is the NRC’s singularfocus.At a March 16 hearing before two House Energy andCommerce subcommittees, Jaczko, 40, a physicistturned congressional aide turned nuclear regulator,patiently fielded questions from the wary representativesof a concerned America. If it was the tsunamithat did the real damage in Japan, then what abouta tornado here? Or terrorists? Or hurricanes? Blackouts?Or what about a quake like the one “that hit SanFrancisco in 1906?”Again and again, Jaczko offered variations on a fewthemes: It’s too early to speculate on what happenedin Japan. All the plants we’ve licensed and those weare reviewing meet strict site specific standards forearthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and,PHOTOGRAPHY By JAMES KEGLEYsince September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. We determinethe largest earthquake likely to occur and howmuch it will shake a reactor, and then we require theplant to be able to withstand that and a little bit more.At the March 16 hearing, Jaczko illustrated his pointby pointing to a glass of water on the table in frontof him and saying, “If you think of this as the nuclearpower plant . . . when you talk about the magnitudeof the earthquake, it would be like me hitting the tablewith my fist. Something like that.” Banging the witnesstable. “And you’ll see it makes the glass over herevibrate.”“What we actually measure, and we design ournuclear power plants around, is that shaking of thepower plant,” Jaczko explained. “So the actual impactdepends on where I hit in relation to the glass.A large earthquake that’s very far away, may not havethe same impact on a site as an earthquake that’smaybe a little bit less, but much closer, so somethinglike that,” Jaczko said striking again, less forcefully,nearer the glass.And, as he has at almost every public appearancesince March 11, Jaczko repeated a promise: TheNRC’s review of events in Japan will be “systematicand methodical” and any new lessons will be appliedto U.S. reactors.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 23

Over the past three years the agency has received 13 license applicationsfor 22 new reactors, with another five applications on hold or under review.Focus on SafetyIn February, Gregory Jaczko’s job looked different. A362,000-square-foot building rising rapidly outsidehis office window mirrored the recent surge in theNRC’s staff and workload. Over the past three yearsthe agency has received 13 license applications for 22new reactors, with another five applications on holdor under review. The workforce, now 4,000-strong,has grown by a third since 2005. At present, the3,000-person headquarters staff is scattered acrossthe Maryland suburbs near Washington, D.C., a symptomof growing pains. The new building will enable theagency to assemble them in one place.The growth has been explosive for an agency that,prior to 2007, hadn’t seen a license application for anew reactor since 1979, the year Unit 2 at the ThreeMile Island Nuclear Generating Station, near Harrisburg,Pa., suffered a partial meltdown. After 25 yearsfrozen in time, the nuclear power industry had finallybegun to thaw as Americans’ antipathy toward reactorsmelted under the heat of rising energy costsand dependence on foreign suppliers. The NRC hadstaffed up and was buzzing. In his first State of theUnion address, President Barack Obama called for “anew generation of safe, clean, nuclear power plants.”Speaking in his Rockville, Md., office in February,Jaczko said his main focus was creating a stable environmentin which NRC’s workers can remain intenton the agency’s key mission without being shaken byoutside forces. “One of the bigger challenges we haveis to continue to ensure that we keep our focus onsafety despite some of the external challenges,” hesaid, referring at the time to pressures to speed upsafety reviews and licensing of new reactors. “Makingsure that we continue to allow the staff to do their joband to do it in a way as free from those external pressuresas possible is one of the bigger challenges,” hesaid. “That, if anything, is the thing that keeps me upat night.”NRC regulates every aspect of nuclear energy production,from the mining of nuclear materials and approvalof new reactor designs to the review and approvalof licenses to build and operate nuclear powerplants and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Its rulesare designed to protect the public and nuclear energyworkers against radiation hazards from industries thatuse those materials.The agency is responsible for ensuring the continuedsafety of 104 aging U.S. nuclear power reactors,the most in any country, 101 of which have been inservice for more than 20 years. 1 Nuclear plants produce20 percent of U.S. electricity. The oldest, OysterCreek in New Jersey, powered up in 1969, and has thesame design as those at the imperiled plant in Japan.Most recently, the nearly 40-year-old Vermont Yankeenuclear plant, with another reactor of the same design,was granted an operating extension. The NRCannounced a 20-year renewal on March 10; it was finalizedon March 21.Jaczko must balance shifting and competing expectations.Notwithstanding the sharp influx of newlicense applications and a streamlined applicationreviewprocess, some lawmakers have pressed theNRC to approve licenses even more quickly, whileopponents of nuclear energy are pushing to slow therollout of new reactors. Approvals can take up to fouryears.Science and PoliticsJaczko was sworn in as a commissioner in January2005. At the time, he predicted that the NRC mightget one or two license applications for new reactorsduring his tenure, he recalls. A number of factorscombined to generate far more, chief among them the1 http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-reactors.html24 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

2005 Energy Policy Act enacted in response to energyprice hikes and growing dependence on foreignoil. The law included tax credits, loan guarantees,and regulatory delay compensation to encourage thebuilding of commercial nuclear power plants.After serving on the commission for three years, Jaczkowas designated chairman in May 2009 by PresidentObama. His term runs through June 30, 2013. Aschairman, Jaczko touches almost everything that theNRC does. He leads the five presidentially appointedcommissioners in setting agency policy, and he overseesthe workforce. He is the official spokesman andthe “authority for all NRC functions pertaining to a potentialemergency involving an NRC licensee,” rolesassigned to the chairman in the aftermath of the ThreeMile Island accident in 1979.In its October 1979 report, 2 the presidential investi-2 http://www.threemileisland.org/downloads/188.pdfgatory commission on TMI, as the country’s worst nuclearincident is known by NRC’s staff, recommended“organizational and procedural changes designed tomake the new agency truly effective in assuring thesafety of nuclear power plants.”The result was the retooled management structurein place today. Under it, the chairman sets the agendafor the commission, which decides issues by a simplemajority vote. By law, the commission cannot seatmore than three members of a political party at onetime, a dynamic that results in “very passionate disagreements,”says Jaczko. “I think that’s a good andhealthy thing. If Congress wanted us all to agree onthe commission, they would have just put one of usover here, not five.”Moreover, each commissioner, including the chairman,gets a single vote, making it impossible forany one commissioner to dictate outcomes. “I don’tworry too much about whether I win or lose votes,”U.S. COMMERCIAl NUClEAR POWER REACTORSYears of OPERATION by END of 2010Years ofCOMMERCIAlOPERATIONNUMBER ofREACTORS0 - 9 010 - 19 320 - 29 4830 - 39 4640+ 7SOURCE: U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMiSSiONS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 25

Jaczko says. “I’ve tried to create an environment inwhich the commission can have good discussions.. . . What matters is that the commission makes gooddecisions.”Having earned a doctorate in physics before servingon Capitol Hill, Jaczko combines technical andscientific acumen with practical political experience.As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsinat Madison, Jaczko learned “to think critically andanalyze problems in a fact-based way,” he says. Yethe wasn’t destined for a career of pure science. Hebecame involved in the graduate employees unionand discovered an interest in policy and governance.Uniting the two passions, Jaczko became a fellow inan American Association for the Advancement of Scienceprogram that helped people with science backgroundsget positions on Capitol Hill.Jaczko initially worked for Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., as a Congressional Science Fellow. He subsequentlyworked for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., first,as science policy advisor and advisor to the SenateCommittee on Environment and Public Works, andlater, as director of appropriations. “I was very fortunateto work for two very different but incredibly effectivelegislators,” Jaczko says. “I saw how they wereable to work with their colleagues. . . . They showedme the ways to approach issues and how to deal withchallenges.”‘Powerful Motivator’Jaczko’s management philosophy emphasizes safety,transparency, efficiency and people. He endeavorsto continually renew a “culture of safety,” he says, tokeep everyone focused on NRC’s overriding priority.The safety mission pervades everything, Jaczko says,all the way down to mail delivery.Jaczko was deeply involved in the NRC’s effort tomake nuclear reactors less vulnerable to air strikesand terrorism, requiring them to always have on handequipment to deal with severe fires and explosions.And he headed up an NRC initiative to develop a safetyculture policy that seeks to measure and regulateprevailing attitudes, values and practices at nuclearfacilities to diminish the chances of an accident.Within NRC, safety informs the way the agency viewsand talks about itself. The agency doesn’t define itselfin terms of activities—overseeing regulatory compliance,reviewing licenses, training safety inspectors. ItThe agency is responsiblefor ensuring the continuedsafety of 104 aging U.S.nuclear power reactors, themost in any country, 101 ofwhich have been in servicefor more than 20 years.PHOTO COURTESY OF NRC26 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

focuses instead on human health and safety to keepits staff energized.“The people here come to work to make sure thatthe American people stay safe,” says Jaczko. “That isa very powerful motivator and a very powerful driver.”In 2008, 2009 and 2010, the NRC has been the toprankedagency in “The Best Places to Work in FederalGovernment” report published by the Partnership forPublic Service and Washington’s American University.NRC ranked highest in strategic management,effective leadership, work-life balance and the fit betweenmission employees’ skills. “We have a lot ofinherent advantages,” Jaczko says. “We listen to theemployees. We try and make changes based on whatwe hear.”When a recent in-house survey revealed that employeeswho weren’t directly involved in missionrelatedactivities felt less connected to the agency,leaders moved to reconnect with them, says Jaczko.The safety of Americans, he says, relies as much onthe people who procure computer systems and keepthe phones working as it does on the people who inspectnuclear reactors.“We really went out and emphasized the importanceof those non-direct mission functions that arejust as important to public health and safety as thepeople who have their engineering degrees,” Jaczkosays. “Everybody here has a responsibility for safety.Everybody is part of the team and a part of the family.”Human FactorsTo a large degree, NRC’s success hinges on attracting,motivating and retaining top-shelf talent. FollowingThree Mile Island, it became clear that the regulatorsas well as plant operators had focused too littleattention on the human factor.“Human performance is such an important piece forsafe operation,” Jaczko said during an October 2010presentation at The Brookings Institution in Washington.“In examining the events leading up to really theworst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear industry,the administration at the time and the Congressrecognized really two fundamental issues: One, thatthe NRC’s regulatory failures had really been part ofthe contributing factor to that accident. And that two,some of those failures were really rooted ultimately inthe agency’s institution, the structure and the foundationof the agency itself,” Jaczko continued. “Effectiveregulation involves more than just the right scientificand technical data. It also involves having the rightkind of management structure and the managementsystem in place.”Thus, Jaczko says, NRC strives to get the right peoplein the right jobs and to provide the training theyneed to function at a high level. It employs a skilledworkforce with expertise in chemistry, nuclear physics,engineering and law. During the recent staff expansion,the agency enlisted people from industry,the Defense Department and colleges and universitiesto groom potential employees.NRC’s regulatory duties—including oversight ofreactor equipment and those who operate it—mustevolve with the industry. For example, new reactors willcome equipped with digital control rooms “that createnew challenges for us,” Jaczko says. In response,NRC is developing protocols for inspecting new digitaltools and for ensuring “the right kind of training for theoperators.”“A digital control system may be handling a lot ofissues on its own, versus the old system where theoperators had to take a lot of specific and direct actions.It means you have to change how you go abouttraining someone,” Jaczko says. “How do you knowif somebody is prepared to deal with an incident ifthey’re using a mouse as opposed to overseeing ormanipulating valves and pumps? It’s a very differentway to train and to ensure competency.”Even as technology changes, the value of institutionalknowledge remains high. But NRC’s deep reservesof in-house knowledge have been drained inrecent years by the retirement of NRC veterans whojoined during the boom years of the 1960s and 1970s.Today, nearly half the workforce has been at the agencyfive years or less. To prevent the brain drain frombecoming a knowledge drain, NRC put in place a rigorousknowledge-transfer program to capture collectivewisdom before it walked out the door.For example, NRC has developed an enterprise so-S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 27

cial networking tool on its intranet to enable employeesto collaborate and share information. It supportsblogs, video posting, collaboration on documentsand networking. It can transform online discussionsinto written documents for storage and search. NRCalso has shot video interviews with workers who areleaving the agency and with subject matter expertsto capture their knowledge and experience. The NRCstaff uses the social networking tool to gain accessto expertise, conduct and receive mentoring and engagewith other employees.Open and TransparentThe NRC strives to communicate openly with boththe industry it oversees and the citizens it answersto, according to Jaczko and other NRC officials. Theysay open dialogue is a safety protocol. So NRC putsreams of information, “good, bad and ugly,” on itspublic Web site, says Eliot Brenner, the director of theOffice of Public Affairs, including safety reviews andother data, excluding proprietary information, aboutevery operating and proposed nuclear reactor in theUnited States. The new licensing process providesopportunities for public participation throughout ratherthan only at the end as in the past.Strong public involvement strengthens public policy,Jaczko says. On his watch, the agency has developeda blog for disseminating technical information to thepublic in a form that lay readers can digest. Jaczkosays the NRC embraced the administration’s opengovernment initiative.“Given the controversies over nuclear power, it’sreally incumbent upon us to be an open and transparentagency,” Jaczko says. “That’s a legacy thatthis agency has had for a long time, and it’s certainlybeen something that’s been important to mepersonally.”He has bucked tradition by suggesting that thefive-member commission might operate moretransparently. At present, members vote on policyissues and other matters by paper ballot. Resultsof those votes are revealed only after a majority ofcommissioners has prevailed.“It would be more transparent if we were makingour decisions in actual real-time voting sessions. Itwould be a change for the agency, but it’s somethingI certainly think would enhance opennessand transparency,” Jaczko says. “It’s something Iwill continue to discuss with my colleagues.”‘No. 1 Priority’The agency’s proposed fiscal 2012 budget seeks$1.04 billion, a decrease of $28.7 million below fiscal2010. The decline reflects a projected decline inlicensing applications, according to a NRC news release.Most of the requested funds—$800.8 million—would be designated for nuclear reactor safety. “Thenew challenges in front of us are happening in thecontext of an expectation that we will do it more efficientlyand effectively than we’ve ever done it,” Jaczkosays. “I’m pleased to say that the agency is in agood position to do that. We have very good peoplehere who are constantly looking to do things betterand finding ways to improve.”Jaczko holds that federal agencies can be modelsof efficiency and effectiveness. Regulators, such asNRC, have to be, he says. One need look no furtherthan the Gulf oil spill, the financial debacle on WallStreet or the recent mine disaster in West Virginia to28 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

grasp the consequences of ineffective regulation, hesays.“With our limited resources, we don’t want to bechasing things that just aren’t that important from asafety perspective,” the chairman says. “We want tomake sure we are focused on those things that havethe most impact and the most importance to safety.”Jaczko is overseeing a streamlining of reactor licensingand increasing opportunities for public input.Under a two-stage process the NRC had used foryears, utilities could secure a license to build a newreactor at a cost of billions of dollars, only to fail toget a license to operate it because safety concernsweren’t adequately considered early on. Now theagency has expanded public participation throughoutthe licensing process, rather than reserving it to theend, so safety issues surface earlier.The agency also has begun using alternative resolutionto handle issues, ranging from contract disputesto discussions with licensees about how to handle enforcementactions, without resorting to civil penaltiesand other punitive measures.NRC is benchmarking administrative functions,such as procurement, against the best practices ofother federal agencies. “To make our internal processesa little more effective, a little more strategic. . . we’re working to incorporate [those strategies]here,” Jaczko says. “When we’re spending taxpayermoney, we want to do that in the most effective waypossible.”Other federal organizations are tapping NRC’s expertise,particularly in safety and interaction with industryand the public, Jaczko says. Foreign governmentsseeking to develop or expand nuclear energyprograms frequently also look to the NRC. A formerNRC senior manager, for example, heads the nuclearregulatory agency of the United Arab Emirates, whichis building a nuclear power program from scratch.And now, 11 NRC staffers are in Tokyo, assisting anincreasingly desperate effort to stanch the release ofradioactivity and ward off a meltdown at the crumblingand increasingly unstable Daiichi plant. But evenamidst the urgency, Jaczko still intends to keep theNRC focused on Job 1.“Our No. 1 priority will continue to be the safetyand security of the existing [U.S. reactor] fleet. So wedon’t intend to take resources away from that activityto help staff this effort to analyze what happened inJapan,” he assured interviewers on C-SPAN’s “Newsmaker’s”program on March 20.JOHN Pulley is a veteran journalist in the Washington,D.C., area and founder of The Pulley Group, aneditorial services agency.This satellite view shows the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunamithat hit the northeast coast of Japan on March 11, 2011.PHOTO BY DIGITALGLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGESS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 29

Man of thePeopleFor William Borchardt,trust—earned fromthe public and sharedamong his staff—is thecore of nuclear safety.By John PulleyPHOTOGRAPHY By JAMES KEGLEYAs point man in charge of day-to-day operations at the NuclearRegulatory Commission, William Borchardt isn’t afraid to buck tradition.With public safety on the line, he says, he will do whatever is necessary“to make sure that all the trains are running on schedule.”Three years ago, when Borchardt, 55, assumed his current positionas NRC’s executive director for operations—its chief operating officer—he challenged the agency’s hierarchy, introducing the principle of “situationalleadership,” that the most qualified available person should lead,regardless of title, rank or salary.“I don’t care where you’re at in the organization chart,” Borchardt says.“If a Grade 11 person is the best person to head up a project, it’s perfectlyacceptable. It’s a good thing if we have a senior executive report-30 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

ing to that Grade 11. What’s wrongwith that?”He introduced the concept expectinga few noses to be bent outof joint, so he braced himself.“I was waiting for outrage fromthe [senior executives],” he recalls.It never materialized. “They said‘That’s absolutely right.’“You have to give yourself andthe organization permission to operatein the way that most of uswould like to operate. Some organizationsseem trapped in [themindset of] ‘You can’t do that.There’s some rule.’“My job is to say: ‘There’s norule. Do this.’”Serious About SafetyBorchardt graduated from theU.S. Naval Academy, in 1978, witha bachelor’s degree in chemistryand served five years in the Navy’snuclear submarine force. He marriedin 1982 and decided to pursuea civilian career, taking a positionat NRC in 1983 as a reactor inspectorat the Region I office, Kingof Prussia, Pa. He planned to stayjust long enough to get a feel forthe civilian work world. His intentionwas to “jump off from thereand start my career.”He never left. Over his 28 yearsat the NRC, he has had “12 or 15different jobs.” He served as inspectorat the Hope Creek NuclearGenerating Station in New Jersey,in the late 1980s. One of the lastnuclear plants built in the country,Hope Creek began operatingin 1986. He also was an inspectorat two operating reactors in NewEngland, posts that provided “agreat foundation of what this industryis all about and how seriouslyeverybody involved with ittakes nuclear safety.”More recently, following enactmentof the 2005 Energy PolicyAct and the licensing activity itwas expected to spur, he createdthe NRC’s Office of New Reactors.“The NRC turned out to be sucha highly motivating place to work. . . I never seriously consideredleaving,” explains Borchardt.Mission TrumpsThe NRC’s culture, he says, offerschances for people like him,who know the agency inside out,to challenge conventional wisdom.But as much as he is comfortabledisrupting hierarchy, Borchardtenthusiastically upholds what herefers to as the agency’s “firstprinciples,” the guidelines andtouchstones that undergird organizationalcohesion and sharpenmission focus.Standing up the Office of NewReactors, for example, was donein accordance with the most inviolableof NRC’s institutional tenets:preserving the health and safety ofthe American people.“The fact that we created thatoffice is reflective of the way theNRC operates. We’re all aboutfirst principles,” Borchardt says.“Clearly, the most important thingwe do and what this agency is allabout is the safety of the operatingreactors. Rather than dilutethe attention of the people whohave responsibility for oversight ofoperating reactors, we created awhole new organization to do thenew reactor work.”The Office of New Reactors hasregulatory authority over siting,licensing and oversight for newcommercial power reactors. Thecreation of that office reflects theimportance of getting in front oftrends that can affect the agency’sability to fulfill its mission. TheNRC cannot afford to be reactive,Borchardt says.“The Energy Policy Act of 2005really gave a shot of energy to theindustry to create new designsfor the next generation of nuclearplants,” he says. “The NRC recognizedthat there would be a significantworkload [increase], and wemoved to create a new office todo those design reviews. . . . I wasable to form this office before weeven got the first operating licenseapplication, so we didn’t start offbehind the eight ball.”The cooperative way the agencystood up the office illustrates howmission trumps the concerns ofcomponent organizations at theNRC, he says. “The staff that wasused to form the nucleus of thisnew organization—no pun intended—hadto come from the existingNRC,” explains Borchardt. “Youwould think that managers of allthe other offices would have createdfences around their protectedstaff, but there was none of that.“We had this very open exchangeof what was best for theagency,” he says. “I was able toseed this new organization withpeople of the highest caliber.”S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 31

‘A Sense of Trust’Maintaining communications andcredibility is a key driver of NRC’ssuccess, Borchardt says. “Wehave always strived to be openwith all stakeholders—with thepublic, with our employees, withthe industry we regulate,” hesays.Congress is a key stakeholder.When the NRC soughtto expand from 3,000 to 4,000people to keep up with demandfor regulatory services beginningin 2005, it needed a biggerbudget. Even though thenuclear industry covers about90 percent of the NRC’s operatingexpenses through licensingfees, Congress must approvespending plans.Lawmakers “authorized anappropriate increase in ourbudget,” says Borchardt, whoattributes the approval, in part,to “a sense of trust. We didn’tgo crazy with the request. Weonly asked for what we reallyneeded to do the job, and theygave us what we asked for.”Similarly, the agency hasworked to increase trust throughmodified public hearings, reviewsand license-applicationprocesses that encourage publicinvolvement. Licensing used to too late in the license-applicationbe a two-part process: The NRC review, Borchardt says.would grant a license to build a “Now, public participation isfacility and then, years later, a licenseto operate it. The process ferent points in the process,” Bor-more appropriately spaced at dif-incorporated most public input at chardt says.the end of the process, at times Equally important are productiveleading to unfortunate consequences.For example, the Shore-power industry, he says. “It’sworking relations with the nucleartheham Nuclear Power Plant, built onLong Island, N.Y., at a cost in today’sdollars of $6 billion between1973 and 1984, never producedcommercial electricity. Legitimateemergency preparedness concernsweren’t considered until farindustry and the regulators workingtogether to create a safe industry.They realize that the absoluteworst thing they could do is cut acorner and cause a serious accident.They would devastate theirown company as well as the wholeindustry.”Indeed, the nuclear energyindustry “has spoken relativelyfavorably about the workwe’re doing on the new reactordesign reviews,” says Borchardt,even though they cantake several years to complete.Regulated companies aren’tdissatisfied with the pace because“it’s more important thatit be done correctly and bedone thoroughly than be donefast,” he says.Borchardt is emphasizingcultivation of a moreinterdependent mindset,one in which “you trust yourcolleagues to do their job...”Flipping the PyramidBorchardt has broad oversightof agency employees, includingpeople in the headquartersorganization, four regional offices,resident inspectors whowork at every operating nuclearfacility, and a training centerin Chattanooga, Tenn. “I viewmy job as one of enabling thesuccess of individuals withinthe agency to accomplish theagency’s mission,” he says.To illustrate, he refers to the standardmodel of hierarchical organization,the pyramid. Then he flipsit. “I think of myself as being at thebottom, supporting the success ofthe inspectors in the field. It’s myjob to make sure that they have thetools, the skills, the training andthe information they need to be32 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

PHOTO BY BRENDAN HOFFMAN/GETTY IMAGESWilliam Borchardt, Executive Director for Operations at the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission (L), and Dr. Gregory B. Jaczko, Chairman of the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission, testify about the nuclear situation in Japan on Capitol Hill on March16, 2011.successful. I see my job as beinga clay layer to keep all the politicalnoise from getting to them.”Borchardt says he relies on “ahandful of core values” to empowerNRC’s workforce. Those valuesinclude trusting his people, operatingas much as possible like aflat organization, eliminating intraagencystovepipes and promotinga culture of trust.“My premise is that every oneof the 4,000 people who come towork here want to work hard. Theywant to accomplish somethingand they want to go home at theend of the day feeling good abouthaving done something,” Borchardtsays. “My job is to clearlydefine what it is we’re trying to doand to help them succeed throughwhatever mechanism I can utilize.I’ve yet to be disappointed usingthat logic.”Those mechanisms take manyforms. The NRC is an aggressiveuser of flexible schedule programs,Borchardt says. More than49 percent of its workers telework,according to a recent Office ofPersonnel Management report. 1The use of those tools has earnedthe agency a reputation as one ofthe best places to work in the federalgovernment. 2“We’re not a perfectly flat organization,but we try to operatewith a flat mentality, with a lot ofinformation sharing and no bureaucraticbarriers. Anybody cancome in here and talk to me, inthe hallway or downstairs whenI’m eating lunch. There’s very littlebureaucracy.”His big focus last year was promotinga more collaborative workenvironment. Currently, Borchardtis emphasizing cultivation of amore interdependent mindset, onein which “you trust your colleaguesto do their job [in order] to help yoube successful, so your success orfailure isn’t perfectly under yourcontrol.”He promotes open, collaborativework environments and interdependenceduring all-hands meetings,through videos disseminatedthroughout the agency, and byway of his leadership team.“It takes a lot of faith in your coworkersand the organization forthat to happen, but that is wherewe’re going,” says Borchardt.JOHN PULLEY is a veteran journalistin the Washington, D.C., areaand founder of The Pulley Group,an editorial services agency.1 “Status of Telework in the Federal Government,” February 2011 http://www.telework.gov/Reports_and_Studies/Annual_Reports/2010teleworkreport.pdf2 “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government 2010,” Partnership for Public Service, http://ourpublicservice.org/OPS/publications/viewcontentdetails.php?id=149S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 33

Mary Glackin, Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, NOAA34 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

WeatheringChangeMary Glackin applies science and service to keep citizensinformed of the changing environment around them.By John PulleyPHOTOGRAPHY By CHRIS FLYNNToday, the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration warns of flash floods 15minutes before they hit—a life-or-death difference forsomeone hiking in a slot canyon, for instance. It’s ahuge advance from 1977, when Mary Glackin joinedthe agency. Back then, “we had zero lead time,” sherecalls. “Once it started, we’d tell you about it.”Glackin, 56, NOAA’s deputy under secretary for operations,started her career in the agency’s NationalWeather Service, so she’s proud of the flood-warningprogress. But NOAA’s newest early-warning challengeswamps the challenge of predicting flash floods. Theagency is taking on the all-encompassing effects ofchanges in the earth’s climate.Aspects of climate—such as future precipitationand temperatures; ocean currents, levels and acidification;and even melting rates for sea ice—affect multiplefacets of life and business. For example, climateplays an important role when deciding power plant locations,setting home insulation standards, predictingcrop yields and fishing hauls, plotting shipping routesand scheduling sporting events. So governments,businesses, nonprofits and universities are clamoringfor climate data. While NOAA has addressed climateissues for years in different parts of its organization,the agency is now proposing to create a single climateservice to integrate its approach.Building the new service will require the largest realignmentin the history of the $5.5 billion, 13,000-employeeagency, but far from the only one, Glackinsays. The agency continually adapts to the oceansand atmosphere it monitors. “I’ve seen a tremendousamount of change in 33 years,” she says. “One of thethings that has driven it is our understanding of howthe earth system works and how earth sciences work.”NOAA’s fiscal 2012 budget request outlines the newClimate Service, pending congressional approval. Itis to be cost neutral, bringing together capabilitiesnow dispersed across existing organizations. Its budgetwould be $346 million with a staff of 610, and itwould be comprised of people and funding from threeline offices: the National Weather Service, Office ofOceanic and Atmospheric Research and the NationalEnvironmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 35

NOAA looks forward to a day when, as the NationalWeather Service did with weather forecasting, the ClimateService will spawn a new private industry providingservices and products based on climate data.The Climate Service will play an important role inNOAA’s overall mission of rendering U.S. ecosystems,communities and economies more resilient inthe face of change. “By providing critical planninginformation that our businesses and our communitiesneed, the NOAA Climate Service will help tacklehead-on the challenges of mitigating and adaptingto climate change,” said then-Commerce SecretaryGary Locke at the February 8, 2010 announcement ofthe new service.If the reorganization goes well, it will be a major partof Glackin’s professional legacy. “It’s a nice time tobe at NOAA because the science is exciting, and society’sdemand for information is at an all-time high,”she says.Connecting the DataNOAA likes to combine knowledge and people in innovative,practical and sometimes surprising ways,Glackin points out. For example, management of thenation’s fisheries and marine sanctuaries, an importantpart of NOAA’s mission, has benefited from anoverhaul of the National Weather Service and an expandedcapacity for using more sophisticated satellitesthat came on line during Glackin’s tenure.“When I came into the agency, there was very littleconnection between the people who were makingweather forecasts for things like precipitation and thepeople who were managing fisheries,” Glackin says.“Today we know how a harmful algae bloom [that killsfish] develops and how it is influenced by precipitationpatterns. Across NOAA, you have people workingtogether collaboratively to provide innovative servicesthat nobody really thought about 33 years ago.”Glackin played a key role in modernizing the weatherservice to better connect forecasters with data andto enable its forecasts to be more broadly used. From1993 to 1999 she directed the program building theAdvanced Weather Interactive Processing System(AWIPS), a 10-year project at the core of the NWSmodernization. AWIPS gave forecasters, for the firsttime, access to Doppler radar data, satellite imagery,automated weather observations and computer-generatedforecasts from a single work station.Even before the Climate Service goes into action,NOAA has been moving to better corral and presentclimate data. In February 2010, the agency unveiled aprototype Climate Services portal 1 that will evolve intoa go-to Web site for NOAA’s climate data, products,and services for all users. Initially, the site is focusingon displaying some of NOAA’s most popular datasets, along with an online magazine, video interviews1 http://www.climate.govNOAA “‘called on the breadth of its expertise,’” Glackin says—from seafood safety to air quality—to respond to the massive oilspill from the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.36 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

“Our mission is fabulous: saving lives andproperty, and really making sure thesetreasures of resources are able to be usedtoday and into the future.”—Mary Glackin, Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, NOAAPHOTO COURTESY OF NOAAwith agency scientists, a climate statistics dashboard,a news feed, maps and other material.Fascinated by WeatherAt a young age, Glackin developed what she calls“an obvious fascination with weather. One of my earliestformative memories has to do with a hurricanethat was not forecast,” she says of a 1962 event nearPhiladelphia. She remembers “being sent to schoolin the morning and released at noon time [because]first-graders shouldn’t be walking home from school”in a hurricane.She came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, whenthe earth sciences movement was in full swing, shesays. The native Pennsylvanian “was raised like a lotof people of my generation—out the front door in themorning . . . raised in the environment.”Her family has owned a home on Long Beach Island,N.J., for decades, “so I’ve always had a connectionto the ocean,” Glackin says. She remembersa family beach trip that ended abruptly in the middleof the night, as her parents packed five kids in the carand fled just ahead of an encroaching storm that theyhadn’t known about only hours earlier.She graduated from the University of Maryland,in 1982, earning a degree in computer science withcoursework in meteorology. “There is a very strongconnection between computer science and meteorology,”she says. “Meteorologists own some of thebiggest, fanciest [mathematical] equations that youneed computers to solve. So I came to work for theNational Weather Service.”‘Science, Service, Stewardship’When Glackin joined NOAA, the agency was less thana decade old. Created by the Nixon administration in1970 as part of the Commerce Department, NOAAbrought together three of the oldest federal agencies:the Coast and Geodetic Survey, formed in 1807; theWeather Bureau, formed in 1870; and the Bureau ofCommercial Fisheries, formed in 1871.Six line organizations create a range of productsand services—including daily weather forecasts, severestorm warnings, climate monitoring, fisheriesmanagement, coastal restoration and the support ofmarine commerce—that affect one-third of the country’sgross domestic product.“Science, service and stewardship underscoreNOAA’s mission,” Glackin says. “All of these piecesinterplay.”Glackin has held top posts in three of NOAA’s sixline offices. The National Weather Service, whichGlackin headed as acting assistant administrator forseveral months in 2007 after running the AWIPS program,provides weather, hydrologic and climate forecastsand warnings to protect life and property andenhance the economy.The National Environmental Satellite, Data and InformationService, where Glackin was deputy assistantadministrator from 1999 to 2002, provides environmentaldata from satellites and other sources. Glackinalso served a term at the Office of Program Planningand Integration as assistant administrator. The officeoversees strategic planning, performance evaluation,program integration and policy integration.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 37

“Today we know how harmful algae blooms develop and areinfluenced by precipitation patterns,” says Glackin.The Advantage of ExperienceHaving witnessed and managed more than three decadesof change, Glackin has the advantage of experienceas NOAA moves to create a new service.Realigning NOAA’s climate functions, she says, parallelsthe overhaul of the National Weather Service inthe 1980s and 1990s.“There was on ongoing recognition that our warningsweren’t as good as they needed to be and a recognitionthat there was technology around that couldhelp to solve that problem,” Glackin says. “Radartechnology had gotten better, and we knew we couldlaunch better satellites that would improve our trackingof storms. . . . But we knew, much like we do inclimate today, that we didn’t have the right organizationalstructure to do it.“We basically changed the whole technologicalbase. We brought in new science and basically upgradedthe skill set of our work force,” Glackin says.NOAA has continued to refine its operations, largelyby “making connections,” Glackin says. This was especiallytrue in response to the explosion of the DeepwaterHorizon offshore oil-drilling rig in April 2010 andsubsequent three-month massive oil spill in the Gulfof Mexico. The spill “required us to call on the breadthof NOAA’s expertise, and not only the obvious thingslike the safety of seafood,” says Glackin. “One of theinteresting pieces for me has been how some of ourair quality work has been contributing to the overallaccounting for how much oil was ultimately leaked. Ittook all parts of NOAA to meet this challenge.”The Deepwater Horizon spill, Glackin says, underscoredhow much remains unknown about marineecosystems, including how much of the spilledoil was eaten by microbes and the continuing aftereffectsof the spill. “We continue to assess theimpact of the oil spill on that ecosystem,” Glackinsays. “It’s still not over [as of March 2011]. We havetwo areas of the Gulf that are closed to fishingtoday.”Change From WithinGlackin’s preferred management approach “is totry and do as much from the grass roots up, to reallyinvolve the workforce in helping to set and refinethe vision for where we’re going,” she says. In fact,the initiative to create a Climate Service was drivenby teams within NOAA “that looked at what the needwas and what some of the options were,” she says.Glackin ticks off the challenges of creating a ClimateService. First, there is the challenge of managingstakeholders’ expectations “because reorganizationovernight won’t transform us and make things a wholestep better the next day.”Second, is change management. “At a global levelpeople can buy into change, but when it comes downto their particular area, they don’t actually plan onchanging themselves,” Glackin says. “We have someof those challenges.” NOAA must be careful to maintainthe integrity of its science as it realigns itself, “ensuringthat we do it in the most transparent way andthat we are conveying confidence in our science,” shesays.But Glackin is optimistic that NOAA can once againadapt to the changing needs of Americans and theearth. “Having your workforce engaged and committedto goals are key,” she says. That’s not hard atNOAA, she adds. “Our mission is fabulous: savinglives and property, and really making sure these treasuresof resources are able to be used today and intothe future.”John Pulley is a veteran journalist in the Washington,D.C., area and founder of The Pulley Group, aneditorial services agency.PHOTO COURTESY OF NOAA38 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

ClimateIntelligenceJoe Klimavicz isharnessing vastquantities of trustedenvironmental dataand putting it into thehands of the people.By John PulleyPHOTOGRAPHY By CHRIS FLYNNForecasting changes in weather and climate —and their influenceon human health, economic vitality and environmental sustainability—isa big numbers game. The National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration uses numerous observation platforms—satellites, aircraft,ships, buoys and in-place sensors—to siphon a steady torrent of rawenvironmental data into the agency’s computer systems.“It’s like a vacuum cleaner for environmental data,” says JoeKlimavicz, who as NOAA’s chief information officer has primary responsibilityfor guiding the agency’s massive Hoovering operation.NOAA assimilates, analyzes, processes and disseminates this data tothe public through multiple channels, including some 750 web sites. Thevalue of that information became widely apparent last year as millions ofgallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of theDeepwater Horizon drilling rig in April. As government agencies scram-S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 39

led to coordinate their responseand the public sought to understandthe scope of the disasterand its implication, Klimavicz’soffice went live on the web withthe Geospatial Platform. The onlinetool integrated 600 layers ofdata to provide a visual, geospatialmeans of accessing data, viapoints and clicks, that otherwisewould have been inaccessible.The new tool reflects a goal ofthe agency to take information offthe shelf and get it into the handsof people—scientists, policy makers,emergency responders andcitizens—who can use it. The siteprovides users with informationabout oil flows, habitat degradation,risks to human health andimpacts on fisheries. The day itwent live, the site attracted morethan three million visitors. To makethe site more useful, Klimaviczanticipates integrating decisionmakingtools into the geospatialplatform as a means to help usersharness the data, he told GovernmentComputer News, which recognizedNOAA’s Geospatial Plat-“We build satellites.We exploit the data.We disseminate ourdata to customers invast quantities.”—Joseph Klimavicz, CIO, NOAAform 1 as one of 10 exceptional ITachievements in government lastyear.‘Data as Our Lifeblood’Observational data collected byNOAA are the planet’s vital statistics.The quantity of informationcollected—sea surface temperatures,chlorophyll concentrationsin oceans, sea levels, air temperatures,to name a few—will increaseten-fold by 2020, Klimaviczsays. Then there is the data generatedby NOAA’s supercomputers,which run climate-forecastingmodels and produce approximately80 terabytes of data per day.The sheer volume of numberscrunched during weather, climateand hurricane forecasting is suchthat simply doubling the resolutionof the results generated by thosesimulations requires a 16-fold increasein computing capacity.Public demand for weather andclimate data doubles every year orso, as well, Klimavicz says. Duringa major snowstorm that blanketsmuch of the country, hits tothe agency’s web sites havespiked by a factor of eight.During a hurricane, traffic onthose sites have surged eightto 12 times during peak hours.“The demand and expectationscontinue going up,” saysKlimavicz. “Nobody is saying‘There is a budget crunch,so we’ll let you get by today.’Budgets are declining. My jobis to figure out the right technologypath and how to implementthat technology and manage thedata in today’s fiscally constrainedenvironment.”“I look at data as our lifeblood,”he says.Taking the Intel OutsideKlimavicz, 51, is a native of theWashington, D.C. area. He haslived and worked in and aroundthe nation’s capital for most of hislife, the past 25 years as a federalemployee. He attended college atVirginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va.,earning a Bachelor of Science in1983 and a Master of Engineeringin 1988. He is married and hasthree daughters.He entered the workforce withthe CIA as an imagery scientistcharged with developing photogrammetricmath models in theNational Photographic InterpretationCenter. He recalls that his“first job was writing optical equationsfor satellites . . . in a very intensiveenvironment. There weredays I would go to work and neversee another human being [in those]dark cold computer rooms.”He “moved around quite a bitwithin the intelligence and nationalsecurity community,” working onthe Director of Central Intelligencestaff before taking a job at the DefenseDepartment. His last positionbefore coming to NOAA wasdeputy CIO at the National Geospatial-IntelligenceAgency.“I kind of look at NOAA as havingan equivalent mission to NRO1 http://gcn.com/articles/2010/10/18/gcn-awards-noaa-geospatial-platform.aspx40 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

(National Reconnaissance Office)and NGA combined on theunclassified side of the house,”Klimavicz says. “We build satellites.We exploit the data. Wedisseminate our data to customersin vast quantities. It’s a lot ofthe same kinds of techniquesand problems.”‘ConstantlyAnalyzing the Data’Upon assuming the responsibilitiesof CIO, Klimavicz zeroed inon strengthening NOAA’s securityprofile. He immediately moved toshore up the confidentiality, integrityand availability of data that theagency needs to warn of approachingstorms, protect the country’scoasts, project the impact of climatechange and monitor air qualityin the event of a terrorist attack.The intelligence work he did priorto joining NOAA informs Klimavicz’sapproach to his current job,yet there is a big difference. Whileat the CIA and DoD, he protectedsecrets that could affect nationalsecurity. In the context of publicweather and climate data, securityis more about maintaining the integrityof information and ensuringthat it is available when needed bypublic- and private-sector decisionmakers. “Tornado warningshave to go out in seconds or minutes,”he says. “The public countson NOAA to deliver relevant, accurateand timely data.”Klimavicz’s office establishedNOAA’s Cyber Security Centerlast summer. The Security Centeruses tools to correlate security logevents across the enterprise alertinganalysts to potential securityincidents. When it is operating atfull capacity, the center will screenall the agency’s data, includingpotential breaches totaling “a billionor more raw events per day,”he says. Those initial screensidentify several thousand eventsdaily for security analysis, of which“a dozen require further investigation.. . . We are making sure we’reconstantly analyzing the data.”Going GreenAs the IT demands of NOAA’soperations expand exponentially,managing the cost of supercomputers,storage space and dedicatednetworks becomes a biggerchallenge. The electricity neededto power a computer capable ofrunning the agency’s simulationscan run to $1 million annually.The agency is consolidating IToperations, including many datacenters, currently housed at morethan 200 facilities across the country.In Hawaii, for example, theagency is consolidating at a singlelocation in Oahu a dozen smalleroffices, each with “a server room,a couple of racks of equipmentand one or two guys maintainingit,” Klimavicz says. “A lot of the satellitecommand and control operationand processing consolidationhas been done. We’ve also got allof our administrative and financialsystems in one data center.”To further enhance efficiencyand green up the agency’s operations,Klimavicz is pushing asmuch of NOAA’s IT operations aspossible to the cloud, “which allowsus to go green very quickly.”The bottom line? Budgets aredown. Demand for accurate, timelyclimate data is up. High performingtechnology at massive scale iscritical. Sustainability is imperative.In the numbers game that isclimate and weather, Klimavicz ismaking it all add up.JOHN PULLEy is a veteran journalistin the Washington, D.C., areaand founder of The Pulley Group,an editorial services agency.S P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 41

By AMANDA SPAKEPHOTOGRAPHY By JAMES KEGLEYRunning AheadRichard Spires is setting a brisk paceto push federal technology into the era of green IT.Richard Spires seems destined to take on impossibly difficult missions—and somehow make them work.Spires, 49, was appointed chief information officer at the Departmentof Homeland Security in September 2009, stepping into the shoes ofno less than seven previous CIO’s at DHS in the eight years the agencyhas existed. He has taken over responsibility for the $6.4 billion DHS hasinvested in information technology. His mission is to transformthe agency’s IT into a shared infrastructure that brings DHS’smany competing departments into one cohesive lean, greennetwork—even if it means forcing very difficult change.“These are tough jobs,” he laughs.Richard Spires, Chief Information Officer, DHS42 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

NUMBER OF DATA CENTERS BY AGENCY as of July 30, 2010SOURCE: http://www.cio.gov/documents/State-of-the-Federal-Datacenter-Consolidation-Initiative-Report.pdfIn addition to tackling the DHS technology challenge,Spires is also serving as co-chair of the FederalData Center Consolidation Initiative. The initiative is agovernment-wide effort to move all federal agenciestoward modern, energy efficient and sustainable informationtechnology by consolidating and eliminatinginefficient, redundant and outmoded IT systems.As Spires will tell you, current federal IT systems areincreasingly unsustainable. “One thing astounding tome was we are spending more and using more energyfor the chiller and all the things around the computingplatforms than the computing platforms themselves,”says Spires. Many federal servers are underutilized,typically running at less than 20 percent of their computingcapacity. Yet, they still require continual powerto maintain them. “On average, we’re using over twiceas much energy on cooling, lighting, back up, etc, thanpowering the computers themselves,” Spires adds.A Dramatic ShiftJust after Spires came on board as the CIO of DHS,the Obama administration issued Executive Order13514 directing agencies to reduce greenhouse gasemissions and energy consumption by 2020. The administrationalso ordered agencies to make plans toreduce the number of federal data centers by 800, or40 percent, by 2015. This data center consolidationprocess was accelerated last year, and overhaulingthe government’s IT infrastructure was officially linkedwith the administration’s energy and carbon footprintreduction goals.All of these directives underscore the fact that theWhite House wants to see a dramatic shift in federalIT strategy. “So we’re trying to reduce both the numberof data centers,” says Spires, “and take advantageof state of the art capabilities to reduce energyconsumption.” Moving to cloud computing where infrastructureis shared by different agencies or clients,and services are purchased and paid for by variousdepartments within agencies, is high on the federalagenda. “Right now, we’re doing it in our own facilities,”Spires says. “We have capabilities that look very44 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

much like a private cloud.” Under this new privatecloud system, DHS provides services to componentagencies, and they in turn pay for the full range of ITthey use. About half of DHS’s disparate email systems—therewere 17 different ones when Spires arrived—andthe IT for headquarters will be the first touse the centralized DHS services.Though he believes all of these changes in IT infrastructureare critical to the long-term sustainability ofDHS, and the government generally, Spires is findingthat shared IT is sometimes a tough sell. “This is noteasy,” he says, “because agencies and departmentsare very reluctant to give up control of their own dataoperations.”Spires is one of a team of people advising agenciesthroughout the government on how to green theirIT, making sure they understand not only the environmental,but also the administrative benefits it will provide.“It’s a cost savings measure, and the administrativeburden is lower,” he explains. “It gives a managermore ability to redeploy resources. Sustainability andenergy savings are a part of that.”DHS itself has begun the process of consolidating24 data centers into two, one in Virginia, and one inMississippi. The process is on track to be completedby 2014. As a result, Spires thinks the effort to greenIT within his agency has reached “the tipping point.”“We’ve stood up two new data centers and we’retrying to move everyone into these two new data centers.”Before, when Spires would explain to officials inthe 22 various departments that make up DHS that acentralized data processing center offsite would havethe capability to provide their IT needs, they were incredulous.“They would be looking at me, like, ‘Oh really?You think you have the capabilities to run ourmission critical systems? Oh really?’“But now [that the two new data centers are up andrunning] they can’t make the argument that we don’thave the wherewithal to do it. Now the problem is acceptingthe sense of losing some control.”It’s that cultural change that Spires, like many federalCIO’s involved in greening IT, understands is troublingto agencies accustomed to trusting technologythey can see and touch. “It’s our biggest challenge—getting people to understand that moving to a sharedinfrastructure is beneficial for them and their departmentin the long run.”Tough CustomerIf anyone can push federal technology into the era ofgreen IT, it’s Spires. Spires is deep into technology athis core. He graduated from the University of Cincinnatiwith a degree in electrical engineering, and decidedto pick up a math degree “as a hobby.” “So thatgives you an idea of the kind of person I am,” he tolda radio interviewer.Born in New Jersey, he grew up in Colorado andOhio, as his father moved the family to follow his workas an electrical engineer for AT&T Bell Labs. “My Dadhad a big impact on me,” Spires says, “but I never feltpressure to choose any particular career.”After graduating from college, Spires spent 16 yearsat SRA International of Fairfax, Va. Then he and apartner spun off a start up company, Mantas, that developeddata mining solutions so big banks and brokeragehouses on Wall Street could recognize moneylaundering, trading noncompliance, securities fraudand other surreptitious activities that could land themin hot water with federal authorities. “I like to say thatI have dealt with some of the toughest customers youcan possibly deal with,” Spires says.He ran Mantas successfully for about four years.Then he began talking with friends who were workingin government. “I always wanted to do public service,he says, but always thought that would be in the twilightof my career.” People he knew at the IRS begandiscussing their need for someone to run a massivemodernization effort of the IRS business services division.This was one of the largest, most complex technologymodernization efforts ever undertaken. “OnceI understood what it was, I thought ‘Wow, a chance torun that would be quite an undertaking.’” So he surprisedhimself and signed on with the IRS in 2004.The job was essentially Mission Impossible I. “Themodernization effort involved updating the core applicationsthat support tax administration in the U.S,”says Spires. This involved overhauling over 400 systemsthat administer more than 200 million taxpayerS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 45

ecords. “The technical complexity was staggering.”About two and a half years later, the IRS asked himto become their chief information officer, and not longafter, deputy commissioner for operations support.He stayed until 2008.“So I had a good run there at the IRS, four and a halfyears. I worked hard and I needed a break. So I tooka year off, did some consulting, and tried to figure outwhat to do with my life.”Going the DistanceBut his break did not last long. In 2009, he got a callfrom the incoming Obama administration asking him ifhe was ready to take on Mission Impossible II. Spireswas asked to become the CIO of the Department ofHomeland Security and assist DHS in upgrading its ITinfrastructure to a greener, more sustainable model.Spires knew that DHS was a mammoth agency thathad experienced difficult IT challenges in its short history.DHS systems were all the more important to thenation because the DHS mission involves among themost critical government functions—protecting theborders, protecting the coasts, protecting the airlines,protecting the President, providing aid and comfort tocitizens after natural disasters and much more. Stillin its early years, DHS was created from 22 differentagencies that previously had been spread throughoutthe government, and often operated different emailand IT systems, few of which interfaced. Just mergingthese IT systems would be a Herculean task.Plus, the new administration desperately neededtalent to help move all federal agencies to moderntechnology, relying on smaller, greener, more sustainableshared infrastructure.While some technologists would have run the otherway, Spires saw the offer as “a chance to make a difference.I’d had enough success in the commercialworld so I could do this financially.” He was also attractedby the idea that the Obama administrationwanted him, specifically, not just a suit to fill a seat.“I’m an independent,” he says. “I’m not even a Democrat.”He asked the transition team liaison why theywould ever want to hire him, given his lack of involvementin the campaign or the Democratic Party. “Andthey told me because they thought I could do thejob! To me that was impressive. It made me say ‘Heymaybe this is a place I want to work.’”Spires had recharged his batteries during his yearoff. “This was the chance to take on something reallychallenging.” Rather, it was another chance, likethe IRS modernization. “I’m very driven,” Spires adds.“Some might say overly so. But I try to keep it inbalance.”Spires admits he works 12 hours a day, and onweekends. Yet, he’s feeling more relaxed, now that thetwo major data centers have come online, six olderones have been closed, and top-quality permanentstaff have been hired to move the DHS transformationforward, faster. “I don’t feel nearly as stressed as I didthe first 18 months I was here,” he adds.But Spires acknowledges that DHS is still wrestlingwith becoming one agency, and that has a major impacton how quickly—and with what level of success—Spires can meet his new challenges. “This is a difficultjob,” he admits. “. . . You are supposed to be anamazing change agent, but when something breaks,everybody is screaming at you. DHS is a harder placeto deal with than the IRS. On pure technology, the IRSwas more complex. But the IRS had a uniform culture,few political appointees, and actually no political environmentexcept at the very top.“Here, at DHS, you have many different cultures. . . and a very political environment because youhave so many political appointees. And I am one. Sothe cultural differences, the immaturity of the processesbecause it is such a young department—kindof a start-up agency—it’s a very different challengethan that at the IRS.”Spires knows that changes in culture and thinkingas great as those involved in federal agencies givingup control of their own data systems does not happenovernight. But he’s prepared to go the distance. A runnersince high school when he competed in track andfield, he has the endurance of a marathoner, which hehas been, and the optimism of a winner.AMANDA SPAKE is a former staff writer at U.S. Newsand World Report and the Washington Post Magazine.She lives at the Chesapeake Bay, in Churchton, Md.46 Leadership | CGI INITIATIVE FOR COLLABORATIVE GOVERNMENT | S P R I N G 2 0 11

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