The Presidential Transition Year - Navigating the Perils and Opportunities Training Workshop for Government

Overview:

On January 20, 2017 there will be a new President of the United States, but beneath the surface the transition period really has already begun. The last year of a President’s term poses both great dangers and opportunities for career civil servants, and the higher rank of those civil servants, the greater are both the opportunities and the risks. As outgoing political appointees focus intensely on both getting a new job outside of government and trying to achieve a small remaining number of legacy items for the outgoing President, career civil servants find themselves alternately ignored and driven hard by the outgoing political leadership. This is a period where morale often suffers along the entire agency chain of command, as the agency political leadership is distracted from much of the routine but essential work of government. Furthermore, career senior executives ponder their own future at the prospect of breaking in a new batch of appointees, most of whom will at best be new to government, or at worst openly suspicious of the career civil servants they are expected to manage. After the brief euphoria of the election, comes the three-month race to prepare for the transition to the incoming Administration, but the reality is that pains of transition extend throughout out the first year of the new Administration. It is this first year where career civil servants face the greatest career opportunities and risks.

The workshop will present a survival guide on how civil servants can successfully navigate through the last year of a President’s second term of office, and the critical first year of a new Presidency, when many careers are made or broken.

What You Will Learn:

What to expect during the last year of a President’s second term
How to get and keep the attention of political appointees distracted by their own job search
How to keep the government functioning as political appointees rapidly exit their posts
How to be a loyal and effective civil servant for the outgoing Administration without damaging your credibility with the incoming Administration
How to structure your work to best get the limited attention of the outgoing political appointees
How to prepare transition papers for the incoming Administration
Understanding the role of the Transition Team
How to start off on the right foot with your agency’s new team of political appointees
How to educate the new political appointees on how the federal government works to help them adjust and to protect yourself
How to adjust emotionally and professionally to potentially dramatic changes in policy or priorities
Learn about OMB’s direction to agencies on how to prepare agency budgets for the Presidential transition.

Why You Should Attend:

The last year of a Presidency presents great opportunities and potentially great risks for career civil servants and you need to know how to manage them both effectively
The first year of a new Administration is crucial to your prospects for career advancement or career stagnation
Training new political appointees is a difficult and sensitive task, but you need to know how to do it
You want to be able to effectively communicate with new political appointees to help your program and yourself succeed

Who Should Attend:

Managers in politically sensitive programs
Managers in programs that are active topics of discussion by the Presidential candidates
Managers in programs that are ignored by the Presidential candidates
Managers who have never had to train new political leaders
Managers in HR, acquisition, IT, and budget, who have the most professional risk if their new political leaders make bad or illegal decisions
Chief Human Capital Officers
Chief Financial Officers
Senior Procurement Executives
Performance Improvement Officers
Chief Information Officers
All Executives, Managers and Staff who will be briefing or interacting with transition teams or preparing for the transition

Format:

Lecture, small group discussion, panel discussion, federal executive guest speakers

Speaker and Presenter Information

Keynote Speaker:

Dan G. Blair

President and CEO
National Academy of Public Administration

Dan G. Blair was named President and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration in July 2011. The Academy is an independent, non-profit, and non-partisan organization, chartered by Congress to assist government leaders in building more effective, efficient, accountable, and transparent organizations.

Mr. Blair was elected as an Academy Fellow in 2008. In November 2009, Mr. Blair was chosen to present, as part of an Academy team, to senior members of the Iraqi government at a conference in Baghdad to discuss the fundamentals of an effective civil service. He also served on the Academy Panel charged with assessing the design, implementation, and Impact of the Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System.

Mr. Blair brings to the Academy more than 26 years of federal public service and is a recognized expert and prominent leader in public service management, having served in top leadership positions in the Executive and Legislative branches as well as the regulatory sector. He has received successive Presidential appointments to the Office of Personnel Management and the Postal Regulatory Commission and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Most recently, Mr. Blair served as the first Chairman of the independent Postal Regulatory Commission, the successor agency to the Postal Rate Commission, from December 2006 through August 2009, and as Commissioner from August 2009 until June 2011. Mr. Blair also served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from 2002 through 2006. In addition to serving as Deputy Director, Mr. Blair was Acting Director of OPM for five months. Prior to joining OPM, Mr. Blair served on Capitol Hill, working for nearly 17 years on the staffs of both House and Senate committees charged with postal and civil service oversight. From 1998 through 2001, Mr. Blair served as Senior Counsel to Senator Fred Thompson on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.

Mr. Blair was responsible for review of legislation and policy affecting the federal civil service, the USPS, federal budget process, government ethics, and federal lobbying reform. Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, Mr. Blair served as Staff Director for Representative John McHugh on the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Postal Service. Mr. Blair was responsible for directing the Subcommittee's oversight of the USPS and directed the development of comprehensive postal reform legislation. Mr. Blair also served as Minority General Counsel for the House of Representatives Committee on Post Office and Civil Service from 1985 to 1994.

Guest Speakers:

Janine Velasco

Assistant Director,

Business Fiscal and Information Resources,

Bureau of Land Management,

Department of the Interior

Janine Velasco is the Assistant Director, Business, Fiscal and Information Resource Management for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Her responsibilities include overseeing the budget, finance, property and procurement, engineering and asset management, audits and Information Technology for the entire bureau.

Janine’s career as a civil servant began as a student intern with the Congressional Research Service’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. While she was completing her graduate degree, she worked for Senator Jeff Bingaman, NM as a legislative fellow. Since that time, she has held various positions with the Forest Service. She came to the Department of the Interior in 1999 with the Bureau of Reclamation where she led the bureau’s strategic planning program. In 2001, she joined the BLM as the Division Chief for Management Services and later served as the Deputy Assistant Director for Business and Fiscal Resources. In 2006, she was selected to serve as BLM’s Assistant Director for Human Capital Management, overseeing Human Resource, Training, Safety, and Civil Rights.

She has a Masters degree from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment and received her undergraduate degree from Kalamazoo College in Michigan.

Edward J. O’Hare

Senior Vice President
Tuknik Government Services

Edward J. O’Hare joined Koniag, Inc. in 2011 as the company’s Senior Vice President for the Government Services Business Sector and as President and CEO of Koniag Services, Inc., Koniag Technology Solutions, Inc., Frontier Systems Integrators, LLC, Koniag Information Security Services, LLC and Professional Computing Resources, Inc. He has extensive experience in the Information Technology and telecommunications sectors, including leading strategic planning, program management, security services and supply operations for government organizations.

Mr. O’Hare served as Assistant Commissioner for GSA’s Integrated Technology Services (ITS) portfolio within the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS). He was responsible for the largest “Fee for Service” Information Technology (IT) procurement and services operation in the United States government. Mr. O’Hare led a highly skilled and diverse workforce that managed more than seven thousand contracts, providing access to relevant and timely IT and telecommunications products, services, and solutions to defense and civilian agencies, as well as to state, local, and tribal governments.

Mr. O’Hare has a long and accomplished history with the IT industry. In 1996, he was Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Federal Supply Service and led the development of GSAAdvantage! and GSA Auctions electronic commerce systems. From 2002 to 2003 he served as Assistant Commissioner for Global Supply, helping revitalize these programs and strengthening supply chain capability to meet specialized needs, including military operations in Iraq. He then worked in private industry, as a vice president at Dynanet and a senior professional with Booz Allen Hamilton.

In 2006, Mr. O’Hare’s commitment to public service brought him back to GSA to serve as the first Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Strategic Planning and Business Process Improvement in the newly created FAS. In 2008 he was tapped to lead the IT support for the Presidential Transition to ensure its readiness after the 2008 elections. More recently, he was named to the first ever “Government CIO 50” by InformationWeek’s editorial board and received the Excellence in Partnership “Government/Industry Partnership Alliance Award” from the Coalition for Government Procurement.

Honorable Doug Domenech

Former Chief of Staff to Department of Interior
Former Virginia Secretary of National Resources
Former White House Liaison
Political, public policy and Government Affairs Expert

The Honorable Doug Domenech has over 30 years of experience in political, non-profit, government affairs and service in the natural resources, climate change, energy, and international fields.

Most recently Doug completed his appointment as Virginia's Secretary of Natural Resources managing six state environmental agencies. Previously he served President George W. Bush as Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of the Interior where he managed projects and people for Secretaries Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne. Interior is the nation's principal conservation, energy, and science agency responsible for one-fifth of the land in the U.S. and 1.76 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. Previously he served as the Department’s White House Liaison, and as Deputy Director of External and Intergovernmental Affairs where he was responsible for outreach to the nation’s conventional and renewable energy companies.

Specialties:

• Senior Executive to US Cabinet Member
• Non-profit Organization Executive Director
• PAC Manager
• Trade Association Manager
• Government Affairs Representative
• International Experience
• Significant Classified Activity
• Field forester
• 4 years state Cabinet official
• 7 years federal government senior management experience
• 15 years employment experience in forestry and forest policy
• 7 years employment experience in political, public policy, government affairs positions

Craig Crutchfield

Chief of the Interior Branch,

OMB

Craig Crutchfield has served at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 25 years, including the past nine years as Chief of the Interior Branch. In this SES position, Craig oversees a staff of up to eight examiners who review a variety of budgetary, legislative, regulatory and management issues related to the Department of the Interior. He also works with other offices in the Executive Office of the President to address interagency concerns and help formulate Administration policies related to conservation, recreation, energy and Native American concerns. Craig earned a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina. He is married with two daughters.

David Eagles

Director of the Center for Presidential Transition

Partnership for Public Service

David Eagles joined the Washington, D.C. based Partnership for Public Service in 2015 as the Director of the Center for Presidential Transition leading the initiatives to assist the presidential candidates and outgoing Administration in navigating and improving the transition process, to promote presidential transition reforms with Congress, to develop management recommendations for the next administration, and to train political appointees to lead effectively.

David previously led strategic initiatives, operational transformations and major transitions spanning the private, public and political sectors most recently serving as Vice President and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Waste Management, the Fortune 200 firm. He was also a Vice President and operating executive for multiple private equity owned portfolio companies, and a Senior Strategy and Performance Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton.

In the public sector, David was a leader for the Romney presidential transition team in 2012 and was appointed in both the Bush and Obama Administrations as the Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and as a Director for the Department of the Treasury’s financial stability efforts. He served at the senior executive service level and won the distinguished service award for his work during the housing and financial crisis.

David received a MPP in Business and Government from Harvard University and a BS in Finance from the University of Alabama.

Instructors:

Scott J. Cameron

Director, Strategic Programs,

Tuknik Government Services

(Former Appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary

Department of Interior and

Chief Human Capital Officer, E-Government Executive and

on the Executive Committee of the interagency Chief Acquisition Officers Council)

Scott J. Cameron, Director of Strategic Development at Tuknik Government Services (TGS), has 37 years of experience working inside and around the federal government. TGS is one of a family of companies under the umbrella of Koniag, Inc., an Alaska Native Corporation government consulting firm. Scott has worked in both houses of Congress, in the Executive Office of the President, as a career civil servant and as a political appointee, working deep in the bureaucracy and in the Office of the Secretary of a cabinet department. He has consulted with federal agencies on management issues working for both large and small businesses, and worked to influence the federal government as a state government employee, corporate government relations executive, and as an executive in a non-profit organization. In November 2015, he became a local government elected official, being elected as a Director of the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District, serving Fairfax County’s 1.2 million people.

Scott is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, has been designated a Strategic Advisor to Government Executives (SAGE) by the Partnership for Public Service, and also has written a column on government human capital management issues for HR News, the publication of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources.

Prior to entering consulting, Scott was a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of the Interior. There he served as Chief Human Capital Officer, E-Government Executive, had the lead on strategic planning and performance management, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the interagency Chief Acquisition Officers Council. He also directed two of OMB’s government wide E-Gov projects; Geospatial One Stop and Recreation One Stop.

Before joining Interior, Scott established the global government relations function of CHEP. CHEP is the global leader in materials handling, with business in 38 countries.

Previously, Scott represented Governor Pete Wilson of California in Washington, D.C., working with Congress and federal agencies on environmental, energy, and natural resource policy issues.

Before entering state government, Scott was Director of Conservation Policy at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, managing all of this congressionally chartered non-profit’s Congressional relations activity.

Earlier, Scott was Deputy Chief of the Interior Branch at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), part of the Executive Office of the President. He served as the program examiner for the US Geological Survey and US Fish and Wildlife Service. Earlier at OMB, he oversaw the EPA’s Office of Water and the Office of Research and Development.

From 1985 to 1989, Scott worked as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Chic Hecht (R‑NV), handling all the energy, environmental, and natural resource issues for the Senator.

Scott began his career as a Presidential Management Intern in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after earning a BA in biology from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from Cornell University, with a concentration in natural resource economics.

He was raised in New York City, is married, and has a son and two cats.

Relevant Government Agencies

Air Force, Army, Navy & Marine Corps, Intelligence Agencies, DOD & Military, Office of the President (includes OMB), Dept of Agriculture, Dept of Commerce, Dept of Education, Dept of Energy, Dept of Health & Human Services, Dept of Homeland Security, Dept of Housing & Urban Development, Dept of the Interior, Dept of Justice, Dept of Labor, Dept of State, Dept of Transportation, Dept of Treasury, Dept of Veterans Affairs, EPA, GSA, USPS, SSA, NASA, Other Federal Agencies, Legislative Agencies (GAO, GPO, LOC, etc.), Judicial Branch Agencies, State Government, County Government, City Government, Municipal Government, CIA, FEMA, Office of Personnel Management, Coast Guard, National Institutes of Health, FAA, Census Bureau, USAID, National Guard Association, EEOC