Less than four months away from a decision that will not only shape our workforce but the national landscape, both presumptive presidential nominees, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ), continue to give little insight into how they would manage the federal civilian workforce.

Sure, the military gets the high profile jobs, but there are 1.9 million other federal employees (excluding postal workers) that are called on to react to national disasters, international crises, and to oversee the economy, housing, and public health: hardly trivial tasks. Are we to believe the next Chief Executive has no plan for managing this workforce?

Clearly, a national discourse must transpire to give greater insight into the myriad of ways government affects our daily lives. Arguably, the lack of attention given to the operations of executive departments has helped the Bush administration ignore the management of these important civilian organizations as well. That is of course until a disaster like the Katrina response brings the issue front and center. 

One need not look very far to find fault in our government; just pick up any newspaper or turn on the Lou Dobbs show for thirty seconds; he's made a career out of verbally abusing the feds.

Data from the current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) management scorecard also shows that many federal agencies have taken a step backward on the Bush administration's five major management initiatives. It's not difficult to imagine this could stem from a lack of pressure from a White House distracted by an economic crises and the seemingly endless Iraq War.

So where do Obama and McCain stand on the federal workforce? 

According to The Next Government, a project of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, McCain would like to make it easier to fire federal employees who are poor performers, and to outsource more government work to contractors. He also wants to launch an executive search initiative to bring talented business leaders into vacant federal jobs.

Obama recently expanded upon how he would run government during a Q & A while campaigning in Albuquerque, NM. He called for a government that was not bigger but smarter, and stated that he would:

• Conduct a federal audit and fund programs that worked and eliminate programs that did not,
• Ensure that government was open and transparent to the American people, and
• Hire the best to serve in government

Although interesting and potentially helpful, neither McCain or Obama intend to do what the best Chief Executives have always done: get their information from the ground up. How about asking the federal employees what's broken, what they want to fix, what kind of red tape ties their hands and prevents them from ding their jobs? True leaders, after all, implement a broad vision that is strongly advised by the people they oversee.

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