People and Performance: Challenges for the Future Public Service— the Report from the Wye River Conference
Published date | 01 January 2000 |
Author | Donald P. Moynihan,Sally Coleman Selden,Patricia Wallace Ingraham |
Date | 01 January 2000 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/0033-3352.00062 |
54 Public Administration Review • January/February 2000, Vol. 60, No. 1
Patricia Wallace Ingraham
Sally Coleman Selden
Donald P. Moynihan
The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
People and Performance:
Challenges for the Future Public Service—
the Report from the Wye River Conference
What are the key challenges for the public sector at present, and what will the future public
service look like if it is to meet these challenges? These questions were put to public-sector
leaders at a conference at the Wye River Plantation in June 1999. The leaders agreed on
aspects of a broad vision for the future and the urgent need for a detailed debate on the transi-
tion questions that arose.
Giving Priority to People and
Performance: A Federal Public Service
for the Future
From June 27–30, 1999, 25 leading public-sector prac-
titioners and scholars met at the Wye River Plantation in
Maryland to discuss the state of the federal merit system
and to outline a vision of a system responsive to changes
in the labor market and in the delivery of public services.1
At this meeting there was broad and strong consensus on
four major points:
• The people resources of government—its human capi-
tal—must be valued more highly and developed more
carefully than current practice allows;
• Performance—high performance—must become a way
of life and a critical part of the culture of the federal
service;
• Strong leadership from both political and career execu-
tives must come center stage; and
• Partnerships with unions, with other levels of govern-
ment, and with other sectors must be front-loaded and
focus on mutual goals and performance objectives.
The many ways in which the challenge was perceived
and described—a “war” for talent; a palette of choice and
opportunity; a mandatory focus on human capital; new com-
petition in a unified and hypercompetitive market; and a
necessary reexamination of leadership needs for new chal-
lenges—grew from a common foundation. If government
leaders and the public are serious about demanding better
performance from government, they must also be serious
about better ideas for the public service. Those ideas in-
clude knowing that human capital is an investment to be
carefully tended, that performance is deterred by systems
that are too complicated and often contradictory, and that
responsibility for effective and far-sighted leadership resides
with political leaders as well as with other members of the
public service. Ensuring that the federal service of the fu-
ture has the flexibility, the vigor, and the focus to be effec-
tive is a formidable task. It involves new analyses of some
of the most closely held tenets of federal service: merit, the
statutory bases of the current system, and the ideas of risk,
reward, and accountability in the public service. Without
attention to the task, effective government is at risk.
Patricia Wallace Ingraham is Distinguished Professor of Public Administra-
tion at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse Uni-
versity. She is the director of the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute
and also directs the Government Performance Project, a comprehensive
analysis of the management capacity of state and local government in the
United States.
Sally Coleman Selden is an assistant professor of public administration at
the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.
Her major areas of research interest include human resource management,
representative bureaucracy and public management. Her recent work has
focused on evaluating human resource management systems in state and
local governments.
Donald P. Moynihan is a doctoral student in public administration at the
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is a research associate
at the Alan K. Campbell Institute. His research interests are in the areas of
comparative administrative reform and performance management.
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