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.