Rice University fellow helped prepare for change-over of White House administration. The White House is no place for on-the-job training

CONTACT: B.J.
Almond
PHONE: (713) 348-6770
EMAIL: balmond@rice.edu

RICE UNIVERSITY
FELLOW HELPED PREPRARE FOR CHANGE-OVER
OF WHITE HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
Project compiled job descriptions and “lessons learned”
from former appointees

The White
House is no place for on-the-job training, but traditionally a number of
presidential appointees have had to learn their jobs with few or no guidelines
or instructions, according to Terry Sullivan, a fellow at the James A. Baker III
Institute for Public Policy of Rice University.

As associate director of
the White House 2001 Project, Sullivan has spent the past two years trying to
change that. He and Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University interviewed more
than 80 current or former White House staff members from the last six
administrations to find out how they did their jobs and what they wish they had
known before Day One. The White House 2001 Project team produced seven
notebooks, each containing approximately 600 pages, of information to assist the
new administration.

“Unlike corporations, a
White House begins without a record compiled by its previous occupants,”
Sullivan said. “The goal of the White House Interview Program is to smooth the
path to power by furnishing incoming staff with substantive information about
the operation of seven White House offices critical to an effective
beginning.”

The program focused on
the offices of the chief of staff, staff secretary, press, communications,
counsel to the president, management and administration and presidential
personnel. The role of each office was defined, and supportive tools, such as
telephone contacts, were gathered for the newcomers. The interviewees were asked
about how to do — and how not to do — their jobs so their successors could
benefit from lessons they learned from experience.

“Many of those we
interviewed told us they had to start their jobs without any organizational
charts, descriptions of their responsibilities, or ‘how to’ instructions,”
Sullivan said. “From these interviews, we were able to compile such essential
information for the incoming administration.”

The White House 2001
Project should also help smooth the way for those outside the White House office
as well, Sullivan said.

He noted that more than
6,700 jobs in the executive branch of the federal government are filled by
appointees, and only about 285 of these are in the executive office of the
president.

Most appointees have to
answer questionnaires for background checks from various divisions of
government, and often the same questions show up. To eliminate the inconvenience
of providing duplicate information on multiple forms, the White House 2001
Project also developed software for nomination forms that can be filled out
online.

“This should help avoid
wasting time, make the information more easily accessible and speed up the
review process for new appointees,” Sullivan said.

Because of the large
number of positions that have to be filled, the new presidential administration
is not likely to be fully staffed until the middle of its second year of office,
Sullivan said. But with the information he has compiled, at least many of those
new workers will know what to expect of their jobs and be better prepared to
take on their new responsibilities.

“Our interviewees said
it would have been nice to read about how to do their jobs before the actual job
responsibility hit them,” Sullivan said. “Without the introductory material and
job guidelines, it was like trying to sip water from a fire hose.”

In the 75 days between
the November 7 election and the inauguration on January 20, the new president
needs to form a White House team, designate 14 Cabinet secretaries, prepare the
inaugural address and an agenda for the nation, and send to Congress a budget
exceeding $1 trillion. Because of the delay in determining the new president
this year, George W. Bush lost a significant portion of the standard transition
time.

Sullivan hopes the
information from the White House 2001 Project will help minimize the impact of
that lost time.

“Early planning is
associated with an effective first year in office,” he said. “In a setting where
those coming into office can anticipate vacant offices and empty desk drawers,
their planning must be completed and their decision-making processes must be in
place well before they enter the White House.”

The White House 2001
Project was funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and support from
the Baker Institute at Rice. George Edwards III from Texas A&M University
and James Pfiffner from George Mason University assisted Sullivan and Kumar, who
was project director.
For more information about the project, visit the Web
site at http://whitehouse2001.org.

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