Donald F. Kettl, Government Executive -

The new president will have a mighty big chore in the spring of 2025: devising a new management agenda.

The people just don’t think government works for them. Harris and Trump supporters agreed on one thing in a recent poll: exactly 52% of both groups said the country had big problems—and that they were unfixable.

Get ready to celebrate the incredible contributions of public servants nationwide – Performance.gov’s annual #GovPossible campaign is back from May 5 through May 11. Visit Performance.gov to check out the available resources and tools to help prepare you for this year's campaign. From social media templates to Zoom backgrounds and banners, our campaign page has everything you need to get involved.

On September 18, 2023, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published proposed regulations in the Federal Register to reinforce and clarify important civil service protections for federal employees who may shift from the competitive service to the excepted service or from one excepted service schedule to another. FMA National President Craig Carter submitted comments on behalf of our association strongly supporting the proposed rule and urged OPM to finalize the new regulations as expediently as possible.

A hallmark of America’s civil service is the foundational, fundamental understanding that federal employees swear an oath to the Constitution and provide services to all Americans, regardless of political party. The federal government cannot function effectively without this nonpolitical civil service capable of preserving institutional memory and competence across administrations. Dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883, which ended the spoils system, America’s civil service has been governed by statutes and rules aimed at preserving a federal employee’s right to due process, as protected by the Constitution.

FMA contributes a quarterly column for "FedForum, published on FEDmanager.com, responding to different prompts. The prompt for this quarter was "What does accountability and transparency mean to your organization?" The piece originally ran on FEDmanager.com.

The mission of the Federal Managers Association is advocating excellence in public service. That mission is what guides and shapes our work.

When talking about accountability, first and foremost, FMA takes pride in being accountable to our members. We want to hear their concerns and listen to what issues are impacting their agencies, their workplace, their careers, their healthcare and retirement, and to address those issues with Congress and the Administration as best we can.

That is what shapes our issue briefs every year – from fighting to achieve the best compensation for their hard work and ensuring the benefits they were promised and earned throughout their careers are not taken away, to pursuing investments in the workforce and providing tools to empower FMA members in their workplace. Since any manager, supervisor or executive is eligible to join FMA, a win for FMA members is usually a win for the federal workforce, writ large. Accountability to our members often helps recruitment, retention, and morale across the federal government.