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Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you easy.
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We're the Gov Navigators.
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I'm Robert Chad.
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And I'm Adam Hughes.
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We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.
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Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast FedEx.
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So the funerals adding up on the Senate's calendar does not help it get things done.
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You're just jumping in with both feet this week.
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Yes.
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But the House this week took action, at least the House Budget Committee did, on reconciliation instructions for reconciliation 3.0.
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Yeah, and you and I had an interesting debate about whether this is permitted under the Budget Impounding Control Act 1974, which I think you convince me it is.
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But I think it's a gray area still.
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But it's 2026, so all guardrails seem to be obeying the same.
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That's right.
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We don't actually follow written law anymore for the most part, if it's inconvenient.
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So I love that we're moving past it.
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But it's important to note the House Budget Committee did pass a budget resolution which included reconciliation instructions, mostly to fund the Department of Defense, but also some aid for farmers.
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Big debate on offsets.
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Where are those fraud bills?
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Yeah, so I mean, we've talked about this too with the budget committees on the Hill, about trying to change the way that Congress and its scorers interpret investments in things like fraud prevention, which currently show up as a cost, even though it saves the government lots of money for every dollar spent.
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So I don't know.
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I don't know if they're gonna be in there.
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Maybe they will, maybe they'll jam them in.
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Seems like something that unless there's a reinterpretation, we can't actually put in a reconciliation, given the rules around reconciliation.
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But again, you said it's 2026.
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Maybe we'll just throw out the rules of reconciliation too.
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But the House has just a week left before their August recess.
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The Senate's gonna spend a couple more weeks in, and then we've got the end of the fiscal year upon us.
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Yeah.
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And you know, it's the midterms too.
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So the number of times that Congress is gonna say, well, let's stay in another couple of days is gonna get smaller and smaller for the rest of this year.
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What else has happened this week?
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Well, I feel like you skipped over the big story.
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The fires, the Canadian fires have arrived in the Washington DC area.
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It's more clouds have descended on the nation's capital.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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You know why I didn't cover it?
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Because I don't need to hear you whining about what disrupts your golf schedule.
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It does say that it's supposed to be bad for all humans to be outside for prolonged periods today.
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You know who it's good for?
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Gulf navigators.
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At your desk till the end of the day.
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Let's get some stuff done.
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Oh Lord.
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I think we might have mentioned this at one point, but maybe not in detail.
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The fine folks over at FedRamp have rolled out their full 20x program.
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They have been piloting this, a new approach to FedRamp that is supposed to be faster and easier and smoother and less work.
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Sort of sounds like it's too good to be true.
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But that has moved from pilot mode, where they ran a small pilot, to full operations.
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And they have a multitude of documents and guidance on the FedRAMP website.
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If you're new to federal government and you think you need to find out about FedRamps, check out their site.
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There's a lot of info.
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And I think we've had a lot of positive comments over the last year plus from the contracting community on the work and the openness that the FedRamp team has shown in developing this.
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So kudos to them.
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I hope they're all getting some time off, maybe not in this smoking and haze-filled Northeast and Midwest of the United States.
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But it was a long time coming, it's some really hard work, and congrats to them for that.
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But DOD or DOW not so lucky.
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No, that is correct.
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The CMMC, the Cybersecurity Metrial Certification Program for the Uninitiated, rolled out some new guidelines, but those were repealed.
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Or paused.
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Paused, yes.
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Pause is probably, I mean, for all intents and purposes, though.
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Yeah.
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That program can't get things straight for some reason.
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I don't think it's curse.
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I don't think the feedback from the community has been quite as positive about that as it has been for the new FedRAMP.
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Only other story that caught my eye, it's a little bit more on the fun side, but there's an article about the head of the Social Security Administration focusing on trying to improve staff morale by sending gift baskets of the pretzels that his daughter makes.
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I mean, it's the thought that counts, right?
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Maybe directing federal resources to your daughter's company is not the best thing in the world, optics-wise.
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But it seems like a nice touch.
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Maybe you don't love working for the federal government anymore, but here's some pretzels.
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Now I know what our clients will be getting for Christmas gifts.
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Oh, I should have.
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What a great idea.
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How did I not come with that faster?
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Okay, now we're excited to talk to our guest today, yet another member of the Gov Navigators Network.
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Ever expanding.
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One of the best things about having your own show is that you can have your friends on.
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That's true.
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We've said that before.
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Yes.
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I'm so excited to spend a few minutes talking to Dana Fowler, who is a senior advisor at We the Doers, also a member of the Gov Navigators Network.
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But most recently was basically the de facto performance improvement officer at the Department of the Interior.
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Dana, thanks for coming on.
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Thanks so much.
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It's great to be among friends.
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So give us a little walk down memory lane.
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Tell us about your career and how you came to be such a stupendous public servant.
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Oh my gosh.
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It is a little bit a story of errors, actually, how I've kind of fallen into different things.
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I'll start off with my first federal job because that introduced me to public service and kind of literally the guts of it.
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So I started my college career thinking I was going to be pre-med.
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And so for a summer job, I interned at the National Marine Fisheries Service lab near where I grew up.
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And so I thought I was going to be a little lab rat and cutting things up for the day.
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But I got assigned to basically be a deck hand on a fishing boat.
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So I ended up with a lovely tan, fewer scalpel skills than I expected by the end of it, but some pretty good biceps too.
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So yeah, that was my introduction to public service, and I kind of liked it.
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That's incredible, first of all.
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I love that so much.
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Yeah.
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It's always something I add into my two truths and a lie.
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Yeah.
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Because nobody'll never get it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I came back to federal service after losing funding with state in the state of Maryland.
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I was finishing up my master's degree, doing emerging drug epidemiology, working with the state medical examiner and a variety of other offices.
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And the governor changed.
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And so I needed to kind of find my next thing with a degree in criminology.
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I was very interested in substance abuse and mental health and the intersection there.
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So I was introduced to the substance abuse and mental health services administration, which is in health and human services.
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So I started there as a temporary employee, a scientific appointment.
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And I led a short publication that went out on a weekly basis to the general public that was a distillation of some of our really enormous data sets that if you weren't an academic or a researcher, you probably never turned past page to.
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So that was my job to help translate all of that for the public, which I really enjoyed that job through a variety of unfortunate incidents.
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I ended up upstairs in the budget shop, where I was immediately assigned to performance because I knew data.
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And so that was great, but I knew nothing about Gipra.
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I knew nothing about budget.
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And so, really, where my career started was building the relationships across HHS, across my office, trying to understand the world I now had been thrust into.
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And so I built a huge network at HHS with all of my counterparts at all of the bureaus.
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And I learned from them every day.
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And we learned from each other.
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We strategized against HHS at times and collaborated.
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And that was the beginning of the rest of it.
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You know, I started to love the idea of stewardship and the budget process as a broad life cycle.
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And I didn't want to leave.
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And that's when you started doing performance work.
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So honestly, you and I have known each other for a long time, and I didn't know this part of your background.
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So okay.
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Yeah.
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So so it got really amusing because that network that I built, people turned to me as a leader among it, but I knew probably the least amount of all of them.
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I was not trained in policy.
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My background was not public administration or any of that.
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But one day I was working at my Gipper job at SAMHSA and the phone rang, and it was my friend at CDC.
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And she said to me, Hey, I'm leaving my job as the PIO.
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I think you should apply for the position.
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And I said, Atlanta?
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I'm not going to Atlanta, but it was CDC.
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How could I not think about it at least?
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So I did.
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And within about six weeks, I had interviewed and signed the paperwork and moved my family to Atlanta.
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So yeah, it was an incredibly interesting turn of events because that was a real leap for me, a trust that this career was where I was meant to be, and that this really drastic change in my life was something to be embraced and not feared.
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And so it was really great.
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My husband worked in IT.
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And so he felt like he could pretty much work anywhere.
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And so we moved my three-year-old and my husband all the way down to Atlanta.
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And I spent five years there, absolutely fangirl.
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Like I love that organization.
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And I've still not lost that.
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It's an incredible place and with incredible people that are truly the most mission-driven government employees I've ever met.
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And I probably would still be there if not for another phone call I received.
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Back here in DC, I got a call from the Performance Improvement Council leadership.
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And they were interested in having me considered for the deputy director of the performance improvement council.
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And that was an incredible honor, considering I felt like I had duct taped and chewing gummed my career to this point.
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I thought you were going to tell the story about how you're like, man, I wish I was just I was out to a long lunch and I missed that phone call.
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No.
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Because you had to end up working at GSA though.
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But I had no idea about how this function worked.
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I had been participating in the Performance Improvement Council working groups for years as a practitioner, as a member of one of the bureaus, with the approval of Health and Human Services.
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But I was a voice that they heard a lot.
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Probably too much.
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You were like, I know how we can get this lady to stop asking questions.
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Let's put her in charge.
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That's right.
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So they invited me to come back to DC and to join the council team where I met you, Adam.
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Yeah.
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Another dark part of your career that we've gotten to now when we cross paths.
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No, no.
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No, not at all.
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So that's kind of the launching off point for a variety of other things that I've done since then.
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But performance was kind of an organic slalom course for me, but in a way that has really reinforced the importance of stewardship, of measurement, of data for decisions, of being humble.
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I think the thing that I've learned the most in my performance work has been how to approach program staff and talk to them about considering new data or new measurement that allows them to make program decisions, right?
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But also allows them to meet some abused compliance exercise that they can't stand.
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But gosh, Congress still loves.
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So it's been a real adventure and I've really enjoyed it.
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I did a couple of other things there, but ended up returning to performance directly at the Department of the Interior.
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So I led performance there most recently.
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And the thing that I really have enjoyed over my career has been the ability to work at the bureau level, so subcomponent to HHS at the department level at interior, and then kind of in this center of government swirl that occurs across the agencies.
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And I've really found it to be a rich environment of smart people with good ideas who sometimes hit walls.
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And being able to help them over those hurdles or around those hurdles has been something I've really enjoyed doing throughout my career.
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That's great.
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What a great walk down memory lane.
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You're now doing a number of things, working with We the Doers, but I also note that you participated in a program at the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
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Talk about what projects you're working on now that you're excited about.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I've got a couple of things in the hopper since I left under the deferred resignation program last year.
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I have been working with a couple of former colleagues on a human capital reform roundtable that was co-sponsored by IBM, the Partnership for Public Service, and then Scan and Center back in February.
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And so I've been working with my co-authors, Jenny Mattingley at the Partnership for Public Service and Tracy Di Martini, who's in consulting right now.
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And we're putting together a paper from those discussions with recommendations around human capital reform, both in the near term and in a longer term, which really digs into recruitment and hiring, onboarding broadly, both the kind provided by HR and the kind provided kind of more locally, as well as my sweet spot, the linkages between performance, organizational performance, and personnel performance, which is a place where folks often get lost.
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But that paper is, I would love to say it's imminent.
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I shared it with my co-authors today.
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So hopefully it'll be out within the next month or so.
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And a lot of it is takeaways that folks have heard before, but the opportunity right now is really extraordinary to lean into some of these areas that previously were seen as kind of untouchable.
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Untouchable.
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I was just going to say that.
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Yeah.
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And we've talked about this too, right?
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And actually, we've talked about it with others on this podcast.
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Like this is an opportunity at a point in time where these reforms that folks like us have been sort of clawing at the concrete to try to make happen over time, all of a sudden they've put a sledgehammer in your hand, right?
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And you can really make some progress.
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There's been other consequences of that too, but what a unique point in time to be able to really institute some significant reforms that could make the government work so much better.
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So is that part of the impetus for doing it?
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Or talk a little bit more about why you're doing this now.
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IBM report?
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Yeah.
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Well, that and the work you're doing with We the Doers.
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I mean, I feel like you're and so many other folks who have left federal service have found ways to continue to do that.
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Part of that has got to be because that's the makeup of people who work in federal service.
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But other part of it has got to be like, no, we've got an opportunity right now to really do the things that we've tried to do for so long.
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So I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
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When I came out of government, I was thinking, do I really know anything that is marketable?
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And I've determined that in fact I do.
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I know a lot about how the government functions.
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And that's a really, really valuable thing, especially from the inside, because there's this glossy, shiny outside that the contracting world sees and others see, but that doesn't help you once you get past the shiny cover, right?
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Of how to navigate, who to talk to, where the policy sits, what you're going to hit in terms of implementation challenges.
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So government reform's been really on my mind, and also a way to pay the bills, maybe someday.
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You've expressed essentially the complete business plan of Gov Navigators, just to be clear.
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Yeah.
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So here's the thing that happened.
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I'm working on this IBM paper with Jenny and Tracy.
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And I see someone on LinkedIn of which I am like literally attached to 24-7.
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And I see a call out for federal employees, either that have been riffed or taken the DRP, that want to have a conversation around reform.
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And so I jumped on it and I said, yeah, me, please.
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So I met for coffee with Maureen Clovers and April Harding, the founders of We the Doers.
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And that conversation was phenomenal.
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I really, really enjoyed the way that they were thinking about things.
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And I was the first to kind of sign up and say, yes, please, how can I help?
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So We the Doers is an evolving organization, but right now it's the three of us as kind of core leadership.
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And what we are doing is we are assembling former feds, current feds in some cases, in Chatham House rules conversations around different areas for potential reform, getting their insight scoop, as you will, and thinking really about what that translates to in terms of recommendations for reform.
00:18:14.799 --> 00:18:36.880
Now, the one thing that makes We the Doers unique to a lot of the other reform organizations out there right now is that a lot of those organizations are utilizing political appointees, academics, former political appointees, no offense, Robert, to inform their recommendations for reform.
00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:37.759
And that's great.
00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:39.200
That's fantastic.
00:18:39.519 --> 00:18:44.960
But there's a gap between those recommendations and the implementation.
00:18:45.279 --> 00:19:01.119
And so We the Doers really has the ability with the incredible network of expertise we have at our fingertips to see some of those roadblocks coming that other organizations may not see because we understand how the systems work.
00:19:01.359 --> 00:19:05.359
And as they used to say, where I grew up in New Jersey, we know the bodies are buried.
00:19:05.920 --> 00:19:07.920
And some of that stuff is unwritten too, right?
00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:16.160
It's not not that the government is great necessarily at documentation, but some of that is like, no, no, you don't do it, even if it's on a piece of paper, don't do it that way.
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:17.759
Do it this way, it's gonna work better, trust me.
00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:18.160
That's right.
00:19:18.240 --> 00:19:18.319
Right.
00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:18.799
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:19.599
Exactly right.
00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:22.799
I mean, you can go and read any policy out there.
00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:37.680
And if you don't look at the guidance that follows from OMB and then potentially departmental guidance and then potentially bureau guidance, you are missing a big part of the picture of how you're supposed to be implementing that.
00:19:38.079 --> 00:19:42.559
One of the tenets of we the doers is to make sure you're measuring the right things.
00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:43.759
Absolutely.
00:19:44.079 --> 00:19:49.519
And I hate to say I've been working in performance management even longer than you.
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:56.400
And you can get the unit or two, maybe even a department or an agency, headed in the right direction.
00:19:56.799 --> 00:20:04.799
But if leaders with a passion for doing this leave, the culture can revert to measuring what's easy.
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:13.359
How do you see what we the doers is doing, or what other recommendations would you have to ensure that those principles stick?
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:17.039
That is, we should be measuring outcomes, not just activities.
00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:19.119
That's such a hard question.
00:20:19.359 --> 00:20:27.200
I think the losses that have occurred in the federal space make that question very hard to answer at this moment.
00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:35.839
The staff that are elect in the federal space, at least the ones that I've reached out to and talked with, many of them are doing multiple jobs.
00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:39.519
And we're talking at various layers in the organization.
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:45.920
This makes compliance the only way for them to get everything done.
00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:49.839
And that's really unfortunate because compliance shouldn't be the first thing.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.160
It should be a, oh, that too?
00:20:52.319 --> 00:20:52.880
Okay, great.
00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:54.559
I can check that box as well.
00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:58.720
I've done what I need to do, but also it fills that need.
00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:06.319
And so I do worry a little bit that we're gonna be in a lull of that necessary level of compliance for the time being.
00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:15.039
But I do think that there is big opportunity to rethink how performance is integrated into everything we do in the federal level.
00:21:15.359 --> 00:21:22.880
There are a lot of things I would rewrite if given the opportunity to revise the legislation.
00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:38.559
And I think we also need to think about how we support the people doing the hard work of having these conversations, managing these data sets, all of that, because it's not supported financially.
00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:44.000
You know, when budget proposals go in, often there's not a line for this kind of work.
00:21:44.079 --> 00:21:48.720
It's an extracurricular or uh I hope to get to that kind of activity.
00:21:49.039 --> 00:21:51.839
Or let's give you another job in addition to your regular job.
00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:52.240
Yeah.
00:21:52.640 --> 00:21:53.279
Absolutely.
00:21:53.519 --> 00:21:54.480
And that happens.
00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:56.240
So it's actually really interesting.
00:21:56.319 --> 00:21:58.799
I see myself as a practitioner, right?
00:21:58.960 --> 00:21:59.759
I learned the job.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:08.079
On the job, and I knew a little something about data from my master's degree, and I knew something about statistics, and I learned about the budget.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:44.640
There are a lot of people out there doing performance measurement and performance management work that have learned it in the classroom, they've picked it up academically, and I would not suggest that I am in any way as qualified as they are, but so much of getting to where you're talking about, Robert, that outcome, that big thing, is disarming people, is having conversations that are uncomfortable, it's helping them see the value in what they do from an outside perspective and help them understand how their story is being conveyed.
00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:54.960
Because if what the measure that they're putting into the budget is, for example, the number of complaints received, that's not telling the right story for that program.
00:22:55.599 --> 00:23:08.720
We need to talk to them about how do we look for measures that are helping them grow and improve the program and put that in front of the people outside of government, right?
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:10.240
Put that in front of the leaders.
00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:12.880
We need to be able to tell a good news story as well.
00:23:13.039 --> 00:23:19.119
And so there's a lot of different factors that influence what measures get chosen.
00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:23.599
A lot of it is not so much about the message it sends.
00:23:23.759 --> 00:23:31.200
It's about convenience, it's about data quality, it's about I have someone that can pull that number for me when it's needed.
00:23:31.519 --> 00:23:33.119
Those aren't the right reasons.
00:23:33.359 --> 00:23:40.000
And so reminding them that those aren't the right reasons in a non-confrontational way is a skill set.
00:23:40.079 --> 00:23:47.039
And I think that's one that I've brought to the party that maybe an academic degree wouldn't have necessarily instilled in me.
00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:47.920
Yeah.
00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:50.000
Well, Dana, this has been fantastic.
00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:51.440
I always love talking to you.
00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:53.759
Thanks for taking so fast.
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:54.960
Thanks for taking the time.
00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:57.440
Thanks for joining the Gov Navigators Network.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.599
We're so thrilled that you're part of it.
00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:03.200
Oh, couldn't be more excited and couldn't be in better company.
00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:04.240
Thank you both.
00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:05.599
Thank you, Dana.
00:24:09.759 --> 00:24:12.640
Love that she's still involved in trying to make things better.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:14.480
I'm so glad she's part of the network.
00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:23.440
Something we didn't cover in the news of the week section was the hearing in House Oversight and Government Reform on fraud.
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:24.400
Yep.
00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:27.920
Where our good friend Jordan Burris testified from Sophia.
00:24:28.640 --> 00:24:29.759
He rocked the room.
00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:31.039
He really did.
00:24:31.279 --> 00:24:43.759
I talked with Jennifer Camara, who's the staffer who led that hearing later after the hearing, and she remarked how pleased she was that the hearing focused on solutions.
00:24:44.079 --> 00:24:47.759
Previous hearings have been highlighting the fact that there's fraud.
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:48.559
Yeah.
00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:49.839
Which I think we all know.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:51.920
If you don't know that there's fraud, you're not paying attention.
00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:54.880
She thought that was pretty meaty discussion of some of the solutions.
00:24:55.119 --> 00:24:55.279
Yeah.
00:24:55.359 --> 00:24:56.640
And Jordan did a really good job.
00:24:56.960 --> 00:25:02.400
Having worked in government and in the private sector in this area, he is a preeminent expert on this topic.
00:25:02.559 --> 00:25:05.519
And we had some great conversations afterwards with a couple of the witnesses too.
00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:09.039
Lots more to cover in that area, but it was a really good hearing and a good start.
00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:16.160
And sometimes it's not worth it to watch all the way to the end of a hearing, but watch till the end of this one if it's on your list to watch anyway.
00:25:16.319 --> 00:25:20.559
Jordan's final answer, he weaves in an amazing movie reference.
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:23.200
I won't give it away what it is, but watch till the end.
00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:25.519
Show notes, maybe.
00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:26.079
Yeah.
00:25:26.319 --> 00:25:26.960
Yes.
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:28.000
Busy week.
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:29.440
Do you have a busy week ahead?
00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:33.519
Well, I'm going to be at the beach on my company mandated vacation.
00:25:33.759 --> 00:25:35.119
Of course you are.
00:25:35.839 --> 00:25:40.880
So not as busy for me, but yes, busy week for Governor Navigators and Policy Circles.
00:25:41.039 --> 00:25:43.279
The AGA PDT is finally here.
00:25:43.519 --> 00:25:44.160
Absolutely.
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:45.519
It's going to be fantastic.
00:25:45.759 --> 00:25:51.839
Thousands of your favorite government accountability professionals descending on the nation's capital.
00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:52.480
Yeah.
00:25:53.039 --> 00:25:54.160
You're in Washington, D.C.
00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:58.480
Our friends RSM are leading a couple of good panels, but there are lots of other ones too.
00:25:58.559 --> 00:26:01.039
So you should check out and come to our soiree.
00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:01.440
Yeah.
00:26:01.599 --> 00:26:02.480
If you know, you know.
00:26:02.640 --> 00:26:04.160
Reach out to Robert if you want to come.
00:26:04.400 --> 00:26:09.759
And then Act IAC's hosting its asset and supply forum on the 21st.
00:26:10.079 --> 00:26:17.599
Geopolitical conflict, contested supply routes, and supply chain vulnerability have heightened the pressure on federal supply and asset networks.
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:18.799
Sounds revening.
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:21.519
Sounds like they could have called this what are we going to do about Iran?
00:26:23.519 --> 00:26:25.200
That would have been provocative.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:27.119
They probably would have gotten more registrations for that.
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:27.519
Yeah.
00:26:27.759 --> 00:26:34.240
And then we're hosting a forum up on the hill on the lending modernization act, which should be pretty cool.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:35.599
Serving Chick-fil-A.
00:26:35.920 --> 00:26:37.119
Chick-fil-A has been ordered.
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:41.200
So if you got that invite in your inbox, Hillstaff, come check it out.
00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:45.920
And Karasoft and GovExec are also hosting the GovForward Summit about FedRAMP.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:46.960
And that's on the 23rd.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:48.240
And they've got a great lineup.
00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:54.319
We talked about this a little at the top of the show, but check that out if you want to mingle with the movers and shakers in the FedRamp program.
00:26:54.640 --> 00:26:55.519
Have a great week.
00:26:55.680 --> 00:26:56.799
Enjoy the beach.
00:26:57.039 --> 00:26:58.079
You know I will.
00:27:06.319 --> 00:27:11.599
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show, brought to you by GovNavigators.
00:27:11.759 --> 00:27:16.240
We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process and didn't get seasick.
00:27:16.559 --> 00:27:17.680
Right, of course.
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:24.319
If you want to know more about us and what we're up to, please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com.
00:27:24.640 --> 00:27:25.440
Ahoy!
00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:13.519
Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you easy.
00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:15.199
We're the Gov Navigators.
00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:16.239
I'm Robert Chad.
00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:17.600
And I'm Adam Hughes.
00:00:17.679 --> 00:00:23.440
We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.
00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:30.960
Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast FedEx.
00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:49.439
So the funerals adding up on the Senate's calendar does not help it get things done.
00:00:49.759 --> 00:00:52.159
You're just jumping in with both feet this week.
00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:56.960
Yes.
00:00:57.200 --> 00:01:05.920
But the House this week took action, at least the House Budget Committee did, on reconciliation instructions for reconciliation 3.0.
00:01:06.879 --> 00:01:16.560
Yeah, and you and I had an interesting debate about whether this is permitted under the Budget Impounding Control Act 1974, which I think you convince me it is.
00:01:16.959 --> 00:01:18.959
But I think it's a gray area still.
00:01:19.599 --> 00:01:23.920
But it's 2026, so all guardrails seem to be obeying the same.
00:01:24.159 --> 00:01:24.480
That's right.
00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:28.560
We don't actually follow written law anymore for the most part, if it's inconvenient.
00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:30.159
So I love that we're moving past it.
00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:43.200
But it's important to note the House Budget Committee did pass a budget resolution which included reconciliation instructions, mostly to fund the Department of Defense, but also some aid for farmers.
00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:45.920
Big debate on offsets.
00:01:46.159 --> 00:01:47.760
Where are those fraud bills?
00:01:48.079 --> 00:02:05.359
Yeah, so I mean, we've talked about this too with the budget committees on the Hill, about trying to change the way that Congress and its scorers interpret investments in things like fraud prevention, which currently show up as a cost, even though it saves the government lots of money for every dollar spent.
00:02:05.599 --> 00:02:06.400
So I don't know.
00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:07.599
I don't know if they're gonna be in there.
00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:09.439
Maybe they will, maybe they'll jam them in.
00:02:09.759 --> 00:02:15.759
Seems like something that unless there's a reinterpretation, we can't actually put in a reconciliation, given the rules around reconciliation.
00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:17.280
But again, you said it's 2026.
00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:19.280
Maybe we'll just throw out the rules of reconciliation too.
00:02:19.599 --> 00:02:22.639
But the House has just a week left before their August recess.
00:02:22.719 --> 00:02:28.240
The Senate's gonna spend a couple more weeks in, and then we've got the end of the fiscal year upon us.
00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:28.879
Yeah.
00:02:29.039 --> 00:02:30.960
And you know, it's the midterms too.
00:02:31.039 --> 00:02:37.919
So the number of times that Congress is gonna say, well, let's stay in another couple of days is gonna get smaller and smaller for the rest of this year.
00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:39.759
What else has happened this week?
00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:42.240
Well, I feel like you skipped over the big story.
00:02:42.319 --> 00:02:45.680
The fires, the Canadian fires have arrived in the Washington DC area.
00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:49.120
It's more clouds have descended on the nation's capital.
00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:50.000
That's right.
00:02:50.159 --> 00:02:50.479
That's right.
00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:52.319
You know why I didn't cover it?
00:02:52.719 --> 00:02:57.759
Because I don't need to hear you whining about what disrupts your golf schedule.
00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:02.319
It does say that it's supposed to be bad for all humans to be outside for prolonged periods today.
00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:04.000
You know who it's good for?
00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:06.400
Gulf navigators.
00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:09.759
At your desk till the end of the day.
00:03:09.919 --> 00:03:11.840
Let's get some stuff done.
00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:14.719
Oh Lord.
00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:18.000
I think we might have mentioned this at one point, but maybe not in detail.
00:03:18.159 --> 00:03:21.919
The fine folks over at FedRamp have rolled out their full 20x program.
00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:29.919
They have been piloting this, a new approach to FedRamp that is supposed to be faster and easier and smoother and less work.
00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:32.400
Sort of sounds like it's too good to be true.
00:03:32.719 --> 00:03:38.080
But that has moved from pilot mode, where they ran a small pilot, to full operations.
00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:43.439
And they have a multitude of documents and guidance on the FedRAMP website.
00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:48.639
If you're new to federal government and you think you need to find out about FedRamps, check out their site.
00:03:48.719 --> 00:03:49.840
There's a lot of info.
00:03:50.080 --> 00:04:00.400
And I think we've had a lot of positive comments over the last year plus from the contracting community on the work and the openness that the FedRamp team has shown in developing this.
00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:01.599
So kudos to them.
00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:08.240
I hope they're all getting some time off, maybe not in this smoking and haze-filled Northeast and Midwest of the United States.
00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:11.599
But it was a long time coming, it's some really hard work, and congrats to them for that.
00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:15.680
But DOD or DOW not so lucky.
00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:18.560
No, that is correct.
00:04:18.959 --> 00:04:29.680
The CMMC, the Cybersecurity Metrial Certification Program for the Uninitiated, rolled out some new guidelines, but those were repealed.
00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:31.040
Or paused.
00:04:31.439 --> 00:04:32.160
Paused, yes.
00:04:32.319 --> 00:04:35.040
Pause is probably, I mean, for all intents and purposes, though.
00:04:35.120 --> 00:04:35.199
Yeah.
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:38.560
That program can't get things straight for some reason.
00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:40.079
I don't think it's curse.
00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:45.439
I don't think the feedback from the community has been quite as positive about that as it has been for the new FedRAMP.
00:04:46.079 --> 00:05:00.160
Only other story that caught my eye, it's a little bit more on the fun side, but there's an article about the head of the Social Security Administration focusing on trying to improve staff morale by sending gift baskets of the pretzels that his daughter makes.
00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:03.360
I mean, it's the thought that counts, right?
00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:10.399
Maybe directing federal resources to your daughter's company is not the best thing in the world, optics-wise.
00:05:10.959 --> 00:05:12.800
But it seems like a nice touch.
00:05:12.959 --> 00:05:15.759
Maybe you don't love working for the federal government anymore, but here's some pretzels.
00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.519
Now I know what our clients will be getting for Christmas gifts.
00:05:21.360 --> 00:05:22.319
Oh, I should have.
00:05:22.399 --> 00:05:22.959
What a great idea.
00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:24.639
How did I not come with that faster?
00:05:24.879 --> 00:05:30.399
Okay, now we're excited to talk to our guest today, yet another member of the Gov Navigators Network.
00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:32.079
Ever expanding.
00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:40.319
One of the best things about having your own show is that you can have your friends on.
00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:41.360
That's true.
00:05:41.839 --> 00:05:42.879
We've said that before.
00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:43.600
Yes.
00:05:43.759 --> 00:05:54.240
I'm so excited to spend a few minutes talking to Dana Fowler, who is a senior advisor at We the Doers, also a member of the Gov Navigators Network.
00:05:54.560 --> 00:06:00.240
But most recently was basically the de facto performance improvement officer at the Department of the Interior.
00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:02.000
Dana, thanks for coming on.
00:06:02.319 --> 00:06:02.879
Thanks so much.
00:06:02.959 --> 00:06:04.800
It's great to be among friends.
00:06:05.199 --> 00:06:07.680
So give us a little walk down memory lane.
00:06:07.759 --> 00:06:12.560
Tell us about your career and how you came to be such a stupendous public servant.
00:06:12.800 --> 00:06:13.680
Oh my gosh.
00:06:13.839 --> 00:06:19.519
It is a little bit a story of errors, actually, how I've kind of fallen into different things.
00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:27.839
I'll start off with my first federal job because that introduced me to public service and kind of literally the guts of it.
00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:32.160
So I started my college career thinking I was going to be pre-med.
00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:41.439
And so for a summer job, I interned at the National Marine Fisheries Service lab near where I grew up.
00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:47.199
And so I thought I was going to be a little lab rat and cutting things up for the day.
00:06:47.519 --> 00:06:52.079
But I got assigned to basically be a deck hand on a fishing boat.
00:06:52.319 --> 00:07:00.959
So I ended up with a lovely tan, fewer scalpel skills than I expected by the end of it, but some pretty good biceps too.
00:07:01.279 --> 00:07:05.839
So yeah, that was my introduction to public service, and I kind of liked it.
00:07:06.639 --> 00:07:08.160
That's incredible, first of all.
00:07:08.639 --> 00:07:09.839
I love that so much.
00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:10.160
Yeah.
00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:13.199
It's always something I add into my two truths and a lie.
00:07:13.439 --> 00:07:13.600
Yeah.
00:07:13.759 --> 00:07:15.600
Because nobody'll never get it.
00:07:15.680 --> 00:07:15.920
Yeah.
00:07:16.079 --> 00:07:16.480
Yeah.
00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:22.720
So I came back to federal service after losing funding with state in the state of Maryland.
00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:30.639
I was finishing up my master's degree, doing emerging drug epidemiology, working with the state medical examiner and a variety of other offices.
00:07:30.959 --> 00:07:32.560
And the governor changed.
00:07:32.639 --> 00:07:37.600
And so I needed to kind of find my next thing with a degree in criminology.
00:07:37.759 --> 00:07:43.199
I was very interested in substance abuse and mental health and the intersection there.
00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:50.720
So I was introduced to the substance abuse and mental health services administration, which is in health and human services.
00:07:50.959 --> 00:07:54.959
So I started there as a temporary employee, a scientific appointment.
00:07:55.120 --> 00:08:12.560
And I led a short publication that went out on a weekly basis to the general public that was a distillation of some of our really enormous data sets that if you weren't an academic or a researcher, you probably never turned past page to.
00:08:12.959 --> 00:08:21.439
So that was my job to help translate all of that for the public, which I really enjoyed that job through a variety of unfortunate incidents.
00:08:21.519 --> 00:08:29.759
I ended up upstairs in the budget shop, where I was immediately assigned to performance because I knew data.
00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:34.080
And so that was great, but I knew nothing about Gipra.
00:08:34.399 --> 00:08:36.080
I knew nothing about budget.
00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:49.600
And so, really, where my career started was building the relationships across HHS, across my office, trying to understand the world I now had been thrust into.
00:08:49.759 --> 00:08:55.120
And so I built a huge network at HHS with all of my counterparts at all of the bureaus.
00:08:55.279 --> 00:08:56.960
And I learned from them every day.
00:08:57.120 --> 00:08:58.799
And we learned from each other.
00:08:59.039 --> 00:09:03.440
We strategized against HHS at times and collaborated.
00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:05.840
And that was the beginning of the rest of it.
00:09:05.919 --> 00:09:12.000
You know, I started to love the idea of stewardship and the budget process as a broad life cycle.
00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:14.399
And I didn't want to leave.
00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:16.799
And that's when you started doing performance work.
00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:21.120
So honestly, you and I have known each other for a long time, and I didn't know this part of your background.
00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:22.000
So okay.
00:09:22.399 --> 00:09:22.720
Yeah.
00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:31.840
So so it got really amusing because that network that I built, people turned to me as a leader among it, but I knew probably the least amount of all of them.
00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:33.919
I was not trained in policy.
00:09:34.080 --> 00:09:37.679
My background was not public administration or any of that.
00:09:37.919 --> 00:09:44.240
But one day I was working at my Gipper job at SAMHSA and the phone rang, and it was my friend at CDC.
00:09:44.399 --> 00:09:49.600
And she said to me, Hey, I'm leaving my job as the PIO.
00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:52.000
I think you should apply for the position.
00:09:52.080 --> 00:09:53.600
And I said, Atlanta?
00:09:53.759 --> 00:09:56.080
I'm not going to Atlanta, but it was CDC.
00:09:56.159 --> 00:09:58.399
How could I not think about it at least?
00:09:58.639 --> 00:09:59.519
So I did.
00:09:59.759 --> 00:10:06.720
And within about six weeks, I had interviewed and signed the paperwork and moved my family to Atlanta.
00:10:07.039 --> 00:10:23.120
So yeah, it was an incredibly interesting turn of events because that was a real leap for me, a trust that this career was where I was meant to be, and that this really drastic change in my life was something to be embraced and not feared.
00:10:23.279 --> 00:10:25.200
And so it was really great.
00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:27.200
My husband worked in IT.
00:10:27.279 --> 00:10:30.320
And so he felt like he could pretty much work anywhere.
00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:34.240
And so we moved my three-year-old and my husband all the way down to Atlanta.
00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:39.200
And I spent five years there, absolutely fangirl.
00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:41.120
Like I love that organization.
00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:43.120
And I've still not lost that.
00:10:43.279 --> 00:10:51.759
It's an incredible place and with incredible people that are truly the most mission-driven government employees I've ever met.
00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:57.360
And I probably would still be there if not for another phone call I received.
00:10:57.519 --> 00:11:04.080
Back here in DC, I got a call from the Performance Improvement Council leadership.
00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:11.120
And they were interested in having me considered for the deputy director of the performance improvement council.
00:11:11.279 --> 00:11:17.519
And that was an incredible honor, considering I felt like I had duct taped and chewing gummed my career to this point.
00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:23.279
I thought you were going to tell the story about how you're like, man, I wish I was just I was out to a long lunch and I missed that phone call.
00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:23.759
No.
00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:27.200
Because you had to end up working at GSA though.
00:11:27.759 --> 00:11:31.840
But I had no idea about how this function worked.
00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:42.000
I had been participating in the Performance Improvement Council working groups for years as a practitioner, as a member of one of the bureaus, with the approval of Health and Human Services.
00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:46.320
But I was a voice that they heard a lot.
00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:48.240
Probably too much.
00:11:48.559 --> 00:11:51.279
You were like, I know how we can get this lady to stop asking questions.
00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:52.399
Let's put her in charge.
00:11:53.039 --> 00:11:53.600
That's right.
00:11:53.840 --> 00:11:59.519
So they invited me to come back to DC and to join the council team where I met you, Adam.
00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:00.159
Yeah.
00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:04.159
Another dark part of your career that we've gotten to now when we cross paths.
00:12:04.320 --> 00:12:04.639
No, no.
00:12:04.799 --> 00:12:05.679
No, not at all.
00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:10.639
So that's kind of the launching off point for a variety of other things that I've done since then.
00:12:10.879 --> 00:12:24.879
But performance was kind of an organic slalom course for me, but in a way that has really reinforced the importance of stewardship, of measurement, of data for decisions, of being humble.
00:12:25.120 --> 00:12:40.399
I think the thing that I've learned the most in my performance work has been how to approach program staff and talk to them about considering new data or new measurement that allows them to make program decisions, right?
00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:45.759
But also allows them to meet some abused compliance exercise that they can't stand.
00:12:46.159 --> 00:12:48.320
But gosh, Congress still loves.
00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:51.360
So it's been a real adventure and I've really enjoyed it.
00:12:51.440 --> 00:12:58.559
I did a couple of other things there, but ended up returning to performance directly at the Department of the Interior.
00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:01.840
So I led performance there most recently.
00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:22.799
And the thing that I really have enjoyed over my career has been the ability to work at the bureau level, so subcomponent to HHS at the department level at interior, and then kind of in this center of government swirl that occurs across the agencies.
00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:33.039
And I've really found it to be a rich environment of smart people with good ideas who sometimes hit walls.
00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:41.279
And being able to help them over those hurdles or around those hurdles has been something I've really enjoyed doing throughout my career.
00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:42.240
That's great.
00:13:42.480 --> 00:13:45.519
What a great walk down memory lane.
00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:57.200
You're now doing a number of things, working with We the Doers, but I also note that you participated in a program at the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
00:13:57.440 --> 00:14:00.799
Talk about what projects you're working on now that you're excited about.
00:14:01.200 --> 00:14:01.919
Yeah, absolutely.
00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:07.360
I've got a couple of things in the hopper since I left under the deferred resignation program last year.
00:14:07.679 --> 00:14:21.759
I have been working with a couple of former colleagues on a human capital reform roundtable that was co-sponsored by IBM, the Partnership for Public Service, and then Scan and Center back in February.
00:14:21.919 --> 00:14:29.440
And so I've been working with my co-authors, Jenny Mattingley at the Partnership for Public Service and Tracy Di Martini, who's in consulting right now.
00:14:29.519 --> 00:15:00.960
And we're putting together a paper from those discussions with recommendations around human capital reform, both in the near term and in a longer term, which really digs into recruitment and hiring, onboarding broadly, both the kind provided by HR and the kind provided kind of more locally, as well as my sweet spot, the linkages between performance, organizational performance, and personnel performance, which is a place where folks often get lost.
00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:03.759
But that paper is, I would love to say it's imminent.
00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:05.679
I shared it with my co-authors today.
00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:08.559
So hopefully it'll be out within the next month or so.
00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:21.519
And a lot of it is takeaways that folks have heard before, but the opportunity right now is really extraordinary to lean into some of these areas that previously were seen as kind of untouchable.
00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:22.399
Untouchable.
00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:23.120
I was just going to say that.
00:15:23.200 --> 00:15:23.360
Yeah.
00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:25.039
And we've talked about this too, right?
00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:27.519
And actually, we've talked about it with others on this podcast.
00:15:27.679 --> 00:15:39.519
Like this is an opportunity at a point in time where these reforms that folks like us have been sort of clawing at the concrete to try to make happen over time, all of a sudden they've put a sledgehammer in your hand, right?
00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:41.600
And you can really make some progress.
00:15:41.759 --> 00:15:50.799
There's been other consequences of that too, but what a unique point in time to be able to really institute some significant reforms that could make the government work so much better.
00:15:51.120 --> 00:15:53.200
So is that part of the impetus for doing it?
00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:56.639
Or talk a little bit more about why you're doing this now.
00:15:57.039 --> 00:15:58.080
IBM report?
00:15:58.240 --> 00:15:58.480
Yeah.
00:15:58.639 --> 00:16:00.639
Well, that and the work you're doing with We the Doers.
00:16:00.720 --> 00:16:06.080
I mean, I feel like you're and so many other folks who have left federal service have found ways to continue to do that.
00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:10.159
Part of that has got to be because that's the makeup of people who work in federal service.
00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:15.519
But other part of it has got to be like, no, we've got an opportunity right now to really do the things that we've tried to do for so long.
00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:17.600
So I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
00:16:17.759 --> 00:16:22.159
When I came out of government, I was thinking, do I really know anything that is marketable?
00:16:22.559 --> 00:16:25.440
And I've determined that in fact I do.
00:16:25.679 --> 00:16:28.080
I know a lot about how the government functions.
00:16:28.159 --> 00:16:43.039
And that's a really, really valuable thing, especially from the inside, because there's this glossy, shiny outside that the contracting world sees and others see, but that doesn't help you once you get past the shiny cover, right?
00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:49.840
Of how to navigate, who to talk to, where the policy sits, what you're going to hit in terms of implementation challenges.
00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:55.519
So government reform's been really on my mind, and also a way to pay the bills, maybe someday.
00:16:55.840 --> 00:17:01.120
You've expressed essentially the complete business plan of Gov Navigators, just to be clear.
00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:01.919
Yeah.
00:17:02.639 --> 00:17:04.160
So here's the thing that happened.
00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:07.920
I'm working on this IBM paper with Jenny and Tracy.
00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:15.359
And I see someone on LinkedIn of which I am like literally attached to 24-7.
00:17:16.079 --> 00:17:24.559
And I see a call out for federal employees, either that have been riffed or taken the DRP, that want to have a conversation around reform.
00:17:24.799 --> 00:17:28.000
And so I jumped on it and I said, yeah, me, please.
00:17:28.160 --> 00:17:34.400
So I met for coffee with Maureen Clovers and April Harding, the founders of We the Doers.
00:17:34.559 --> 00:17:37.200
And that conversation was phenomenal.
00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:41.359
I really, really enjoyed the way that they were thinking about things.
00:17:41.519 --> 00:17:45.920
And I was the first to kind of sign up and say, yes, please, how can I help?
00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:53.279
So We the Doers is an evolving organization, but right now it's the three of us as kind of core leadership.
00:17:53.440 --> 00:18:14.640
And what we are doing is we are assembling former feds, current feds in some cases, in Chatham House rules conversations around different areas for potential reform, getting their insight scoop, as you will, and thinking really about what that translates to in terms of recommendations for reform.
00:18:14.799 --> 00:18:36.880
Now, the one thing that makes We the Doers unique to a lot of the other reform organizations out there right now is that a lot of those organizations are utilizing political appointees, academics, former political appointees, no offense, Robert, to inform their recommendations for reform.
00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:37.759
And that's great.
00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:39.200
That's fantastic.
00:18:39.519 --> 00:18:44.960
But there's a gap between those recommendations and the implementation.
00:18:45.279 --> 00:19:01.119
And so We the Doers really has the ability with the incredible network of expertise we have at our fingertips to see some of those roadblocks coming that other organizations may not see because we understand how the systems work.
00:19:01.359 --> 00:19:05.359
And as they used to say, where I grew up in New Jersey, we know the bodies are buried.
00:19:05.920 --> 00:19:07.920
And some of that stuff is unwritten too, right?
00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:16.160
It's not not that the government is great necessarily at documentation, but some of that is like, no, no, you don't do it, even if it's on a piece of paper, don't do it that way.
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:17.759
Do it this way, it's gonna work better, trust me.
00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:18.160
That's right.
00:19:18.240 --> 00:19:18.319
Right.
00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:18.799
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:19.599
Exactly right.
00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:22.799
I mean, you can go and read any policy out there.
00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:37.680
And if you don't look at the guidance that follows from OMB and then potentially departmental guidance and then potentially bureau guidance, you are missing a big part of the picture of how you're supposed to be implementing that.
00:19:38.079 --> 00:19:42.559
One of the tenets of we the doers is to make sure you're measuring the right things.
00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:43.759
Absolutely.
00:19:44.079 --> 00:19:49.519
And I hate to say I've been working in performance management even longer than you.
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:56.400
And you can get the unit or two, maybe even a department or an agency, headed in the right direction.
00:19:56.799 --> 00:20:04.799
But if leaders with a passion for doing this leave, the culture can revert to measuring what's easy.
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:13.359
How do you see what we the doers is doing, or what other recommendations would you have to ensure that those principles stick?
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:17.039
That is, we should be measuring outcomes, not just activities.
00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:19.119
That's such a hard question.
00:20:19.359 --> 00:20:27.200
I think the losses that have occurred in the federal space make that question very hard to answer at this moment.
00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:35.839
The staff that are elect in the federal space, at least the ones that I've reached out to and talked with, many of them are doing multiple jobs.
00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:39.519
And we're talking at various layers in the organization.
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:45.920
This makes compliance the only way for them to get everything done.
00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:49.839
And that's really unfortunate because compliance shouldn't be the first thing.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.160
It should be a, oh, that too?
00:20:52.319 --> 00:20:52.880
Okay, great.
00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:54.559
I can check that box as well.
00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:58.720
I've done what I need to do, but also it fills that need.
00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:06.319
And so I do worry a little bit that we're gonna be in a lull of that necessary level of compliance for the time being.
00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:15.039
But I do think that there is big opportunity to rethink how performance is integrated into everything we do in the federal level.
00:21:15.359 --> 00:21:22.880
There are a lot of things I would rewrite if given the opportunity to revise the legislation.
00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:38.559
And I think we also need to think about how we support the people doing the hard work of having these conversations, managing these data sets, all of that, because it's not supported financially.
00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:44.000
You know, when budget proposals go in, often there's not a line for this kind of work.
00:21:44.079 --> 00:21:48.720
It's an extracurricular or uh I hope to get to that kind of activity.
00:21:49.039 --> 00:21:51.839
Or let's give you another job in addition to your regular job.
00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:52.240
Yeah.
00:21:52.640 --> 00:21:53.279
Absolutely.
00:21:53.519 --> 00:21:54.480
And that happens.
00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:56.240
So it's actually really interesting.
00:21:56.319 --> 00:21:58.799
I see myself as a practitioner, right?
00:21:58.960 --> 00:21:59.759
I learned the job.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:08.079
On the job, and I knew a little something about data from my master's degree, and I knew something about statistics, and I learned about the budget.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:44.640
There are a lot of people out there doing performance measurement and performance management work that have learned it in the classroom, they've picked it up academically, and I would not suggest that I am in any way as qualified as they are, but so much of getting to where you're talking about, Robert, that outcome, that big thing, is disarming people, is having conversations that are uncomfortable, it's helping them see the value in what they do from an outside perspective and help them understand how their story is being conveyed.
00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:54.960
Because if what the measure that they're putting into the budget is, for example, the number of complaints received, that's not telling the right story for that program.
00:22:55.599 --> 00:23:08.720
We need to talk to them about how do we look for measures that are helping them grow and improve the program and put that in front of the people outside of government, right?
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:10.240
Put that in front of the leaders.
00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:12.880
We need to be able to tell a good news story as well.
00:23:13.039 --> 00:23:19.119
And so there's a lot of different factors that influence what measures get chosen.
00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:23.599
A lot of it is not so much about the message it sends.
00:23:23.759 --> 00:23:31.200
It's about convenience, it's about data quality, it's about I have someone that can pull that number for me when it's needed.
00:23:31.519 --> 00:23:33.119
Those aren't the right reasons.
00:23:33.359 --> 00:23:40.000
And so reminding them that those aren't the right reasons in a non-confrontational way is a skill set.
00:23:40.079 --> 00:23:47.039
And I think that's one that I've brought to the party that maybe an academic degree wouldn't have necessarily instilled in me.
00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:47.920
Yeah.
00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:50.000
Well, Dana, this has been fantastic.
00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:51.440
I always love talking to you.
00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:53.759
Thanks for taking so fast.
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:54.960
Thanks for taking the time.
00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:57.440
Thanks for joining the Gov Navigators Network.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.599
We're so thrilled that you're part of it.
00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:03.200
Oh, couldn't be more excited and couldn't be in better company.
00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:04.240
Thank you both.
00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:05.599
Thank you, Dana.
00:24:09.759 --> 00:24:12.640
Love that she's still involved in trying to make things better.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:14.480
I'm so glad she's part of the network.
00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:23.440
Something we didn't cover in the news of the week section was the hearing in House Oversight and Government Reform on fraud.
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:24.400
Yep.
00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:27.920
Where our good friend Jordan Burris testified from Sophia.
00:24:28.640 --> 00:24:29.759
He rocked the room.
00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:31.039
He really did.
00:24:31.279 --> 00:24:43.759
I talked with Jennifer Camara, who's the staffer who led that hearing later after the hearing, and she remarked how pleased she was that the hearing focused on solutions.
00:24:44.079 --> 00:24:47.759
Previous hearings have been highlighting the fact that there's fraud.
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:48.559
Yeah.
00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:49.839
Which I think we all know.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:51.920
If you don't know that there's fraud, you're not paying attention.
00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:54.880
She thought that was pretty meaty discussion of some of the solutions.
00:24:55.119 --> 00:24:55.279
Yeah.
00:24:55.359 --> 00:24:56.640
And Jordan did a really good job.
00:24:56.960 --> 00:25:02.400
Having worked in government and in the private sector in this area, he is a preeminent expert on this topic.
00:25:02.559 --> 00:25:05.519
And we had some great conversations afterwards with a couple of the witnesses too.
00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:09.039
Lots more to cover in that area, but it was a really good hearing and a good start.
00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:16.160
And sometimes it's not worth it to watch all the way to the end of a hearing, but watch till the end of this one if it's on your list to watch anyway.
00:25:16.319 --> 00:25:20.559
Jordan's final answer, he weaves in an amazing movie reference.
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:23.200
I won't give it away what it is, but watch till the end.
00:25:24.240 --> 00:25:25.519
Show notes, maybe.
00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:26.079
Yeah.
00:25:26.319 --> 00:25:26.960
Yes.
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:28.000
Busy week.
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:29.440
Do you have a busy week ahead?
00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:33.519
Well, I'm going to be at the beach on my company mandated vacation.
00:25:33.759 --> 00:25:35.119
Of course you are.
00:25:35.839 --> 00:25:40.880
So not as busy for me, but yes, busy week for Governor Navigators and Policy Circles.
00:25:41.039 --> 00:25:43.279
The AGA PDT is finally here.
00:25:43.519 --> 00:25:44.160
Absolutely.
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:45.519
It's going to be fantastic.
00:25:45.759 --> 00:25:51.839
Thousands of your favorite government accountability professionals descending on the nation's capital.
00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:52.480
Yeah.
00:25:53.039 --> 00:25:54.160
You're in Washington, D.C.
00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:58.480
Our friends RSM are leading a couple of good panels, but there are lots of other ones too.
00:25:58.559 --> 00:26:01.039
So you should check out and come to our soiree.
00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:01.440
Yeah.
00:26:01.599 --> 00:26:02.480
If you know, you know.
00:26:02.640 --> 00:26:04.160
Reach out to Robert if you want to come.
00:26:04.400 --> 00:26:09.759
And then Act IAC's hosting its asset and supply forum on the 21st.
00:26:10.079 --> 00:26:17.599
Geopolitical conflict, contested supply routes, and supply chain vulnerability have heightened the pressure on federal supply and asset networks.
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:18.799
Sounds revening.
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:21.519
Sounds like they could have called this what are we going to do about Iran?
00:26:23.519 --> 00:26:25.200
That would have been provocative.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:27.119
They probably would have gotten more registrations for that.
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:27.519
Yeah.
00:26:27.759 --> 00:26:34.240
And then we're hosting a forum up on the hill on the lending modernization act, which should be pretty cool.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:35.599
Serving Chick-fil-A.
00:26:35.920 --> 00:26:37.119
Chick-fil-A has been ordered.
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:41.200
So if you got that invite in your inbox, Hillstaff, come check it out.
00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:45.920
And Karasoft and GovExec are also hosting the GovForward Summit about FedRAMP.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:46.960
And that's on the 23rd.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:48.240
And they've got a great lineup.
00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:54.319
We talked about this a little at the top of the show, but check that out if you want to mingle with the movers and shakers in the FedRamp program.
00:26:54.640 --> 00:26:55.519
Have a great week.
00:26:55.680 --> 00:26:56.799
Enjoy the beach.
00:26:57.039 --> 00:26:58.079
You know I will.
00:27:06.319 --> 00:27:11.599
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show, brought to you by GovNavigators.
00:27:11.759 --> 00:27:16.240
We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process and didn't get seasick.
00:27:16.559 --> 00:27:17.680
Right, of course.
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:24.319
If you want to know more about us and what we're up to, please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com.
00:27:24.640 --> 00:27:25.440
Ahoy!
