The Changing Public Service: Looking Back...Moving Forward

The Changing Public Service: Looking Back...Moving ForwardAuthor(s): Manlio F. de Angelis, Marshall E. Dimock, William W. Parsons, Elmer B. Staats, O.Glenn Stahl, Donald C. Stone, Paul P. van Riper, Dwight Waldo and James R. CarrSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1990), pp. 199-209Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/976867 .

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199

The Changing Public Service: Looking Back...Moving Forward Founding ASPA Members: Manlio F. De Angelis, Marshall E. Dimock, William W. Parsons, Elmer B. Staats, 0. Glenn Stahl, Donald C. Stone, and Paul P. Van Riper

Dwight Waldo, Syracuse University, Session Convener

James R. Carr, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Editor

Dwight Waldo Had I been more prescient, I might have been an elder

statesman of the American Society for Public Administra- tion (ASPA) myself, because I was at the meetings in 1939 of the American Political Science Association at which the organization meetings took place. I also attend- ed the meeting the second day. This I did to hear one of the distinguished seniors at that time, Charles Beard, who made a memorable address beginning with a booming "Fellow travelers." This was much like having started an address in November 1988 with "Fellow liberals." The speech was a rewarding professional experience for me. But it took me two more years to get connected with public administration.

The task here is not merely awesome but, some would say, impossible. All have had the experience-oh how many times-of listening to somebody compress 20 minutes of thought into 40 minutes of words. But in these reflections by several of ASPA's founders, the task is to summarize literally more than 400 years of professional activity and thought into an hour and a half of words. These panelists were asked to reflect to the length of five to seven minutes each. If you do a little arithmetic, you see that that limit is supposed to leave time for interchange with the audience, questions, further observations, and so forth. Let's all try to make it work out that way. The order in which the founders will speak, fortunately, is provided by American culture: we shall simply do it alpha- betically. So let us proceed with the first of the speakers, who is Manlio De Angelis.

Manny served in local, state, national, and international administrative positions, and he has a distinguished record

in general. His government services include nine years in the U.S. Civil Service Commission, in which he advanced from Examiner to Chief of Program Planning Operations. He has also had significant overseas experience, including three years in technical assistance in Greece and two years of teaching in the program of the University of California attached to the University of Bologna in Italy. And since he formally retired some 18 years ago, he has carried on a consulting business.

Please understand that in making these introductions, I am summarizing a great deal of experience in few words. I cannot do more than indicate in general terms the careers and accomplishments of these distinguished persons. So I give you first, Manny De Angelis.

Manlio F. De Angelis The topic, of course, is "Looking Back...Moving For-

ward." We were asked to say what we have learned. But I don't know who "we" are. Public administration, public service, as you all know, is so diverse; it has so many different specialities, activities, and levels. It encompasses so many activities that I don't believe that any one person can describe it all or even summarize the lessons learned. Therefore, I've told Dwight that all I'll talk about are some of the few things that have been most important in my life over some 32 years in federal service, additional years in other kinds of activities at the local and state gov- erment levels, and in private consulting.

I shall break my comments into three points. The first is, what have I learned about preparation for a career in public service? Second, how did I develop any expertise,

At thefiftieth anniversary conference of the American Society for Public Administration in 1989, seven founding members reflected on the changing public service, their experiences in it, and challenges now confronting the Unit- ed States. Dwight Waldo, former editor of the Public Administration Review, was convener of the session, and James Carr of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency compiled this collection of remarks. Opportunities for ASPA, for public administration, and for governments throughout America are succinctly presented, based on the extensive practical and scholarly experience of these long-time leaders of ASPA.

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200 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW * 50th YEAR

whatever I might have, and learn coordination with other areas of specialization in this field? Third, how did I decide to accept the challenges that came to me, including many opportunities to learn new things and to take on new jobs?

I guess I'm a risk taker. I believe we all have to be, but I don't want to tell others what they should do. I was for- tunate. My career spanned a period of governmental expansion, a period of intense activity, and that provided many, many opportunities. Nevertheless, one of the lessons I think I've learned is that every time has its opportunities if one only prepares to take them.

Also, I want initially to mention retirement. I think that retirement is one of the most important times to continue learning, because it's a time when one may be asked to help others in training, in consulting, in developing new activities, in volunteer work. It is a time of reflection, and I think it's most important in each of our careers. At least I have found it to be one of the most significant times in my entire life.

Now I shall return to the two or three points under each of these three headings.

First, in preparing for public service, I was a kid from a small town who went to a big college, and I began to have my eyes opened to social consequences in the Depression. Penn State in 1931-1932 was a small college, but I had to support myself to get through. My dad had lost his job the year before I graduated from high school. Fortunately, I found opportunities to work at Penn State the first day I arrived, and I helped to put myself through college the rest of the four years. That was a great learning experience for me. I found out only after I took the job that one of the ladies for whom I did housework for 25 cents an hour was married to the head of the economics department, who was also chairman of the scholarship committee. So the next year, I found myself the recipient of a scholarship because they knew I needed it, and I had made good enough grades to earn it. That was one of my very proud moments which enabled me to keep on going.

It was early in my college experience that I decided to aim for the public service. In my sophomore year, I developed interests in the concerns of the whole world that I had not really been aware of as a younger person. And so I moved from a scientific field of chemistry and physical science over to liberal arts. I took art; I took psychology; I took education. I found in my own background that the more things I learned, the better I would feel about it and the better prepared I would become. There's an example I would like to mention. It's the example of the small rocket and the big rocket. The small rocket has just so much powder stored in it, and it will go up only so high. Some- one told me, "Take the time when it's available to build the biggest power base you can, the greatest amount of background you can get, and you'll go higher and don't worry about it." And I think that's true. One of the things I found in those early years was the necessity and desir- ability of developing writing skills, reading skills, lan- guage skills, and the kind of liberal arts skills that are important when you are called upon to create your own

job. I discovered that later on. When I retired, an adviser said to a group of us who had been in the foreign service: "Don't go out to look at classified ads. Think about what you have done. Think about what you can do. Think about creating your own job." I think that this is what happens; if you are up to looking for opportunities or if you make yourself available, then opportunities come to you. At least they came to me, and I'm thankful for them.

As a young person, I found that joining organizations that had interests similar to my own was very important. I had an opportunity to develop some leadership skills by chairing various groups in college; by helping to organize intercollegiate meetings of one kind or another; and by making friends across a wide spectrum. Those friend- ships, those professional associations, are part of a net- work that each individual can create that helps to build a satisfying career. Such associations frequently open up new opportunities never dreamed of. Occasions arise that give one a chance to do something different.

Regarding my second point, developing expertise, I think that one of the best ways I found was to be willing to take on temporary assignments and to move around. I did a variety of things. I even gave up a job that could have been permanent in Pennsylvania State government to go to Washington, DC, for a short-term, temporary assignment in classification, because the man who was going to head the program was so good and I was going to learn something. I took a cut in pay to go to Washington for this three-month temporary job. Before that job was finished, it turned out that I got a permanent job offer from the U.S. Civil Service Commission (CSC), resulting from an exam- ination that I had taken years before. Because the man I would be working with was such a competent person, I thought that I would learn a great deal. I never regretted it. My experience of nine years at CSC, much of it under the leadership of Leonard D. White and then Arthur Flem- ming, was most challenging, and it led me to learn much about the coordination of many different activities. An examiner doesn't just examine. He has to relate applicant skills to recruitment and to placement. The war came along and from being an examiner I became chief of placement for the entire war effort. It was a tremendous opportunity to help. I worked two shifts instead of one, and that activity quickly went to three shifts with 250 people working in my group at one point.

I learned another lesson at that time, that I needed an assistant. So I trained one. In six months, my boss liked him, needed help, and took him away. I got another assistant, trained him, and in six more months another boss took him away. So I began to complain. And they said, "Hey, wait a minute. We think you're a good trainer. That is a compliment. Train the next guy." I did, and then I got promoted. Thus I learned, don't make yourself indispensable. If you're indispensable, you never get promoted.

New job challenges is a topic with much I could talk about. The one challenge that stands out in my mind occurred after nine years of civil service, when I was sud- denly asked to go to Japan. To do what? To be on a personnel advisory mission to help democratize the civil ser-

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THE CHANGING PUBLIC SERVICE 201

vice system, through a Japanese group that would work with four of us. I was chosen because I had just headed the program planning staff at the U.S. Civil Service Com- mission (CSC). As a postwar adjustment, we had rewrit- ten 45 executive orders dating from the beginnings of the CSC, 61 years earlier. We planned the peacetime conver- sion of the American civil service system from a wartime basis back to a competitive basis, that would give some of the over 15 million veterans an opportunity to participate.

Japan opened a new world to me. After I came back, I was asked to go to Greece. A civil war was under way there. The Truman Doctrine had been enunciated. The week before I was to depart to Greece, I was called in by the Assistant Secretary who had hired me at the State Department. He said: "We have just heard that there has been a reorganization, and the job you were going to as program planner has been abolished. You don't have to go. We don't know what you'll do if you do go. But you're welcome to go if you want to." I said, "Sure." My family was ready to go. I was taking two small kids to Greece in the middle of a civil war. We had planned everything. I said, "We'll go." So I landed in Greece, and my family came a couple of months later by boat. One of the very first things I had to do was to find a place to sit because there weren't chairs and tables. I managed to do something about that and to help some of the other people. Within a week's time, I was opening a letter of credit at the Bank of Greece for millions of dollars. It was something I had never done, but a college course I had taken in international banking stood me in good stead.

Retirement activity was to have been a third topic, but my time is exhausted. Let me close by saying simply that it's been a wonderful experience being part of ASPA. In my retirement I had the opportunity to work with Seymour Berlin when he served as ASPA's Executive Director. He called me in for a two-month temporary assignment, and I stayed for four and one-half years to set up the member services activities, insurance programs, and many of the other activities in ASPA. That has been one of the most rewarding activities of many in my retirement. Thank you.

Dwight Waldo The second commentator is Marshall Dimock. As

chair, I was given a sheaf of briefing materials, and among the briefing materials was a photocopy of Marshall's entry in Who's Who in America. I discovered it was an unfortu- nate side effect of his career that it increased the size and production cost of this very widely used reference work. Truly it was difficult to extract from the masses of data supplied to me as chair the experiences of the presenters that should be mentioned. Let me merely say that Mar- shall has held a variety of posts in government at various levels, in many jurisdictions, and in numerous places. And his service has included-what is unusual among public administrators-a period as a legislator in his state of Vermont. He is the author of many and varied books and articles, both alone and with Gladys Ogden Dimock.

MARCH/APRIL 1990

And what most of you would not know, but I have occa- sion to know, he is the author of delightful animal stories, 11 of which have been published in book form. He has taught at various universities, both at home and abroad. And all of what he has done, he has done while carrying on a wide variety of other public-oriented enterprises, which I must restrain myself from listing. So I give you Marshall Dimock.

Marshall E. Dimock The challenge of ASPA in the next 50 years is to be the

leader in an attempt to solve the economic and political problems of the United States-problems which will last for at least five decades. We need a catalytic agent, and we need some leadership. And I think that ASPA is ideal- ly equipped to serve this role. It's not likely to happen among the political scientists or the economists or the sociologists or the psychologists or even the American Management Association (now that Larry Appley is no longer there). I don't know of any organization that can provide the know-how that is necessary to solve Ameri- ca's problems unless ASPA steps forward and does the job. If there's anything that we should put over our doors that identifies members in this organization, it is the sign that public administrators are doers. As long as we keep track of the fact that we are essentially doers and that our job is to accomplish concrete results and to solve problems, we shall do our duty to the United States. But if we begin to do as so many other organizations in the United States are now doing and merely set up a new study commission and then do nothing in terms of the follow- through, I fear for what is going to happen to the United States.

I was once in Japan as a visiting professor, and that pro- vides an example. Japanese budget officials came to see me and said if you will give us a seminar, in turn we'll give you information to write a book. I never should have agreed, or perhaps they should not have, since they were most often informing me and I wasn't teaching them. Of course, if I had been in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, like some of my colleagues here, I probably could have taught them something. But even then I doubt it because they were already so production-doer-motivated. They would constantly ask me, "Well, what is the next step in the process that you are outlining?" For example, they collected material from all over the country so that I could do my book and all they had to do was say, "Please help this man write his book." The whole system in Japan operates that way: it gets things done.

One of the great dangers that I see in ASPA is that we are going to divide policy and its execution, and, if so, we're dead as a dodo. Public administration will not survive if it persists in that, and it ought not to survive in that way, because the respect in which we differ from other organizations is that we combine plans and their execution. And unless we continue to make that synthesis, we shall have lost the reason for our existence.




Now, if this thesis is at all correct, it prioritizes what we do. One of the first things ASPA needs to do is to increase the local initiative of the chapters. I would like to see a number of chapters get together within the next couple of days or next two weeks and lay out a plan of deciding what the principal problems are that we should be tack- ling. Big problems, you know, like education and human services. Not piddling questions, but big ones. And then I would like to see each chapter take one of these problems and work on it intensively and publish the results.

One reason I'm giving you this pep talk this morning is that I was very active in the Society for the Advancement of Management, the old Taylor Society. And one of the things we did, for example, in the Washington chapter, was to have a series of study groups, largely inspired by outstanding people like Harlow Person. We would deal, for example, with work planning, and we would publish the results. That product was so good that it is still a clas- sic in the field today. This is a first step that ASPA ought to take today. Professionals in public administration ought to divide up the whole field of the economy in order to revive the position that we formerly occupied in the world: to see that important jobs get done. The second thing we ought to do is to get the resources to do these jobs. Third, ASPA ought to see that the results are published. And fourth, we ought to see that the results are widely circulat- ed, as, for example, when Luther Gulick headed the better government personnel study or when the Brownlow Com- mittee or the Hoover Commission reported. Those leaders realized that follow-up is extremely important.

ASPA ought to be thinking in those terms today. Lead- ers ought to be thinking large. They ought to be thinking in terms of saving the country not simply about internal organizational issues. Now you say, "Are we qualified to do that?" Well, let me tell you my reasons for giving you this pep talk. Is there any other organization where you have all levels of organization, in terms of production, as represented to the extent that ASPA has? Most organizations draw only on those at isolated top levels of organizations. ASPA has all levels represented. And this shows my bias. My bias is always for the operating officials, because I think that that is where the people are who are going to save the country. Generally speaking, the bulk of our members are operating officials-doers. As such, they can put forth an idea and secure the cooperation that will really do something to solve the problems that I see coming up in the next 50 years that already threaten to over- whelm us.

In order to do this, we need to make up our minds that we must resist the tendency toward centralization and too much reliance upon the central office. ASPA must give local chapters the freedom to go ahead and do the things that are necessary. We ought not to have too much confor- mity. We ought not to have too many rules. And we ought to ask people who have been prominently imaginative and involved to step forward, because the way that we're going to get this dynamism is by getting a mass movement that is democratic and inspired.

One reason that ASPA needs to do this job is that we can take a great deal of pride in the fact that this professional organization has overcome all kinds of prejudices, such as anti-women or anti-race. ASPA has become truly a democratic organization. And one of the results of that is the way this fiftieth anniversary conference has been run. It's been run beautifully. If we can run a conference as well as this, using all levels of people in terms of the hierarchy of organization, then my belief is that we have the potential with which to undertake an important and demanding scheme such as I've been outlining. Now, another thing. I don't think that we're going to solve the problems of the United States until we solve the problems of getting cooperation. We're not going to solve the problems of cooperation until we get the legislature and the executive to work together. And we're not going to solve the problem of getting more production out of administration until we tackle the question of our relationship to the judiciary and the legal profession. The courts are too actively administering things that they have no business administering. I could give you examples of this, but I've already exceeded my time. So I'll leave that for the period of questions. Thank you.

Dwight Waldo The third presenter is William "Bill" Parsons. In the

information which I was given, Bill confessed to an early false start by taking a bachelor of science degree in business education. But he quickly remedied that by taking a degree in public administration, and from that point on everything was up. He worked successfully and notably as a management consultant in the 1930s, and he served with the Public Administration Service when that was an operation to be reckoned with. He had a distinguished career in the federal government, in the Bureau of the Budget, where he was a legend when I went into that enterprise for a brief period in 1944. He was later Assis- tant Secretary in the Treasury Department, and he also served in the General Accounting Office. On his retirement from the federal government, he joined the faculty of the University of Southern California as distinguished practitioner in residence and continues in that role today.

William W. Parsons I'm afraid that I can't outdo Marshall's superb chal-

lenge. He has done far more than most of us who have been workers in the vineyard.

My experience with ASPA goes back a long way: it really began at the Maxwell School at Syracuse in 1936- 1937. A number of us on the campus at that time were interested in finding some way to meet a need that was quite evident. There was no generalist professional organization. The Public Administration Clearinghouse in Chicago in the 1930s served as the umbrella organization for a number of specialized groups like ICMA. One of the things that impressed me then, and I know now how to put it into words, thanks to Harlan Cleveland, is that public

MARCH/APRIL 1990




administration is "the business of putting it all together." How do we do that? There was no professional organization in the mid-1930s to facilitate that process. A number of us at Syracuse felt the need for such a group. We sensed that we were going into the field as generalist administrators, and we wanted to create an organization to further that professional perspective.

One of the criticisms of ASPA today, of course, is that it is too general. But it does fill a great need in providing a linking mechanism for people in a number of other professional societies. Before I come back to that, one of the things I would like to do, since this is a time for looking backward as well as forward, is to take a moment to tell you an experience I had with ASPA when I was in the Treasury. It will illustrate my point.

I had the good fortune to be the career assistant secretary for management in the Treasury for 14 years through two administrations, both Democratic and Republican. In the mid-1950s I served as the national president of ASPA, and I was in the position of being able to travel the country for ASPA at the same time that I was traveling for the Treasury. My superiors thought that was a good idea because in the process I found and recruited good people for the Treasury Department. So there was a reciprocal mechanism at work. I was able to speak to almost every ASPA chapter in the country during my term as president.

One time I had a call from a friend of mine who was the city manager of San Diego and president of the San Diego ASPA chapter. He said, "Bill, I understand you're coming to Los Angeles. How about coming down to San Diego to talk to the chapter?" I was happy to be able to do that. But at the chapter meeting (a group of approximately 100 people, even then a very big chapter) the city manager took what I thought was a very strong position. He introduced me as one of those high officials in Washington who never get their hands dirty. They don't have the problems that city managers must deal with, he said, such as rescuing cats from the top of telephone poles, stopping dogs from barking, or picking up overturned garbage cans. I responded to that introduction by saying, "You don't know some of the problems in Washington. There are many occasions at every level of government when officials in public service must get their hands dirty." And I told the ASPA chapter an anecdote which I'll repeat here briefly.

One afternoon late in January, along about 1954, the Secretary of the Treasury returned from a conference in the White House with Ike. It was about 5:30 in the afternoon, and since it was January, it was getting dark quite rapidly. Most of the working people had gone home. I got a call on the intercom: "Bill, get down here quickly." I rushed down to the Secretary's office to find out what was up. He was standing there with a very fancy, expensive hat. (He was a very wealthy man, and one of his hobbies was expensive hats.) He held it out, and it had obviously been splattered by a pigeon. I started to laugh, but then I thought I'd better not.

MARCH/APRIL 1990

"Bill, get these damn birds off the building," he said. As a very successful business administrator, the head of a big steel company, when he said something, he was used to having it done. He didn't want my explanation that the birds had been on the building since Lincoln's time. There were over a million starlings and pigeons there every night. This was their building. But he wasn't interested in that. All he wanted was to get the birds off the building. No city manager had more of a challenge than that.

We had tried to get rid of the birds previously. We had used whistles; we had used snakes; we had used owls; we had used everything on earth you can think of to get rid of the birds. We couldn't poison them or shoot them because of the Humane Society.

I recalled that an assistant had shown me an article in the Wall Street Journal just the day before about a building in New York that was also plagued with birds. I called him at home and asked him to get up to New York that night and to go down to Wall Street to find out what they had done about their birds. He called me the next morning and reported, "There is a bird-proofing company in Philadelphia that has strung low-voltage wires over parts of the building and succeeded in keeping birds off the building." He went down to Philadelphia to see the company and to find out when they could come down to help us. They arrived a few days later and recommended making a test on one section of the building.

The Treasury Building, as most of you know, is an ancient building, built perfectly for birds to roost. It was very difficult to enter or leave the building at dusk. You had to run fast and you had to duck. We had eight people who did nothing but clean up bird guano every morning.

The bird-proofing test was successful, so the next move was to enter into a contract. There were competitors in the bird-proofing business, but we knew that this was the company that we wanted, so we had to be very careful in our specifications. Of course, we had no money either. Minor problems like that. One thing followed another, and we finally got a contract for cleaning the building and bird proofing it. Often when I was in the boss's office, he would point to the pigeons looking at him through the window-reminders, constant reminders.

The next hurdle came when the crew was finally working in the building. The chief of the Secret Service came to see me. "Bill, will you get those thugs out of the building?"

"What are you talking about, Chief?" "The fellow who is heading the crew, the vice president

of the company, got out of Leavenworth last week. We can't have people like that in the Treasury Building."

It took another three or four weeks to get that straight- ened out. But nine months later we had the building bird- proofed, and Secretary Humphrey could wear his best hat to work in safety. I had to beg, borrow, and nearly steal the money to do it. I never have told the Budget Bureau how we did it. We spent a quarter of a million dollars, which is like a million dollars today.



204 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW U 50th YEAR

We did get the building bird proofed, and it was a proud day and a proud building. And that was the story I told the ASPA chapter in San Diego about high level officials in Washington getting their hands dirty. If I had not succeeded in getting rid of the birds, I would have been of no use to my boss in more important matters. That's the "doer" quality that Marshall Dimock was talking about.

As for the future, my feeling is that ASPA fills a very great need for the bridging of the specialist with the generalist manager. We all talk about this; we all know that it's important. There are some who criticize the fact that ASPA is a generalist organization that has a number of specialized sections, and specialists perhaps feel some resentment in being under a generalist umbrella. My own feeling is just the opposite. I think it's very important that ASPA brings all these specialized experts together in a common meeting ground. I think that this opportunity will be increasingly valuable in the next 50 years. As we all know well from academic experience, it is necessary to make generalists and managers out of specialists who are already in public service careers. We must all figure out how to get rid of the pigeons, so to speak, in order to be able to get the important substantive work of government done. Making managers out of specialists is a chronic need, and ASPA has a special contribution to make to this process. Thank you very much.

Dwight Waldo The next presenter is Elmer Staats. His resume is truly

awesome, and I shall just have to pick off some of the things I think are important, or at least caught my atten- tion. Elmer held important positions in the Bureau of the Budget at different times and under different administrations-which I think says something. He capped his federal service with 15 years as Comptroller General of the United States. His list of honors, citations, medals, and awards begins with eight honorary degrees and goes on from there. He is past president of ASPA and a founding member of the National Academy of Public Administra- tion. And the Academy-I think this says something very eloquently-has established a trust fund in his name.

Elmer B. Staats Thank you, Dwight. I take as my departure point this

morning, June 8, 1939, when I went to work for Don Stone in the Bureau of the Budget. The economy was still in deep depression. There was a war going on in Europe. We hadn't begun to think about how the United States would relate to that. We had a report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management which sig- naled that the President needed help. He had then six staff people, including a secretary. We moved to establish an Executive Office of the President. Don Stone, incidental- ly, was the chief architect of the EOP. We now have OMB, the National Security Council, the White House staff, and the Council of Economic Advisers; these cur- rently are the most significant parts of the EOP.

Upon reflecting over 50 years about some of the things that I feel have added most to our ability to manage government, I'll list just a few of them. Included must be the First Hoover Commission in the 1940s and steps to improve the coordination of federal, state, and local governments, especially the Advisory Commission on Inter- governmental Relations. Also important have been the growth of ASPA, the founding and increasing influence of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the development of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. Centers of strength have grown in our colleges and universities for training people for public service. At the time I came into government, there were only four in the nation. I don't know what the membership of NASPAA is now, but it's very large. Of growing importance are public interest groups of state and local government organizations and the Acade- my of State and Local Government.

The Federal Training Act of 1950 was important. A major reform effort of today is the National Commission on the Public Service, chaired by Paul Volcker, the first comprehensive review of federal civil service by an out- side group in 35 years, designed in part to counteract the negative rhetoric of the past two Presidents with respect to the career service. Fortunately, we have now, today, a President who regards himself as a product of the public service, and whose attitude represents a change. These are all elements that I see as being representative of progress, but we have many problems ahead which I think are going to challenge the ability of the public service. I'll mention only six; you can add to the list.

First on my list are the budget and the trade deficits. In the budget deficit case, the United States has tripled its national debt in only eight years. This grows out of a self- inflicted wound to the body politic in the drastic tax cuts of the early 1980s. An intergenerational equity issue is involved in this trade and budget deficit situation. I think that it might even be regarded as an ethical issue: why should we place this burden on our children and grandchil- dren?

Second, as a challenge, is the environment. Again, this is an intergenerational equity issue of the first order of magnitude.

The third is education. It's a worrisome issue which I think represents itself in the dropouts, in fewer minorities graduating from high schools, and even fewer going on to college. Excellence in education must again be a priority.

Fourth on my list is drug abuse, which, while a major problem everywhere, is a disastrous threat to the inner cities, particularly impacting on younger people and draw- ing off resources which are needed for other purposes.

Fifth on my list is the infrastructure deterioration in this country. We've given far too little thought to the needs for capital investment in the public sector: such basics as bridges, sanitary sewers, and public facilities.

And the sixth and final on my list is the concern about ethics in both public and private life. Maybe we're some-

MARCH/APRIL 1990




what more sensitive to this issue today, but in my opinion it's more involved than just the newspaper accounts.

Now each of us can add to this list. The important thing is that these challenges call for able and dedicated public servants, imaginative people, innovative people, who are able to work in a highly complex political and economic environment. That is why we established the National Commission on the Public Service. That is why, in that report, we emphasized the importance, at a very early age, in grade school and high school, that we begin to instill in American young people attitudes of responsible citizenship and public service. You'll find much in that report which I think you will like. These are challenges for ASPA and for NAPA, for NASPAA, for state and local associations of government.

If America does not meet these challenges in the next few years, the next 50 years are going to be fraught with great uncertainty. We may have to agree with the person who defines an optimist these days as one who still feels that the future is uncertain. Thank you.

Dwight Waldo

The next presenter is 0. Glenn Stahl. Glenn not only had 34 years of service, varied and important, in the federal government, but he also had significant experience in state and local government. Additionally, Glenn served abroad and was a consultant to five foreign governments. He has written several books and more than 100 articles and is what I think might be described as the solid center of personnel administration. Along with this, he had done much else, including periods of teaching, both at home and abroad.

0. Glenn Stahl The perspective of this group of charter members today

spans almost all of a century-one that has embraced much material progress but one that regrettably has wit- nessed only occasional periods of true civic consciousness and concern for the collective welfare. It has ranged from the lofty ideals evoked during the two World Wars, the New Deal, and the internationalism of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years down to the Vietnam disillusionment, the Watergate scandals, and the "Reagan Retrogression." From high aspirations for society's constructive use of government, from Walter Lippmann's mid-century idea of a "Public Philosophy," it has degenerated down to the nadir of regard for our sense of community.

No wonder public administration has been plagued with self doubts and has retreated from its earlier visions of a more messianic role in solving society's problems!

No wonder so few college students seem interested in anything as nebulous as "the public good" and in working for the public service!

No wonder we have produced new generations exem- plifying and glorifying greed and self aggrandizement!

MARCH/APRIL 1990

No wonder we see renewed distrust and disparagement of government, while the marketplace is worshiped as the great arbiter of all that is "good"!

Yes, we are right back in the 1920s, when Calvin Coolidge proclaimed that "the business of government is business."

Yet, a faithful minority still hangs in there-including many members of ASPA-trying desperately to keep the machinery of government functioning, under discouraging conditions-trying to protect it from the Rodney Danger- field syndrome of "no respect." And there are some hope- ful signs of organized efforts to face up to the situation, notably the work of the National Commission on the Pub- lic Service, which is making an impressive contribution, and a new President who at least says some good words about the public service and its quality, that is, when he is talking directly to its members.

But do the proverbial citizens on the street hear about all this? No, I think not; they fall back on the same tired old myths and shibboleths that for decades have been per- petrated on us by those elements in America who value private enrichment way ahead of the public welfare.

We in public administration have been making two fun- damental mistakes: 1. We have concentrated too much on machinery and pro-

cesses and too little on the goals and public support for public administration. In our doctrine and commisera- tions we tend to neglect the professional and technical end products of government-law enforcement, economic regulation, education, conservation, environmental protection, functions in health, engineering, and monetary fields, and research of all kinds.

2. In our zeal to be nonpolitical, we have mustered too little courage to stand up for the broad public interest. We have confused impartiality with neutrality; we have mistakenly thought that to be impartial in action we had to be neutral in advocacy. Let me cite five random examples: First, how many of us stood up for the public service

when the worst onslaughts of the Reagan years were under way?

Second, how many still courageously fight the unre- lenting pressures for "privatization" (a loathsome term for any truly public-spirited mind) and all its unsupported assumptions? How many openly challenge the notion that monetary profits to entrepreneur privateers is a superior motivation in getting the general public's work done as compared with exaltation of the service ideal? Indeed, competition and profit can be negative motivators for many functions, ranging from scientific research to crimi- nal investigation.

Third, how many have helped to tell the world about the profound satisfactions found in working in the public interest? How many, instead, have cowered in their offices and laboratories and resorted to advising their progeny not to seek public service careers?



206 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW U 50th YEAR

Fourth, how many stuck their necks out to resist politi- cization and degradation of their functions? Think, for example, of the signal sent to college students and other prospective recruits when the U.S. Office of Personnel Management openly encouraged civil servants to move their functions into the private sector to make more money!

Fifth, how many have valued subservience to political masters so abjectly that they failed to speak out when their bosses violated law or the public trust or sabotaged duties required by statute or the Constitution?

For everyone who demonstrated such efforts and courage in their dedication to public responsibilities, I venture there are a thousand who cannot say they did.

Look at the evidence of public ignorance and the per- sistence of political myths brought out just in the 1988 election year: 1. Public expenditure and taxation are still considered by

a majority to be major evils, while the excesses of Wall Street, defense contractors' skullduggery, and other corporate graft (causing immense costs to the public) get only fleeting criticism. In the agonizing over taxes, few make the connection with the much higher costs of paying interest on excessive debts, of selling off Ameri- ca's assets to foreign investors, of bailing out savings institutions, and the like-all to avoid needed public expenditures for regulatory control and to "keep the government off the backs" of enterprising charlatans.

2. The pay of higher-level civil servants and judges, along with that of Members of Congress, goes down in flames-while scarcely a ripple of public protest is heard about the unconscionable multimillion-dollar annual incomes of literally millions of corporate executives, money-market manipulators, media moguls, lawyers, and professional athletes.

3. So much of the American public gets exercised about graft and abuse in government but succumbs meekly to an unregulated, free-booting brand of capitalism in the private sector.

4. The quality of elective officials and presidential (especially subcabinet) appointments has sunk to the point that the criterion for holding public office is no longer "who is the best available person?" but merely "who can perform minimally?" and sometimes "how close to criminality has the candidate's conduct been?" If a candidate is not quite indictable, he or she is considered approvable-with elements of an uninformed, careless electorate rallying with campaign support.

5. Instead of cringing under the illusion that government should perform more like business, how many of us have had the temerity to suggest that business should behave more like government? I contend that we public-administration types need to

assemble the talent, to marshal the evidence, and, most of all, to summon the courage to reeducate the American people as to what we are all about. I say we are here not as mere complying servants bending to the partisan whims of the moment, but as a counterweight to political

neophytes or extremists who in too many cases have little regard for their publicness and their ethical obligations and are too often bent on sacking the commonweal.

Along with major elements in our citizenry, are we prisoners of an individualistic philosophy that elevates personal "rights" so far above the common good, the general interest, the welfare of others, that we forget enforcement of social "obligations"? We approach irrationality in our defense of "freedom" from social controls, in our resistance to constraints on the unbridled pursuit of self indulgence and self aggrandizement. Our system certainly complains against expropriation of private wealth far more insistently than it objects to expropriation of the welfare offuture generations. We in public administration, all too often, fall prey to the easy way out, to the psychologically disabling notion that this is the "American way."

I had thought that the real American way was an ever- present primary concern for mankind's general welfare. To resist erosion of this American way, we do not need funds so much as determination! There are 17 million of us in civil public employment. If we spoke with one voice, both our political leaders and the elusive taxpayers might take notice. We should vow to make even the National Rifle Association stand in awe!

Collectively and individually, public servants should make it their mission, for the 1990s and thereafter, to regalvanize the American people into kinds of vision that Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy articulated. If we did, we wouldn't even need that higher pay to coax the best and the brightest (and, I hope, the best motivated) back into the public service.

The United States is yearning for leadership that challenges the good and noble in our citizens. We must assert our own true place in democratic government-that of a public interest profession, not just an army of imple- menters! If enough others are not willing to take it on, then why not ourselves?

Dwight Waldo Our next presenter is Don Stone. Yesterday, ASPA's

President introduced Don with, "This man needs no introduction." You know the line, which is always followed by an introduction. Well, "This man needs no introduction." But I will note some items from his varied career. He directed the Public Administration Service in the 1930s, and he held key positions in the Bureau of the Budget, the Marshall Plan, and the Mutual Security Agency. Don also was a college president in the 1950s. He was the first dean and "founder" of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. And he has been president of four organizations of public administration professionals, including, of course, ASPA.

Donald C. Stone I believe I have learned a few things-what to do as

well as to avoid-from working with a host of superb people in many organizations. Some examples:

MARCH/APRIL 1990




1. Before accepting appointment to a new post, be sure you follow a "stinker."

2. To assure success, select people more competent than you are and give them any resultant credit.

3. Before signing a letter, check whether your secretary enclosed the items mentioned.

4. Avoid voting in meetings and use consensus-building procedures to prevent formation of "in" groups and "out" groups.

5. On ethics, follow Elmer Staats's advice. If you don't want something to be printed in the next morning's edi- tion of your newspaper, don't do it.

6. The success of a meeting depends on the comfort and arrangement of chairs.

7. If a highly centralized organization isn't working well, the solution is to decentralize it. If it is already decen- tralized, then the remedy is centralization.

8. Beware of bureaucratic anemia-a fatal disease when iron in the blood changes to lead in the pants.

9. If you wish to live long and joyfully, never retire. In respect to improving the art and practice of public

administration, we have too often ignored the requisites of and failed to foster democratic, effective, and respected government. To move forward we must: 1. Advocate more appropriate structures and roles for leg-

islative, executive, and judicial branches. This includes local, state, and federal-and the intergovernmental system.

2. Recognize the crucial importance of capable, trustworthy executive leadership and management as indispensable to effective performance.

3. Give a death blow to the prevalent dogma that, unless an executive is free from merit principles to appoint and change several levels of subordinates, career appointees will not be responsive or trustworthy.

4. Accelerate the supply of talented graduates of schools of public affairs and administration who are specially prepared for managerial and administrative responsibilities.

Time does not permit citation of other examples. May I concentrate on this last point on professional education.

I wish to reply to those starry-eyed academicians who proclaim that the discipline of public administration is in "trouble" in "disarray." That it lacks a theoretical justification. For years now we have been admonished by sabo- teurs and infiltrators that there is no integrating theory which makes the study and practice of public administration respectable. Some say the concept of a profession is an illusion; Q.E.D., schools of public administration are no longer legitimate or relevant-they should concentrate on disciplinary education and on producing policy analysts in the disciplines. A whole book was recently published with the title, The End of Public Administration. What should we do to diffuse this sophistry and apostasy?

MARCH/APRIL 1990

First, expel from ASPA anyone who refers to public administration as a discipline. It is not a discipline like political science, economics, or sociology. It is a multidis- ciplinary-based field of practice-a vast arena of initiative and action cutting across and using many disciplines.

Second, ASPA and NASPAA and other public service organizations should define and broadcast what administration is all about in operational terms. Based on 60 years of study, managerial experience, and teaching, I suggest that it is a field of professional study and practice concerned with mobilizing and using all relevant competen- cies and knowledge in carrying out public purposes through responsible and effective organizations with management as the integrating element.

Fifteen years ago in a NASPAA symposium, Dwight Waldo answered the proclaimers of this alleged identity crisis by advocating "an overarching professional paradigm with management as a thing in itself." That is a sufficient answer.

Third, it is time for experienced public managers to speak up and, first, to tell professors in the disciplines either to stick to their disciplines or to plant at least one foot solidly in professional work; and, second, to instruct the ASPA Council and editors to prevent anti-public administration subversives from infiltrating.

Fourth, request NASPAA to stop letting these disciplinary specialists have a dominant voice in determining standards, curricular content, and accreditation for graduate education in public administration. Drop from membership in NASPAA and accreditation any program which is subordinated in a disciplinary department or group of disciplines. There is no more justification to recognize a political science department as a legitimate sponsor of a school of public administration than a biology department as the parent of a school of medicine. If NASPAA is to engage in accreditation, it should apply to a total comprehensive school, not to one element or a program subordinated to a single or group of disciplines.

Political science, economics, and many other disciplines and technologies have made and should make many inputs to public administration. Specialists should be on tap, not on top. If a disciplinary specialist wishes to be on top, the task is to become a generalist and to guard against a bias toward the former specialty. This applies to both government and university administrators.

Fifth, let all of us who esteem the profession of public administration make clear to university presidents and top academic officers that it is as essential to establish a comprehensive professional school of public affairs and administration as it is schools of business, medicine, education, and law. In addition to their basic curricula, such schools should be concerned with selected fields of administration such as public works, human services, urban administration, international affairs, environmental protection, public health, etc. These involve cooperative programs with other professional schools.

As a concluding note, let me share two relevant sen- tences in a letter that Luther Gulick wrote to me in June 1973:




"These culminations of human life are now in a tailspin, with problems and challenges so overwhelming that no one can be sure of the future, nor certain that mankind will be able to surmount them.

"Our solace in observing these latter degen- erations is the knowledge that those who worked for noble, honest, imaginative, and effective public policies and management were not only on the right path, but that the future, if there is a future based on the past, will once more turn to these ideas and policies to find the way forward."

Dwight Waldo The last of these ASPA anniversary presenters is Paul

Van Riper, who is professor emeritus of the Political Sci- ence Department, Texas A&M University. Paul has had a distinguished academic career teaching previously at at least two other institutions held in high regard, Northwest- ern and Cornell. He is a retired lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army Reserves. He has had important administrative assignments in the Department of Defense. He is the author of many works, the most important of which probably is his history of the United States Civil Service, which is a landmark work in the tradition of his famous mentor, Leonard D. White.

Paul P. Van Riper I'm not surprised to be last, with a name ending in "V."

I always sat in the back row in college. I don't expect to offer you advice, for I subscribe to the

couplet by Oscar Wilde: "All advice is dangerous; good advice is fatal."

However, I must reply a moment to Don Stone about public administration in a political science department. I've designed an MPA program in such a department. With a sympathetic head for a decade now, it works fine.

Our convener asked us, "What have we learned?" In 1976 the historian Henry Steele Commager said, "We are no longer creative in politics and government; every major political institution we have was invented before the year 1800." His charge is simply not accurate on several counts. 1. We have a revamped Supreme Court, far different from

any envisioned in 1789. And our system of justice has produced administrative due process and affirmative action.

2. We have learned how to design Luther Gulick's "managerial executive" at all levels and have learned to hold such executives politically responsible. And we now have a multitude of city and county managers.

3. We have a partisanly neutral, professionally competent civil service for the most part, and within recent years have developed new forms of enlightened labor relations in government.

4. In finance, we now have executive budgets and cost accounting.

5. With the Smithsonian, Lincoln's National Academy of Sciences, the Bureau of Standards, and the National Institutes, we have developed an enormous scientific capacity and understanding.

6. We have gone much farther than expected with planning and such planning instruments as zoning.

7. We have exploited the government corporation, the independent regulatory commission, and various forms of mixed entrepreneurship, not to mention grants-in- aid.

8. And we have developed many useful notions concern- ing organizational humanism. What of the future? Again, I have a few categories of

concern.

First, it would seem that Woodrow Wilson's main point in his 1887 essay is still valid: that the central problem in American political science and public administration is the role of a bureaucracy in a democracy. The difficulty here is that bureaucracies function best with fixed goals, while to maintain such in a popular democracy is extremely difficult. Sometimes the two support each other, sometimes not. The key question in the next years is how to interpret this problem. We must yet learn, I think, that there is no fixed paradigm for public administration; such paradigm as we can have is always in a state of tension. Forty years ago Ken Thompson and I, then young faculty members at Northwestern, where we shared an apartment, argued with Charlie Hyneman, when he was writing his Bureaucracy in a Democracy, about his trying to bridge the gap between the separation of powers, especially the President and Congress. It's a first rate book, but no one remembers his proposal; it wasn't workable. Actually, this ends- means (legislative-executive) system was not made to be bridged but was created to remain in a state of mixed balance and tension. Put another way, there are times to emphasize a dichotomy and times to emphasize the unity of politics and administration. Both can be right or wrong depending on needs at the time. We want neither Wilson's Congressional Government nor Nixon's Imperial Presi- dency.

Second, our next important problem is not to let economics (classical, Keynesian, or public choice) put money and profit ahead of human needs. Again, the system must remain in tension. We must, as Lincoln tried, maintain a balance between property rights and personal rights.

My third basic concern relates to the fact that we are in a post-industrial world. No one has ever been here before; there are no precedents. Many have been suggesting that the touchstones to this new world are information and education and that we should build society around them. This is nonsense. Education and information are the keys to invention and change. But we must also never forget that no great nation ever remained so without a solid heavy industry, a productive agriculture, and an efficient com- mercial and transportation system. Again, the solution is found only in a suitable balance among key factors.

MARCH/APRIL 1990




Fourth, I want to comment just a moment on a few less- er gaps in administrative knowledge. Despite 40 years of work on Herb Simon's decision making, we still have no typology of decisions or decision processes. We have no very good approaches to headquarters-field relations, despite a good chapter in one of Marshall Dimock's books. We have neglected the intelligence function in the civil administration as a normal staff function. And, while we talk a great deal about policy making, we have little or no literature on the necessary organizational support for a policy- or decision-making system.

Fifth, in conclusion, let me return to a major concern raised by others here. We need better codification of the ethical system. Above all, we must realize that, if we turn all personal and employment relations into contracts and do no more or less than a contract calls for, we are going to be in deep trouble. The touchstone to public service is not a contract, but, to coin a phrase, "duty, honor, country," or, as Luther Gulick reminded us yesterday, a renewed sense of civic duty and responsibility.

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Documents

The Changing Public Service: Looking Back...Moving Forward