The Center for Presidential Transition’s comprehensive guide on the activities required during the transition. This guide for the 2024 presidential election cycle was produced in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group. It features detailed outlines of transition best practices, historical materials from past transitions, and recommendations for a successful presidential transition to a new or second-term administration.
Federal agencies face a cascading series of challenges before and after a presidential election and into the early months of a new or second-term administration. Since 2008, the Partnership for Public Service has provided resources to federal agencies, while promoting knowledge-sharing and collaboration, to strengthen presidential transitions.
The Agency Transition Guide has been developed by the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition® and Boston Consulting Group, informed by conversations with federal leaders and other presidential transition experts. It provides lessons learned from past transitions at federal agencies and includes best practices and key decision points to help senior career executives lead successful transition planning efforts.
While this guide focuses on presidential transitions, most federal agencies will also experience a change in political leadership at least once during an administration. The practices outlined in this guide apply to principal leadership transitions independent of the election cycle.
This document, prepared by the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition® and the law firms of Steptoe & Johnson and Holland & Knight collects historical examples of decisions previous administrations have made when vetting prospective political appointees. It includes updates for the 2020 presidential transition cycle.
The Center for Presidential Transition’s comprehensive guide on the activities required during the transition. This guide for the 2020 presidential election cycle was produced in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group. It features detailed outlines of transition best practices, historical materials from past transitions, and recommendations for a successful presidential transition to a new or second-term administration.
New data from the Partnership for Public Service found that Senate confirmation of presidential appointees are taking longer than ever.
Why it Matters
A major presidential responsibility is to fill more than 1,200 political appointments requiring Senate confirmation. Few decisions have a greater impact on the success of an administration than the selection of its people. A president must not only select well-qualified appointees, but work with relevant federal agencies and the Senate to get appointees in place quickly. This is especially crucial for a president beginning their first term, or transitioning to a second term, as year five usually coincides with a turnover of more than 40% in senior leadership positions.
A framework developed by the Partnership for Public Service and PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC), which describes the entities and relationships that a president has available to implement policy and manage the government enterprise. The report depicts the White House offices, key personnel, policy and management councils and the role of the Office of Management and Budget as the key to the center of government design and operation.
Our next president and his team will have no shortage of people offering them advice. Considering the primacy of an effective federal workforce toward achieving the administration’s goals, they would be well served by what our government’s top human capital experts have to say. Acting upon these expert recommendations could elevate our federal government to new heights.
More than half of respondents volunteered that bold reform of our civil service system is necessary. More than two-thirds advocate eliminating or significantly updating the General Schedule pay and classification system. The vast majority of them recommend phasing out the current system gradually.
Ninety percent agree that alternative work schedules are a useful tool to a great or very great extent for attracting and retaining talent, and over half would add telework to that list of especially useful tools. Given a menu of options, direct-hire authority and dual compensation waivers are cited as the most underutilized hiring tools. The need to obtain prior OPM approval to use these tools on a case-by-case basis is cited as the main reason they are not more actively used.
Only 44 percent of CHCOs believe that federal managers and supervisors possess the supervisory or managerial competencies they need to a great extent, and none of the respondents believe federal managers overall deserve the highest rating, i.e., to a very great extent.
Only 29 percent of CHCOs believe to a great extent that HR staff members have the competencies they need. The percentage of CHCOs who believe their HR staffs are viewed as trusted advisors is 52 percent. Eighty-eight percent of the CHCOs interviewed believe federal performance management systems are doing a good job of aligning organizational goals with individual performance, up from 64 percent in 2007.
Memo dated Oct. 12, 1992 from White House Chief of Staff James Baker to Cabinet and agency heads requesting their resignation letters following the election in order to start fresh in a potential second term of President George H. W. Bush.
| Memo written by Jan Mares for Chase Untermeyer in his role with President-elect George H. W. Bush for prospective political appointees outlining expectations for public service. |