by Brian Weberg
Are you the enemy? That's the subject of a discussion and debate going on at govloop.com, a social network designed for government employees and highlighted by Ed O'Keefe in his Washington Post blog called the Federal Eye. In a govloop.com post titled "I Work for the Government and I'm NOT the Enemy," federal government employee Sandy Ressler complains that the "perception of federal employees as lazy, overpaid, incompetent, among other adjectives are widespread" and asks "so...how do we change this perception of federal employees as the enemy?"
I wonder if Ressler is expressing something that all government employees--federal, state and local--feel at one time or another, or maybe all the time...that their efforts and hard work are misunderstood or under-appreciated, and that the current political rancor in Congress or too-frequent ethical misstep by elected officials or government employees allows the public to paint all government professionals with the same broad brush of skepticism and distrust. I know from my five years in the private sector and now more than 25 years working with state legislative employees that there isn't much difference between these workplaces. Both employ talented, hardworking people who do their best each day, and creative, dedicated leaders who believe in the mission of their organizations. And both sometime use processes that are inefficient, harbor people who don't perform and employ managers who don't know how to manage. Neither workplace is perfect or, in my opinion, better than the other.
Still, enough members of the public find it reasonable (they had a government service experience that supports their contention) or comfortable to blame government employees for inefficiency and everything else that's wrong with our public institutions. It's fair for Ressler to ask his question about how to change public perception, but maybe it's more important to focus more on actual performance rather than the public perception of performance. My guess is that government and it's employees will always be the enemy (it's an American tradition)...except in all those millions of daily cases when great government service satisfies a real public need.
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