As a younger federal employee it is easy to see why the federal government is so far behind. The fed struggles to hire and retain great and competitive employees. This is largely due to the private sector paying close to double and offering a better work life balance. The fed struggles to provide the necessary tools to its employees to make the “wheel turn” on a daily bases. Fed employees are constantly burdened by budget issues, lack of updated technology, and lack of tools to do their jobs. All of these compounding factors ultimately leads to fresh and new talent leaving the fed. This causes the fed to lack in becoming the best it can be. This in return leads to a “clash of titan” mentality where new and motived employees are left to deal with colleagues who are comfortable and do not share the same mentality of being productive. Majority of the time these type of coworkers pass their work onto the motivated younger individuals.
In speaking to other fed employees who are younger that will make up the future generation, we all seem to have the same ideas to increase work place production while cutting cost and incentivizing the fed as a place for the most talented people.
The idea of the federal government paying a ridiculous amount of money to rent or own a physical space is silly. A federal agency may be occupying federal space for offices, but still pays rent to federal government. Depending on the location this amount can make you sick to your stomach. In future endeavors to procure the best person to make our government function I propose we cut leasing and owning building space for federal agencies to work out of and allow telework.
What does this accomplish? If the fed wants to remain competitive for the smartest and brightest we need to make it appealing. With the amount of money saved in paying for building space you could give the employees the necessary tools to make their job actually work without wasted time dealing with old technology and IT departments. With this idea put into play across all federal agencies it would be a significant amount of money saved for the tax payer which would help assist in reducing wasteful fed spending. And helping curve the large national deficit. This in return would be a incentive for a great fed employee to stay because you save money by not having to pay for gas, wear and tear on your vehicle, you put one less car on the road, which cuts back on pollution and traffic. The fed must become creative to retain and recruit the most qualified candidates, largely due to low pay. Yes, some agencies need space depending on their mission, but for those that don’t it seems like a no brainer.