Ex-official offers students practical career advice

A former White House aid during the George W. Bush administration encouraged students to take an active role in government Wednesday, calling on them to be known as ‘results’ people.

The Center of Politics and Governance under the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs sponsored Clay Johnson, former deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, to speak about his experiences as a public official with considerable influence in the federal government.

Some students, including government senior Garrett Mize, came hoping to gain advice to use in the future when entering public policy themselves.

“A lot of times, people get into government not knowing how to achieve goals. What’s great about [Johnson] is that he’s goal-oriented,” Mize said. “He gave us real-world examples [of] achiev[ing] our ‘preferred outcomes.’”

Veronica Stidvent, the director of the Center for Politics and Governance, interned in a department under the OMB while Johnson presided as director and said Johnson is renowned for what many consider to be the best reform of the federal government’s management practices in modern times, as well as a successful presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush.

“He was one of the president’s closest advisors. He had significant influence on management reform and successfully made significant reforms to the federal workforce,” Stidvent said. “He placed a new emphasis on results and measuring those results.”

Johnson graduated from Yale University in 1968 with a bachelors in administrative sciences and holds an masters degree from MIT Sloan School of Management. A close longtime friend of the Bush family, he served as former Gov. George W. Bush’s chief of staff and selected officials for Bush’s administration.

While Johnson worked in the OMB from 2003 to 2008, he took on the heavy task of evaluating the effectiveness of federal programs and agencies. His work led to discoveries of misuse of government funding, which he and his team worked to reduce by $7 billion.

Johnson said the federal government is a large body that often gets misled and confused and forgets to keep a goal, what he calls a “desired income,” in mind.

“Fed[eral] government is the largest, most complex organ in the world,” Johnson said.

“There is the most unbelievable amount of public scrutiny over everything that takes place, and political leaders of administration change every two, three, four years. There are changes at the top that take a long time, so they have to focus on desired outcomes.”

Johnson encouraged students to follow additional steps if they wished to properly serve the public: keeping a clear plan in mind and maintaining transparency in work.

“There has to be a relevance to performance, there has to be transparency in work,” Johnson said. “That’s not to say you take privileged information and make it available to the public. But in general, the people whose money we are spending, the Congress, the press, has to know what’s going, or they will make it out to be worse than it is. It will make your life harder if you don’t surround your work with transparency.”

Johnson told the audience to be dedicated, perseverant and always focused on results in their future public careers.

“I encourage you all to go into public service and serve your country. It is hard work and maybe there is an occasional thrill, but it is really, really awarding,” Johnson said. “I want you to be that person who is constantly irritating. You be the person people call ‘the results person.’ You go in there not to make money, but to have the experience of a lifetime, to make a big difference. Don’t settle for ‘we are going to pass a bill’ or ‘we’ve got some money to spend’; focus on the desired outcome.”

1 comments

wow

Fri Oct 2 2009 11:23

another low in the Daily Texan's ability to fact check. Veronica Stidvent didn't "intern" for OMB. If you took one look at her bio on the website of the center she runs, it would tell you that "she served as a policy adviser in Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs".

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