Who is Government?
Hint - it's people... And they help keep this country running.
There is a great deal of activity in the world right now. And even at home, well, if you can call the entire US home (it's pretty large and not entirely homogeneous), a lot is going on. Closer to my actual home, there is also a lot going on… and it’s all related. And it’s a lot to process… and I’m not sure how or what I can say. Well, I think I know, but as a civil servant, you have restrictions. And yes, I am writing this on my own time, on my own device, and these are my own opinions. And I’m distracted and disjointed, so apologies if we take a meandering path to answer this one question: “Who is government?”
There are many reasons one might want to be cautious about what they say or discuss outside of work. It’s never a good thing to piss off your employer, even accidently. And when your employer is the government, and thus all US taxpayers, so about 330 million people, you will likely upset someone no matter what you say. There are so many opinions, and that is what makes this country wonderful. We can all have and express our views, and we value them so much that they are our first right and amendment in the Constitution. Freedom of speech is something to be cherished and fiercely defended. It helps us celebrate the best of us, hear, and thus incorporate all the good ideas. And yes, it also showcases our bad ideas, bad takes, and at times, crazy thinking. However, without freedom of speech, we can’t see or hear our own bad takes and misconceptions, and therefore can’t fix them, improve ourselves, or learn from our mistakes. Freedom of speech is at the core of the American ideal, and I would argue, one of the best methods we have to become a better nation.
And don’t forget the Hatch Act. That strikes fear in most civil servants. However, civil servants still have the beautiful First Amendment right - the freedom of speech.
Besides, most people I have met who work for the government are there not to promote themselves (though they exist - we are people after all), but they are there to serve the public. To ensure that the American people, and those residing in the US have the best information, their rights are maintained, and they can have prosperous lives.
Still, speaking about the civil service is daunting. But needs must.
Who is the government? Ask many people on the streets and they won’t know. They will complain about taxes, the DMV, or wait times, and bad websites, insinuating that the groups they dislike or see as problematic are the government.
No one likes to give money without being directly involved with having a say in where it goes. However, those tax dollars enable us, as a community, a city, a county, or a country, to allocate funds for essential services that support a functioning society, such as roads, highway signs, fire departments, weather satellites, and much more. By pooling our funds together, we get more out of them.
Yes, the DMV is often joked about being a horrible place to have to wait in line… but in the last twenty years, I can’t really complain - and in fact, in rural Vermont, I had nothing but praise. They had a mobile DMV, which was one of the most pleasant experiences I’ve had at a DMV. Getting rid of it or further reducing their funding won’t help. When I’ve had to wait, it was because there weren’t enough people there to help with the workload. And that brings me to the wait times.
The waits, whether at the DMV or elsewhere in the government, are often due to a shortage of staff. Yes, I would like to point out a fact that I thought was obvious to everyone. Sometimes, and I know this sounds crazy, sometimes you need more people working together to make a process more efficient. Many hands make light work.
We have somehow assumed that redundancy or downtime is a waste of money. The people I know who work for the government, when they have downtime, come up with new services, better services, and new efficiencies. Down time, or time not directed, is not wasted. And the lack of redundancies? That is a huge time and money waster. When someone is sick or retires, the cost of having to train someone new or the delays that come with no substitute is an inefficiency, if I have ever seen one.
The bad websites… have you heard of the phrase 'lowest cost bid,' and how the government is often forced to accept that lowest cost bid? Sometimes, not always, but sometimes you get what you pay for. This has meant that I can’t just buy a computer. There has to be either an arrangement in place or, more often than not, you have to put it out to bid. Then go through the 10s to 100s of bids that are put in and taking hours and hours, wasting your time, the procurement person’s time filling out and going over the paperwork, the IT person’s time who has to check all the spesifications, just to try to save maybe $25 on something that you could have just gone down to best buy, or apple, or any other computer store and picked up. Now accountability. Yes, that's important, but that’s not what we’re discussing with this lowest-cost bid system.
But that’s not the government - tha’s not who the government is.
The government is the people. When you say you hate the government, you are saying you hate the people who have dedicated their lives to serving the public. You are saying you hate the veterans who, after putting their lives on the line for our freedom, are now serving their country in other ways. You are saying that you hate the scientist down the street who is trying to find a cure for cancer. You hate the mail carrier who delivers your medicines and birthday presents. You hate the weather forecaster who is predicting and warning people of the hurricane’s path. You hate our military. You hate the FDA officials testing our food to ensure it’s safe to eat. You hate the air traffic controller ensuring our planes don’t crash. And you hate many, many more Americans, about 3 million of us, over 1000 in every state - and that’s just the Federal government. Don’t forget your state and local employees as well. Yes, that may not be what you meant when you said you hate the government, but the government is indeed large. And perhaps you said this because you were frustrated. Frustrated at the wait times, the bad websites, and the fact that you don’t quite know what all the government does.
Perhaps you think that the government is wasteful. Like any system, there are often opportunities for improvement. As technology changes, needs and wants shift, yes, there can be improvements made. However, the only waste I’ve seen—and many would not call this waste—is in the amount of oversight, and oversight of the oversight, and what seems to be even more oversight of the oversight. Oversight is good and necessary, but can be stifling.
Many have come in thinking that they can force efficiencies by slimming down budgets. We are often asked explicitly to do more with less. We have always tried to find a way, but you can only do that for so long. Now it is being acknowledged, and we’re being told, “You will need to do less with less.” And if not spending money is the goal, then yes, we can do less.
I’m not the only one who has found the government to be highly efficient. Many who come in are surprised at how efficient the government is. Listen to this NPR interview with a former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency. And if you want ideas on how to improve the government and its efficiency? Just ask current and past civil servants. We have ideas. I can talk to you for hours about how I think we could improve the travel process (actually, I think it would only take 5 minutes to explain a more efficient process - but then probably the rest of the time for someone to walk through the regulationsions or reasons that my way would be less untenable or accountable).
But again, I digress… It’s hard to stay on topic when you’ve been told you are a waste, a leach, a drain on society. Don’t believe me that we’ve been hearing this? Take a look at this one email from OPM, now available on Reddit. The head of OPM has stated that he wants those who work for the federal government to be traumatized. You can watch it for yourself.
This should be a positive story, not one where I complain.
I can hear my mentors, supervisors, and others in the community telling me that I should keep the above to myself, or better yet, ignore it. I can hear them telling me to focus on the positives, so let’s do that. Let me introduce you to the government, or better yet, let me first introduce you to Michael Lewis—a writer who has taken up the charge of figuring out who serves the public.
Michael Lewis has now written two incredible books, and shows what the civil service, and thus the government, is. Initially, he wrote “The Fifth Risk” in 2018, and with it, the story of Art Allen. My mother-in-law first read it and told me the story of Art. A humble, focused individual working for the federal government. He worked on a problem that you probably might think was a waste of time when you first heard about it - drift characteristics. He worked on determining how things float in coastal waters under different conditions. But his research and his work with the Coast Guard has saved thousands of lives.
In Michael’s second book, “Who is Government? The untold story of public service” he and other writers add more stories about civil servants and the jobs they do. In the first essay, “The Canary” (also available from the Washington Post), he tells the story of Christopher Mark. However, he also invites us into the world of civil servants, where they never put themselves forward, but instead solve unique and complex problems, often as a team, and always acknowledge the team, “…we did this.”
And while Michael is a much better writer, storyteller, and editor, I wanted to add a few more stories of some who are in the government, who perhaps had one of those team roles.
My neighbor.
My neighborhood is filled with people who work for different government agencies, but let me tell you about one person in particular. She works for the USGS as a budget analyst. She loves her job, and it has been her dream to work for the USGS. She is a military spouse who has had to relocate frequently around the world due to her partner’s profession. This means that every three years or so, she helps pack up, move, unpack, and support the US military. Like many of my other neighbors, being a military spouse has hurt her job prospects and career. It’s challenging to gain seniority, or even access to on-the-job training and professional development, when you have to change jobs every three years to relocate to various places around the world and across the US.
But she loves maps, geography, and numbers. I remember the day she got the job. I couldn’t understand why anyone would be excited about being a budget analyst. That sounds tedious to me. But she loves it, has a talent for it, and it is people like her who enable so much to get done in the government. She discusses helping to ensure that funds are used wisely, which is not easy in the government. Often, politicians will say things like, “That’s not how you would spend your money at home,” or “We need to take care of the government funds like you would your household funds.” Well, I have news for you… Funding in the government doesn’t work that way. If you get FY25 (Fiscal year 2025 from October 1st 2024 - September 30th 2025) you really need to spend those funds by July or August 2025 preferably, but may be able to stretch them to March 2026… but only if you are using them for buying things and not for labor - unless you have a labor exemption. Oh, and those FY25 funds might not get to your agency until May or even August of FY25. Can you save those funds and use them a few months or years later, say, because of tariffs, a government shutdown, or a pandemic, and costs are now sky high but likely to come back down in a few months or even a year? Nope. If you don’t use those funds before they expire, you lose those funds. Now that doesn’t happen in my household bank account.
Dealing with federal funds can be a nightmare. Dealing with scientists when they want to create what would seem like a rational spending plan to any “household”, but doesn’t align with how the federal government spends money, is a nightmare. Putting together contracts and grants to ensure funding can get to and be accounted for at institutions and other agencies can be a nightmare. But she does this day in and day out. She enables others to conduct science, helping to protect various bird species across the US, preserve wildlife, and learn how the changing environment affects the local ecosystem, economy, and our lives. Without her and people like her, our work would come to a halt.
My partner
My partner is a Professor at the Naval Academy. He teaches midshipmen, and he collaborates on research with them. He trains them on how to think, how to problem-solve, and how to tackle challenging issues—and learn a bit of physics. He helps them understand how to do research, and perhaps more importantly, the importance of doing original research. The military has its research institutions, such as NRL or AFRL, and most are run by service members who cycle through every three years or so. Providing midshipmen with a basic understanding of research and academic culture enables them to build upon it, becoming better managers, communicators, and evaluators for the scientists, engineers, and technologists they will lead.
And with the civilian faculty, the Mids see a different culture, one that many of them will transition into after life within the military. They learn how civilians work, which is very different from that of the military, and with its pluses and minuses. Most midshipmen will not spend their entire careers in the military and will have to find civilian jobs. This is not a failing or a bad thing; however, to prepare them not just for their military jobs, but also for their careers afterwards, their interactions with civilian professors are invaluable. I would argue that they are essential even during their military career, as they will likely have to interface with non-military organizations and people.
The National Park Service ranger I met on vacation
The National Park Service is the jewel of America. It preserves this great land’s natural beauty for all to see now and for future generations. I won’t say much here, as I said plenty in my recent post on the National Park Service. However, I do want to say that it is clear that every National Park Service ranger that I have met is passionate and dedicated to their service. And their pay often is not much, especially if it is seasonal work. But their value is immense. They embody the dedication and love to serve and help protect the United States of America.
My friend(s)
I have many friends who work for the government. They serve across many institutions, from the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy, NASA, NSF, the Department of Health and Human Services, and many other agencies (yes, mostly scientists, but not all). Each one of them loves their job. Each one of them complains about their job, and they work to make it better, more efficient, and more productive. They have ever since they took the oath for the job. Whether they work to transfer technology from inside the government out to corporations, fund science, keep our weather forecasts as accurate as possible, ensure that senior citizens get their Medicare, oversee treaties, or help keep our farmers informed about the changing climate and how it will impact their crops, they are dedicated to their job and the public they serve.
“I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Civil servants are there to help. Are there some not-so-useful ones? I can’t think of any, but probably. We are human after all. And we are affected by human things. When someone dies in our family, when we are sick, when we are constantly put down, yes, we might not be as productive or as useful - and those periods pass. But we are by far and away here to help, even on our bad days. We are people trying to give back to a country that gave so many of us so many opportunities. We are immigrants and children of immigrants. We live and work across these United States. We love this country, its people, and we want to be part of its improvement.
We are Americans, and we are here to serve.