The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit working to improve government, is sifting through nominations for an annual awards ceremony honoring federal workers this spring – an event that’s moving forward despite a year of upheaval that threatens to change how good civil service is defined.
The most recent ceremony for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, or the “Sammies,” illustrated the tensions of honoring civil service during the Trump administration, which has fired tens of thousands of federal employees and criticized others as unnecessary or working against the interests of Americans. Honorees in June – including one who helped return $1.2 billion in stolen COVID-19 relief funds and another who reduced wait times in the United States passport system – were not asked to stand on the stage or to speak, the Partnership’s CEO Max Stier says. He wanted to protect them from being singled out by Trump administration cost-cutters.
The only award winner to speak at the summer ceremony was David Lebryk, the Sammies federal employee of the year, formerly the Treasury Department’s acting secretary, who was cited for effectively overseeing the government’s finance operations. Mr. Lebryk had already left his job following a clash with allies of then-Trump adviser Elon Musk after he resisted efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency to access the department’s payment system.
Why We Wrote This
The Trump administration’s cuts and changes to the federal workforce have forced groups that reward good governance to reckon with new norms for outstanding public service.
Amid these tensions, Sammies’ staff are trying to figure out how to continue a decades-long tradition of honoring those who, they say, significantly improve Americans’ lives.
The complications with the awards ceremony reflect a tension over the role of the government’s bureaucrats, also known as civil servants – the people responsible for everything from operating national parks to ensuring food safety. To insulate them from political pressure, these workers cannot be fired without cause. And they are expected to serve as nonpartisan experts who can keep the government running smoothly from one administration to the next.
But Mr. Trump has enacted sweeping changes to the federal workforce – cutting staff, introducing merit-based hiring criteria, and asking federal workers to show support for the administration’s goals. He may be able to go further: The Supreme Court appears poised to allow the Trump administration to have direct control over agency leadership, even though Congress established the agencies as independent of the presidency.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
“We’re breaking what had been more or less a century-long system where we have political appointees,’’ says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “But we also had a civil service system that was intended to maintain continuity, expertise, and non-partisanship as core values in our government.”
The drastic reductions and other changes are something the Trump administration and many Republicans say is needed to ensure government efficiency. And the administration’s actions show it’s elevating its own vision of good governance, redefining the ideal these awards have honored and how the civil service has operated for the last 140 years.
A lifelong calling
Another program, the Arthur S. Flemming Awards, is run through George Washington University and similarly seeks to honor federal employees who find innovative approaches to sticky problems. But the Flemming awards have an additional criterion: they go only to people who have spent three to 15 years in government. That’s to encourage employees to view their work not as a stopgap, but as a long-term commitment.
“Public service is a calling,” says Kathryn Newcomer, president of the awards commission. “It’s not just a plain old job or way to make money, but it’s something that you really believe in.”
She’s thinking of people like Alex Maranghides. After almost a quarter century of research, this Sammies finalist created lifesaving guidance to protect evacuees during wildfires.
In the field where he works, he says, it can take decades for someone to gain a high level of expertise.
In fact, Mr. Maranghides retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in April. But he’s still working, without pay, trying to make sure the newest generation is well prepared to carry on the work.
“It’s absolutely essential, because if we break that chain, then it’s going to be extremely hard to rebuild,” he says.
But Daniel Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, says a culture that honors longevity comes with trade-offs. Firing poor performers who have been longtime loyal workers can be difficult, and, he adds, the Trump administration is trying to change that culture.
Mr. Greenberg says the Trump administration may be trying to model the federal workforce on a characteristic of the gig economy, where a “gifted administrator” comes in for a short period only, mainly to make structural changes. Then that administrator moves on.
“If you have that type of model, that suggests a different kind of workforce and different kinds of incentives,” he says.
Courtesy of the National Academy of Public Administration
Loyalty and efficiency
Mr. Musk, a billionaire whom Mr. Trump brought on to run the new Department of Government Efficiency, at one point required federal employees to list five things they had accomplished that week. (The Office of Personnel Management ended the requirement in August, but it still encouraged managers to track their employees’ progress.)
The OPM has also drafted new regulations that prioritize performance over length of service when deciding which employees to keep.
“President Trump rightfully recognizes that the federal government needs to operate on the same fundamental practices [as] do all modern organizations writ large,” wrote OPM Director Scott Kupor in an October blog about the agency.
Mr. Greenberg says that he understands why Mr. Trump has sought to reform the federal workforce.
“If you’re a car salesman, there’s a reason that your pay is contingent on how many cars you sell,” he says. “It’s relatively easy to measure the value of a worker to a business in many parts of the private sector. It’s really hard … in the public sector.”
The Trump administration is also emphasizing support for its priorities. In late May, the OPM implemented a new “merit hiring program” that includes four open-ended essay questions for applicants to federal positions at certain levels to complete. One question asks applicants to identify Trump executive orders or policy priorities that are “significant to you,” and explain how, as government employees, they would help implement them.
Civil servants typically serve across several administrations and are required to carry out each president’s policy priorities. However, they are also intended to be nonpartisan, and some experts see the Trump administration’s new job-applicant questions as contrary to that goal.
“It’s never been the case in the past that civil servants were told to demonstrate how they were aligned with the president’s goals, and that’s because we expect them to serve presidents of both parties,” says Mr. Moynihan.
Mr. Stier, head of the organization that gives out the Sammies awards, is still working to plan how next year’s ceremonies will function in the changing government climate. They’ve already made a few changes: He plans to hold the awards months earlier than their usual fall date since “we don’t know what’s coming around the pike,” and recipients may include people the government no longer employs.
Still, the awards program is moving forward.
“We need to not just focus on what is being broken right now, but think about what needs to change and what we can change,” says Mr. Stier. “And this idea of building a recognition culture for our government is really important.”
