Going Slow

Joe Davidson, in the Post’s “Federal Diary“:

Jennifer L. Dorn, who has had four presidential appointments, remembers her first days in a new agency this way: “It’s like being on a first date. How close do I dance with my partner?”

Particularly unsettling is that 20 percent of the senior executives agreed with the statement: “I have no knowledge of transition activities in this agency.”

High-level civil servants have a responsibility to know about the presidential transition, said Lovelace, who has been working on it all year. If they don’t, they can’t guide their staffs.

“There’s no excuse” for the ignorance of her colleagues, Lovelace, herself a senior executive, said after the panel. “Go to Change.gov,” the transition Web site, she urged them.

The survey was done in September and October. “It would be my hope that now that the election is over,” she added, “that the senior executive in the federal government is paying attention.”

Two points: (a) the survey was of Bush appointees, which may say more about the administration than “transition” generally, and (b) that administration at least had the benefit of assistance from the White House Transition Project, so there’s a history there. I suppose the survey results could have been worse.