After a lengthy campaign that featured more dramatic turns than a soap opera during sweeps week, federal employees now know who the next president will be: Donald Trump.
That's one certainty, but how the new administration will handle the ongoing initiatives to address issues like IT modernization, acquisition reform and efforts to recruit the next generation of the federal workforce remain firmly unknown.
Details on the president-elect's executive management plan have emerged piecemeal throughout much of the campaign, but it is expected to be in line with the GOP's stance on reducing the size and scope of government.
"One of the things that has to be said, given the tenor of the campaign and the fact that there's been so little discussion of issues, it's a little hard sometimes to speculate on the future direction," said Don Kettl, professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
"The Clinton campaign, of course, laid out in great detail some of its ideas; the Trump campaign much less so, but we haven't had a chance to hear in detail how this is likely to work."
With a race so charged and contentious, there are few tea leaves to read when it comes to the new administration’s plan for managing the executive branch, giving federal employees a potentially cloudy glimpse of what’s in store come January.
"There are a lot of choices to be made about both what you will focus on and the strategies you will use and how you will manage that," said Shelley Metzenbaum, founding president of the Volcker Alliance and a former associate director for performance and personnel management at the Office of Management and Budget.
"I think combined with that you’ve got the sort of: ‘What do you want to focus on?’ " she said. "The people and problems. There are the opportunities, which include substantial changes in technology and our understanding of how to use data so that you can encourage innovation, not business as usual but business in a smarter way."
While the president-elect took strong stands on issues like immigration — which will directly impact funding for the Department of Homeland Security — and recently dabbled toes in management issues by proposing a federal hiring freeze and a lobbying ban on former feds, little detail has emerged from the Trump camp for direction the federal government will have in 2017.
But with some statements and position papers from the now president-elect, as well as historical context, a vision emerges of what could lie ahead for federal and private sector stakeholders under a Trump administration.
"A great president needs to be clear where they are going to process [these opportunities], then finding people that are going to work on these problems," Metzenbaum said.
How government services will be provided, whether through increased reliance on the federal workforce or through contractors, will be a key question for the next administration.
If Trump follows traditional GOP positions on reducing the size of government, contractors may see a rise in business opportunities, which also raises questions of how the next administration will approach ongoing employee engagement and recruitment efforts.
Another issue that the president-elect will certainly inherit from his predecessor is the focus on modernizing the IT infrastructure and cyber posture of the federal government, but how he proposes to fund those projects in a difficult budget climate also remains unknown.
If one thing is certain, the acquisition regulation environment will be dramatically different come January, as Trump has proposed a slash-and-burn policy to existing Obama executive orders.
But for federal employees trying to prognosticate on what change awaits them, a Trump presidency may present the most cryptic of Magic 8 Ball responses: "Ask again later."
