The complexity of the 2020 presidential transition — due to legally contested results and an ongoing pandemic that has already forced many federal agencies to rework their operations — has caused many members of Congress and good government groups to rethink how transitions should be executed in the future.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., noted at a Dec. 10 House Oversight Committee hearing that Congress should prioritize addressing “some of the crevices that have been exposed” during the 2020 process.
Perhaps the most significant hurdle of the 2020 presidential transition process so far has been General Services Administration head Emily Murphy’s delay in releasing transition resources to President-elect Joe Biden’s team, prompting calls for Congress to set firmer guardrails on that process.
Martha Joynt Kumar, professor emerita in the Department of Political Science at Towson University, said that the delay from GSA meant that the Biden team was not getting information on vaccine distribution plans and coordination with vaccine manufacturers.
“What ended up happening was the Biden team would then have to do workarounds and talk to people who were knowledgeable [and] who had been in the administration earlier, which is not a good substitute for getting the latest information,” said Kumar.
Murphy herself, in her letter announcing the release of transition resources, called on Congress to pass an update to the legal framework surrounding the transition so that future administrators in her position would not have to make the decision on who had won the election and when.
“We need to make sure that this is viewed, in fact, as a ministerial decision, that there isn’t as much discretion involved so that we can see more transition activity happen faster,” said Partnership for Public Service President and CEO Max Stier, adding that Congress should add clarity that this determination is a low bar to meet.
“You could also reduce the importance of that decision by allowing more work to be done pre-election so this doesn’t become as big a gate as it currently is.”
But beyond the more controversial elements of the 2020 transition, this year has also renewed calls for simplifying the president-elect’s road to taking over management by starting earlier and paring down on certain hurdles.
Stier reiterated proposals introduced by the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona in 2010 to halve the number of political appointments made by each incoming president, both those that are Senate-confirmed and those that are simply presidential discretion.
Cutting the number of such appointees in half is also predicted to save $800 million over the course of 10 years.
According to Lisa Brown, vice president and general counsel at Georgetown University and former Obama/Biden transition official, the process of getting security clearances for incoming presidential appointees acts as a “bottleneck” for getting people into position to start work and is a process that can’t be started in advance of the election taking place.
In addition, if too many leadership positions turn over due to political shifts in power, agencies are more likely to stall or slow down on important projects.
“We have short-term leaders that don’t align against the long-term problems that government is intended to address, or the health of the institutions that they are in fact responsible for,” said Stier.
“The career workforce is the engine room of our government and it is vital that career workforce is tended well and engaged well by new political teams.”
Congress has already ensured that career employees have more involvement in the transition process by making a career leader in charge of the transition plan at each agency, under the Presidential Transition Enhancement Act passed earlier this year.
Members and witnesses also expressed concerns that those top career employees that have the most policy experience in government will be moved into less protected positions, under an October executive order President Donald Trump signed to establish a Schedule F in federal job classifications.
“The damage that could be done between now and the next administration is really serious, and to the extent that this can be stopped, it would be to the people’s benefit. Because ultimately it will lead to incredible inefficiencies, incredible harm to the public and to public servants,” said Stier.
Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.
