Today, the Washington Post looked more deeply into the security breach of passport records last week of Presidential candidates and U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain by non-government employees. The article describes how the number of contract employees to government employees “exploded” in the last year when the U.S. Passport requirements for travel to Canada and Mexico changed thereby increasing the number of applications to the State Department.
The companies contracted out by the State Department provide administrative employees to handle the processing of the passport applications on the clerical side. However, “the people who review the documentation and approve or deny the application are federal employees” as well as those handling the printing and scanning of the information. It seems to me that the breaches happened because the contractors are not held to the same standard as the Federal employees, yet they handle the exact same sensitive, private and personal information about all citizens, whether high profile or not. In addition, the companies that provide the contract employees are making a big profit. Is our personal and private information for sale? In this case yes. And it is your tax dollars paying for a company to profit rather than a well-trained government employee to manage your private information.
So how does this relate to the Public Service Academy? Well, the Academy will not only train civil servants, but hold them to the highest standard of discretion when interacting with citizens or their information because there is no profit involved. In fact, the Academy will serve as a symbol for excellence in federal, state, and local government service jobs and return some dignity and respect to the the public sector! What do you think?
Fence-sitter responded on 16 Jun 2008 at 3:04 pm #
I think that’s rather magical- considering the proposition that an academy the size of 1275 per class will have even the slightest effect on the millions employed by local, state, and federal government agencies.
That’s like putting out a forest fire with an eye dropper.
Justine Hebron responded on 16 Jun 2008 at 3:14 pm #
We plan on issuing an eye dropper to each graduate. It is strength in numbers and the power of the ideas.
Thumb-twiddler responded on 16 Jun 2008 at 7:26 pm #
Sometimes rhetoric isn’t compelling enough.
The US PSA would require 200,000 graduates to even account for 1% of the government job force (according to 2006 census numbers). That’s 155 years worth of graduates.
Let’s say that the US PSA graduates only became teachers. Five years worth of graduates would only account for .3% of all teachers in the US (not including college level instructors).
$40,000 dollars a year per student equals $160,000 for a single students education. That’s taxpayer money that could have went towards giving 16 teachers a $10,000 signing bonus.