Today the Serve America Act will be introduced in the Senate.  The goal of the legislation is to encourage approximately 175,000 more Americans to spend a year doing national service — targeting young people, social entrepreneurs, and Americans at all stages of their lives.

Some reasons to support this bill:

• When students do service early in their lives, they are more likely to continue doing service over their entire lives and working to improve their communities
• Many Americans, including retirees and recently graduated college students, are looking for opportunities to serve their country
• The legislation has broad bipartisan support, including Senators Kennedy, Hatch, McCain, and Schumer
• The legislation will help apply effective business strategies to the non-profit sector by establishing venture capital funds (called “Community Solution Funds”)

You can read a summary of the Serve America Act here: http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/press_release.cfm?id=0BA0C2ED-0061-4B4E-B291-9A8E262C82CB

To call your Senator and ask them to support the Serve America Act, go to  http://www.bethechangeaction.org/servicenation/take_action/callcongress

To read the entire act, see http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:s3487is.txt.pdf

How frustrating it is to have a great idea with no one to tell it to!

In fifth grade, my teacher read us Sharon Creech’s “Walk Two Moons,” a coming-of age story with focus on the lesson: “don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.” I challenge all congressional staffers working to help their bosses achieve effective and efficient government to consider this.

Gracye, Chris, and I navigated the halls of the House office buildings this week to reach out to congressional staffers. The mission? Speak with staffers for 30 seconds and get the staffers to get their bosses on board as co-sponsors of the new Public Service Academy bill. While there were a few great conversations had, many times we were turned away.

“Tell them I’m not here,” we could hear over the half-wall partition.
“I’m too busy right now,” two said to me, “leave your flier at the front desk.”

Too bad turning me away as “insignificant” once only makes me more eager to come back a second time.

Don’t get me wrong. Character matters regardless of occupation (public or private), but it especially matters when you are charged with managing public resources. Think of it this way: you get your pay stub from two weeks of hard labor and you recognize that upwards of 25-28% (even 33%+ if you’re lucky) is “missing.” That’s the money the federal government is using to run the country — yes, that’s just the federal government.

So, when I hear scandals running the gamut of our public experience from the mismanagement of FEMA in light of Hurricane Katrina to the peanut recall in light of the FDA and Texas Department of Agriculture shortcomings to the recent AIG scandal, I am especially grieved.

In a discussion I had recently with a friend that works for a market-based management charitable foundation, he questioned whether the Public Service Academy (another public institution) would truly be the answer to this vicious cycle of public mismanagement, to which I responded with an emphatic, “Yes!” Sure, there are many things that would curb public mismanagement, one being greater involvement by each one of us in holding our officials accountable, but the Public Service Academy would by far be the most effective next step that we can take to reclaiming our public institutions.

1) The Public Service Academy builds character. Like the military academies, the campus culture is actively shaped to form the character of each individual that is admitted. They are trained to see their future public sector career not as an obligation or something to advance their own personal ambitions but as a service and duty to their nation. This culture cannot be guaranteed through private scholarships for public sector programs at various universities/colleges — an idea that my friend said would be “infinitely more efficient,” to which I retorted, “Only in the short-term!”

2) The Public Service Academy provides practical experience in the form of internships and off-campus enrichment, which is required for all students. So not only are students being taught what it means to put the public good first in theory, but they have the opportunity (and obligation) to apply it in practice before they get into real positions of great impact.

To me, these are the two most important distinctions that having an academy would provide. If constant character development and the experience to know how to apply that character to the real world does not lead to less government mismanagement and corruption (i.e. a more efficient public sector), I frankly don’t know what will.