Page 49 - FCW, January/February 2020

Shared services have
been one of your more
recent efforts. How will
GSA’s Quality Services Management Offices effort continue after you leave? NewPay falls under the HR QSMO umbrella. That’s where our focus is. That’s where the administration has said they really want to ensure we can take this forward. They said as a group, “Let’s tackle payroll.”
The first thing you have to do if you’re going to do true shared serv- ices is tackle and agree on standards. You have to be very thoughtful about how to move ahead and what comes next. You can’t just start picking other things out if the standards aren’t there and the market isn’t picking up on it.
The focus on payroll is critical to prove that we can do this and that we have methodically thought it through. It’s a key initiative under the President’s Management Agenda. We’ve got the task orders awarded, and there’s a team in place. Industry has to see it as a real opportunity to see the government can do shared services and that it can create new marketplaces for industry.
The focus has to remain on making payroll successful for a variety of rea- sons, not the least of which is that 2.1 million federal government employ- ees who get paychecks are counting on this.
What will you miss the most about GSA?
The people and the work. We sit in the middle of government. You deal with every agency and help write legislation and policy. You get to help implement it. You get to influence things. It’s the mission. It’s corny, but the people here are happy to come to work and happy to be working on dif- ferent missions and challenges. It’s a great place to be and a great culture. It’s why I’ve spent 32 years here.
How has the GSA workforce changed over the years? Is it more technically capable?
\[GSA has a\] really strong acquisi-
tion cadre, and on the technical side, \[they’re\] getting into 18F and how we approach customer experience. We’re being much more thoughtful about what role we can play and help move government.
Before Clinger-Cohen \[was passed in 1996\], all IT acquisition had to go through GSA and be approved and managed. We’ve become very innova- tive and entrepreneurial and really tried to figure out the different ways GSA can support government.
You have to have a very diverse workforce with customer service skills, IT skills, acquisition skills,
program management skills, finan- cial management, and that’s just on the FAS side. The Public Buildings Service is another job, trying to figure out how to better manage that foot- print and provide value.
What will your duties be at NASA?
In a nutshell, they’re working through some organizational transformation and CXO consolidation. Across all the centers, there are IT functions, financial management functions, HR functions. They’ve been working to consolidate them in a way that makes NASA more efficient so that they can focus on mission.
They recently launched Arte- mis \[NASA’s plan to send the next manned mission to the moon by 2024\]. There are also other big projects going on. They want to be smarter about how they focus their resources. It’s \[about asking\], “How do you bring the agency together in a way that focuses resources on mission?”
I’m coming in to help with that. I think they’re about halfway through some of that consolidation. It’s time to look at where that’s headed and what value it’s providing, and I can help there. n
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