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The Lectern:

The Lectern: Good jobs for young people in government

By Steve Kelman
Published on October 18, 2007 - 10:30 AM

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I got a really upbeat email a week ago from a recent Kennedy School grad (and course assistant for my public management course), Andrew Vogt, who with the help of his Russian language skills, took a job upon graduation about 18 months ago at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the DOD agency in charge of keeping an eye on "loose nukes" in places such as the former Soviet Union. To put it mildly, their mission is of life-and-death importance for all of us, and I was really proud that Andrew had gotten, and taken, this opportunity. We've been staying in touch since graduation, and he checked in last week:
    Everything is going very well at DTRA, and I think you will be happy to hear that they are doing a very good job of putting young people into challenging roles with significant responsibility. I have been the government representative for one site visit to a nuclear storage facility and continue to 'run' (still hard to believe) a project as an international project manager. It is an amazing opportunity.
Andrew also reported that he had become involved in "a foreign affairs discussion group of young government professionals" organized by a young GS-15 who had come to the Kennedy School for an executive ed class. "All of the discussions have been fascinating. There are some great young people in government service thinking about the major questions of where we are heading as a nation."

Any other young feds want to join a dialogue about your job responsibilities? Are you being given interesting, challenging, and meaningful work, or not?

View Comments

Some government agencies don't take well to newcomers or outsiders trying to exert influence on some process that has been around for many years. Inbred organizations suffer from the "not invented here" syndrome, and I see no changes.

Posted by EagleEye on October 22, 2007 - 09:31 AM

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Posted by doreueks on November 4, 2007 - 08:44 PM

I have been given an opportunity to work on quite a few challenging/interesting projects in conracting. Some of them because of our extreme lack of resources, but others because I've earned the right to work on key projects. I think that as young people in Government we have an excellent opportunity to leverage existing knowledge so we can get the clout to work on key projects. I've found that if I'm confused or unsure of something, it's very likely (especially in contracting) that I can find written guidance or regulation on the topic. Instead of fighting all of this guidance, we should learn how we can best embrace it and work within its framework. I believe my English Prof referred to this as, "appealing to written authority". At the same time, I try to make sure that I don't unecessarily use written authority as a crutch. This creates beauracracy (the same thing many of us young people are trying to crush).

Posted by jswhetsell on November 13, 2007 - 10:04 PM

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Posted by mkuilqxg on May 24, 2008 - 07:44 AM


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