EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 9 A.M. ON JANARY 20 Presidential TRANSITION GUIDE PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE Center for Presidential Tr ansition The Partnership for Public Service is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to revitalize the federal government by inspiring a new generation to serve and by transforming the way government works. The Partnership teams up with federal agencies and other stakeholders to make our government more effective and efficient. We pursue this goal by: • Providing assistance to federal agencies to improve their management and operations, and to strengthen their leadership capacity • Conducting outreach to college campuses and job seekers to promote public service • Identifying and celebrating government’s successes so they can be replicated across government • Advocating for needed legislative and regulatory reforms to strengthen the civil service • Generating research on, and effective responses to, the workforce challenges facing our federal government • Enhancing public understanding of the valuable work civil servants perform We would like to thank our strategic partner in this work, The Boston Consulting Group, as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, whose generous support made this transition guide possible. Presidential TRANSITION GUIDE January 2016 First Edition Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 7 About this Guide 10 GETTING ORGANIZED 13 Fundamentals of Getting Organized 13 Major Steps in Presidential Transition Management 18 BUILDING THE TEAM 41 Key Transition Leadership Activities 43 PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS 55 The Basics of Making Presidential Appointments 56 Major Steps in Personnel Management 62 POLICY IMPLEMENTATION 89 Major Activities in Policy Implementation 91 AGENCY REVIEW 115 Major Steps in the Agency Review Process 118 SUPPORTING THE PRESIDENT-ELECT 167 Fundamentals of the President-elect’s Schedule 167 Major Steps in Presidential Calendar Planning 172 Vice Presidential Personnel and Transition Planning 180 Transition Planning for the First Family 181 ROLE OF THE OUTGOING ADMINISTRATION 185 Role of the Outgoing President 186 Major Steps for the Outgoing President 189 In the 1972 dramatic film The Candidate, a dazed U.S. Senator-elect Bill McKay learns he has won a hard-fought Senate election. Turning to his campaign manager, he asks, “So…what do we do now?” This classic scene from fiction highlights the real-life difficulty of preparing to govern in the midst of campaigning, and the void that is created if planning does not take place. While poor planning may be an afterthought in the movies, the consequences in reality are serious and sobering. Preparing to take over the presidency of the United States of America is highly complex and extremely important. Done well, it will set up a new administration for success for the next four years; done poorly, and it will be difficult for a new administration to recover. Introduction The purpose of this guide is to share many of the lessons learned from past tran- sitions, and to suggest best practices and key choices most likely to contribute to smooth and successful transitions in the future. Executing a presidential transition involves establishing key goals and organizing the infrastructure necessary to achieve them, including: • Staffing the White House and the Executive Office of the President, develop- ing a functional decision-making structure and preparing to assume govern- ing responsibility • Making more than 4,000 presidential appointments, roughly 1,000 of which require Senate confirmation • Getting up to speed on more than 100 federal agencies and organizing and training leadership teams for each • Building a full policy platform for the new administration and planning exec- utive actions, a management agenda, a budget proposal and potential legisla- tion to implement those policies • Preparing a 100- to 200-day plan for executing the policies laid out by the president during the campaign and getting the new administration off to a quick start • Developing a strategy for communicating with the American people, Congress, the media, political appointees, the federal workforce and other stakeholders Introduction 9 New administrations often have faced a major crisis within their first few months in office, from the economic meltdown that confronted President Barack Obama as he took the reins in January 2009, to the September 11th terrorist attacks that occurred nine months after President George W. Bush’s inauguration, to the lin- gering savings and loan crisis that required the early attention of President George H.W. Bush in 1989.1 Candidates cannot wait until after the election to begin think- ing about how they will organize and prepare to deal with such emergencies. This work must begin well in advance of Election Day so the new administration is ready to govern—and prepared for any possibility—on day one. The Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition and its Ready to Govern® initiative are designed to ensure the smooth and safe transfer of both power and knowledge during the peaceful transition from one adminis- tration to the next. Ensuring that each incoming presidential administration is ready to lead on day one is a national security imperative and a solemn duty to the American people. Few presidential transitions have been well documented, and even fewer have captured key documents, information and advice in a way that will be use- ful to future transition teams—a surprising and even concerning fact, given the enormous amount of planning and preparation that the transition requires. As the presidential campaign season heats up, we need to place as much empha- sis on the ability of candidates to lead our government as we do on their policy positions. The next president is essentially the CEO of a complex organization of nearly 4.1 million federal employees whose mandate is protecting U.S. citizens and creating an environment where they can prosper. This means the president must begin transition activities early, smartly and at full strength. With the Center for Presidential Transition, the Partnership has created a learning system to assist outgoing administrations, presidential candidates, presi- dential transition teams, federal agency leaders and government career executives and provide access to the resources they need to plan, prepare and contribute to a smooth transfer of power. Our material is gleaned from a variety of sources, including prior transition teams, administration officials, government agencies, good government organizations and transition scholars. We hope this permanent “one stop shop” for all things transition will serve to educate, inform and equip all those who play a role in the presidential transition to make each one better than the one before. 1 John P. Burke, “George H. W. Bush: Transition and Early Presidency,” in Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case Studies in Presidential Leadership, ed. David Abshire (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of the Presidency, 2001), 43. 10 Presidential Transition Guide The Center for Presidential Transition is home to the Ready to Govern® initia- tive, a four-pronged approach to our work. DEVELOPING A MANAGEMENT ROADMAP Sound management enables the effective implementation of policy and is essential for a successful presidency. Management mistakes can cost an admin- istration dearly in reputation and results, and as such, transition teams should devote time and resources to develop a robust management agenda. We work with good government stakeholders to develop management recommenda- tions for the next administration. ENGAGING CONGRESS AND PROMOTING PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION REFORMS To establish a stronger infrastructure and framework for transitions, the admin- istration and Congress must work together to make improvements to the process. We have identified actions that Congress can take, including codifying best prac- tices from prior transitions, designating a federal transition coordinator, and fur- ther reducing the number of positions subject to Senate confirmation. ASSISTING THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES There is currently no single place for campaigns to obtain comprehensive information regarding transition planning. The Partnership is working to fill this void by creating this presidential transition guide, and by facilitating rela- tionships between transition teams, the outgoing administration and individu- als with prior transition experience. PREPARING PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTEES TO SUCCEED The success of every presidency depends on picking high-quality agency ap- pointees and preparing them to lead in the public sector. Through our Ready to Govern forums, bipartisan faculty from previous administrations will meet with incoming political leaders to prepare them to effectively govern. Introduction 11 ABOUT THIS GUIDE This guide is a collection of decision points and approaches to presidential transition planning and execution. It is an attempt to clarify the process of planning for a presidential transition, and to gather lessons learned and best practices from prior recent transitions of both political parties. The goals are to create the expectation that presidential candidates will prepare for a poten- tial transition well before Election Day, and make the transition process more established and less politically sensitive. The intended audience includes presidential candidates and their top cam- paign and transition staff, outgoing administrations, policymakers invested