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 The Boston Consulting Group is a global management consulting firm and one of the world’s leading advisers on business strategy and change management. BCG was founded in 1963 and has more than 15,000 staff based in 48 countries and 85 offices around the world. BCG’s U.S. Federal Practice was founded in 2009 and helps clients address their most critical challenges to enable more efficient, effective and affordable government. Presidential TRANSITION GUIDE January 2018 Third Edition Copyright © 2018 by the Partnership for Public Service Policies made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. To view a copy of the license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 3 The Research, Discussions and Activities That Informed This Guide 4 About Our Mission 6 TRANSITION OVERVIEW 9 Fundamentals of Getting Organized 9 Responsibilities of the Transition 12 Laying a Strong Foundation 14 Key Transition Milestones 24 BUILDING THE TEAM 41 Key Transition Workstreams 45 Key Transition Leadership Activities 51 PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENTS 63 The Basics of Making Presidential Appointments 64 Major Steps in Personnel Management 68 Vetting and Investigating Presidential Appointees 81 Onboard New Appointees 89 Prepare Cabinet Orientation and Retreat 89 POLICY IMPLEMENTATION 111 Major Activities in Policy Prioritization 114 AGENCY REVIEW 143 Major Steps in the Agency Review Process 146 SUPPORTING THE PRESIDENT-ELECT 199 Fundamentals of the President-elect’s Schedule 199 Major Steps in Presidential Calendar Planning 206 Vice Presidential Personnel and Transition Planning 212 Transition Planning for the First Family 214 ROLE OF THE OUTGOING ADMINISTRATION 219 Major Steps for the Outgoing President 220 SECOND-TERM TRANSITION 241 CONCLUSION 249 In the 1972 dramatic film The Candidate, a dazed U.S. Senator-elect Bill McKay learns he has won a hard-fought election. Turning to his campaign manager, he asks, “So … what do we do now?” This classic fictional scene 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 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; done poorly, it will make it difficult for a new administration to recover. Introduction Introduction The purpose of this guide is to share lessons learned from past presidential tran- sitions and to suggest best practices, as well as key choices and decision-points involved in planning for a smooth and successful transfer of power. It is essential to begin transition planning well before Election Day, which requires creating an organization, setting goals and doing the work necessary to achieve those priori- ties. The primary goals of a presidential transition include: • Staffing the White House and the Executive Office of the President, develop- ing a functional decision-making process and preparing to assume governing responsibility • Making more than 4,000 presidential appointments, over 1,100 of which re- quire Senate confirmation • Getting up to speed on more than 100 federal agencies and organizing and training leadership teams for each • Building a policy platform for the new administration based on campaign promises, and planning executive actions, a management agenda, a budget proposal and potential legislation • Preparing a 100- to 200-day plan for executing the policies laid out during the campaign to help the new administration get 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 3 Presidential Transition Guide New presidents not only have to make critical leadership appointments across government and pursue a robust policy agenda, they also have to be fully prepared to handle a major crisis within their first few months in office. President Donald Trump was confronted with an emergency response to three major hurri- canes in 2017, as well as escalating tensions over the North Korean nuclear threat. President Barack Obama had to deal with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression upon taking office in 2009, while the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred just eight months after President George W. Bush’s inauguration. Can- didates cannot wait until after the election to begin thinking about how they will organize and prepare to deal with such emergencies or the demanding day-to-day requirements of governing. This work must begin in the midst of the presidential campaign so the new administration will be ready to govern—and be prepared for any possibility—on day one. The intended audience for this guide includes presidential candidates and their top campaign and transition staff, administrations seeking a second term, outgoing administrations, policymakers invested in the transfer of power, agency officials handling transition planning, outside groups that provide advisory sup- port, the media and the public at large. The pages that follow cover the major activities and phases of a pres- idential transition, and explain how successful transitions should operate. This guide is not intended as a complete history of past presidential transitions, but it is a living document that will be updated as we learn more about presidential transitions and talk with those who have been involved in the process. Individuals provided information on the basis of non-attribution, and direct quotes have been included with permission. THE RESEARCH, DISCUSSIONS AND ACTIVITIES THAT INFORMED THIS GUIDE The transition work of the Partnership for Public Service over the past decade has been used to develop this guide and improve the presidential transition process. Our work has included: • Conferences in 2008, 2012 and 2016 at the Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund that brought together representatives of federal agencies, good-government groups and members of the major cam- paigns to discuss transition planning. The 2016 conference included speak- ers from the 2008 transition team of President Obama and the 2012 team of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, including the chairman of the Romney Readiness Project. Attendees included officials from the Republican cam- paigns of Donald Trump, John Kasich and Ted Cruz, and the Democratic campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The Boston Consulting Group helped facilitate the 2012 and 2016 conferences and prepared a wealth of materials relating to the 2016 presidential transition. • Convening three presidential transition roundtable forums in 2016 with members of the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump transition teams to provide information and best practices on preparing to govern and to fa- 4 Introduction cilitate a smooth handover of power from the Obama administration to the successful candidate. • Engagement with more than 170 career agency executives from 40 agen- cies during 2016 and 2017 to help them plan for the presidential transition and anticipate the needs of the presidential transition teams. • Interviews with members of the Trump and Clinton transition teams, the Obama administration and agency transition service providers following the 2016 presidential election to understand how the transition teams, the White House and the service providers were organized, what worked and what should take place in the future to improve the process. • Development of a series of interactive courses to provide new political ap- pointees with the tools they need to succeed and excel in their roles as government leaders. • Discussions with Congress that led to passage of new laws that reduced the number of political appointees subject to Senate confirmation; provid- ed office space, equipment and support to eligible candidates immediately after their political conventions; and established White House and federal agency councils designed to assist the transition teams of the presidential candidates. • An in-depth analysis of presidential transition calendars, and how pres- idents-elect spend their time between the election and the inauguration, developed in cooperation with the Boston Consulting Group. • Sponsoring the release event for the Romney transition team’s book, Rom- ney Readiness