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Survey on the Future of Government Service – Project Description
The 2007 Survey on the Future of the Government Service is a survey of federal executives being conducted at Princeton University. The survey includes questions about the backgrounds, political views, and experiences of 7,500 executives across the federal government. It is the largest academic survey of federal executives ever conducted. The results from the survey will contribute to ongoing scholarly research on the public service and inform the work of the Task Force on the Changing Nature of Government Service at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. The Task Force is being chaired by Paul Volcker and has been charged with investigating the current state of government service in order to make recommendations about how best to train the next generation of public servants.
The first set of questions concerns the backgrounds of federal executives. The purpose of these questions is to better understand the career paths of federal executives and what they do in their current jobs. What are the different ways executives obtained their current positions? What education and work experience did executives have prior to assuming their current post? What motivated them to enter government service in the first place?
The second set of questions concerns the political views of federal executives. What political parties do they belong to? Are they liberal or conservative? What are their views about important pieces of legislation that have recently been considered in Congress?
The next section of the survey concerns the extent of political involvement from different political actors to find out how much contact federal executives have with them including congressional committees, interest groups, the White House, and political appointees. The survey also includes questions about the responsiveness of these executives to political direction.
We are also interested in federal executives' perceptions of how well the federal government is performing. Thus, the fourth section includes questions about executives' perceptions about the competence of different groups working in their departments and agencies. This section also includes questions about executives' perceptions about how well the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)—an instrument created to measure program performance—is working.
The final section of the survey includes questions about the future of public service. Should young people enter public service? If so, what type of education should they get? Should we create a public service academy? Why or why not? Answers to these questions will better help us understand how best to train the next generation of public servants.
The survey provides a unique opportunity to understand the backgrounds, views, and experiences of federal executives in a way that has not been possible in the past. It should both advance academic knowledge about the public service and inform public discussions about the changing nature of government service and the best ways to recruit and retain the best and brightest to public service in the future.
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