No Time To Wait: Building a Public Service for the 21st Century

The Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust sponsored this National Academy of Public Administration (Academy) study to determine how the federal government's human capital challenges can best be addressed. The Academy formed a five-member Panel of Fellows with expertise in human capital management to conduct the study and produce a White Paper.

In 2017, we released No Time to Wait, the first of our white papers on the future of the federal public service. The Panel argued that the government’s workforce strategy needs to build on three elements: putting mission first, driving the principles of the merit system always, and ensuring accountability for both. In the Panel’s new white paper No Time to Wait, Part 2, the Panel concludes that there is even less time to wait. We need to act today, quickly and creatively, to build the government workforce we will need in the years to come.