Government Performance II
by Anonymous Federal employee

Editor: I want you to know that not all Federal agencies are like the one the Federal employee wrote about in your last issue. I am a GS12 chemist. I analyze samples (my main job). I am also a Contracting Officer's Representative. I was also a member of a statistics committee, developing new statistical ways of checking our analysis using new software. Some of us taught ourselves how to program--on our own time.

And we wrote programs -- on our own time (at home) to help us out our sections at work. We also, during the slow season, develop new methods, and write them up for peer review and publishing. Even though we sell these open-file reports, we also put them on the web, so people can access them for free.

It is rare that our IT section ever comes by -- we fix our own computers. When something breaks in our section, someone usually knows how to fix it. And we work together to solve problems. A few years ago, our UNIX system administrator decide to move on. No problem. One of the chemists in our section had enough knowledge of UNIX and system administration to fill in until they hired a replacement. And he got a little bit bored doing that, so he wrote a number of web applications for customers to do queries on our web site.

Why do we do it? We are scientists. And scientists have ego problems. We ENJOY doing this work. We have visitors from countries all over the world. Sometimes when we do some novel new science, we have media /TV/newspaper interviews.

I am a conservative. There are only a few of us conservatives, and a majority of extreme liberals working there. We get into heated arguments sometimes. But that doesn't stop us from working together; in fact, usually we work VERY well together as a team on projects and problem solving.

We are a fee for service lab. People have a choice of sending their samples to our lab or other labs. We have to stay competitive and do stuff that other labs can't or won't do, or say is impossible. You got questions? Call us and we will talk to you. We even return phone calls. Even though we have funds appropriated at the beginning of the fiscal year, we have to earn this money back. If we don't, people can't get promoted -- could even lead to layoffs. If we make any money, we put it in the equipment fund to buy new instruments -- this stuff ain't cheap. A new GC/MS costs $75,000. But we still have older instruments running -- some from 1990 --running on HPUX unix systems -- can't afford to buy everything at once. We have some instruments still running off MSDOS!!! And they work!!!!

When we dispose of old equipment, we no longer send it to property disposal to be given away. We work with GSA to sell the equipment on E-bay!!! Last year we had approximately $180,000 of platinum crucibles we no longer needed. We sold those on E-bay, and used the money to build a new loading dock for the warehouse.

Everything's not perfect. But we are not like that story you published.

Just thought you ought to know.

This federal employee works in Denver