“Let’s work toward a government with many fewer longterm employees”

Our Proposal:

• Limit government employment to five years wherever possible
• Offer newly-opened temporary government jobs to recent graduates 
• Give attractive incentives to these temporary government employees to find ways to reduce waste and increase efficiency

The Goal:

• Make government more efficient
• Save taxpayer money
• Give recent graduates good-but-temporary job opportunities

Explanation:

Government organizations are notoriously wasteful and inefficient with taxpayer money. There are many reasons for this, some of which include:

1. Government organizations in particular become institutionalized such that the interests of the bureaucracy become the priority, superseding even the original purpose for the organization’s existence. The result is lower efficiency, less “bang for the buck”.
2. Firings in government are rare, so there is very little incentive for employees to strive for excellence. Further, it can be argued that lifetime employment in a bureaucracy fosters an environment of low productivity, of “going along to get along”, and of conforming to the lowest common denominator in terms of work attitude ("lifetime bureaucrat’s mentality”)
3. Bureaucracies are often incentivized to “use it or lose it” when it comes to funding, thus leading to wasteful end-of-the-year spending sprees
4. Expensive lifetime pension plans that are funded directly or indirectly by the taxpayer

Let’s do something about it. 

1. Let’s start by putting into place a five-year limit for government employment wherever possible. We can start with jobs that do not require years of experience in order to do well. For jobs that are more complex and generally are better performed by experienced workers, let’s see if those jobs (and applicable laws and regulations) can be reformed and simplified in order to make job experience a much less-important factor in job performance. 
2. Let’s give priority to filling these five-year jobs to recent high school and college graduates. Finding that first job after graduation is often the most difficult; too many recent graduates struggle to find good jobs. By placing a five-year limit of government employment, every year many thousands of government jobs will open up, offering ample employment opportunities to recent graduates and others struggling to find work.
3. Give incentives to these young and creative recent-graduates-turned-employees to come up with ways to make the agencies they work for more efficient. If an idea saves the taxpayer money, give the employee (or group of employees) who came up with the idea a percentage of the savings for ten years. Imagine—government employees with a great incentive to find ways to make things more efficient and cost effective. Wouldn’t that be a nice change?  
4. Instead of “use it or lose it” spending binges, let’s give financial incentives to both employees and entire agencies to responsibly achieve goals under budget.
5. After working up to five years, a onetime severance pay could be given, thus saving the taxpayer from shouldering trillions of dollars worth of lifetime pensions for former longterm government employees. As an added incentive, the amount of severance pay can be determined by job performance.

Some of the envisioned benefits include:

1. Help make government more efficient and effective by giving attractive incentives to creative temporary employees (i.e. individuals with no longterm, self-serving career interests in the organization) to innovate and come up with new ideas to make things function better and more cost effectively
2. Help reduce the influence of the” lifetime bureaucrat’s mentality” in government
3. Greatly reduce the number of expensive lifetime pensions that saddle the taxpayer
4. Very importantly, provide a potential source of good employment to recent grads, enabling them to gain experience, start saving and/or pay off educational debts, and develop a track record of achievement during a critical part of their lives.

A note regarding envisioned benefit 4): it is important to recognize that the time immediately after graduation can be crucial for determining one’s trajectory in life. Sadly, in too many cases the window of opportunity to find a career-defining job opportunity is often just a question of months after graduation; finding a good job after graduation becomes increasingly difficult as time drags on during an extended period of fruitless job searches. Providing ample and rewarding employment opportunities to recent grads will help ensure a more prosperous future for the country as a whole, and doing so in a way that helps reform government is an envisioned double benefit of the ideas proposed here. 

Let’s do this!