Center for Presidential Transition

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Center for Presidential Transition

Abbreviation	The Center
Formation	2016 (2016)
Founded at	Washington, D.C.
Type	Good Government Nonprofit
Purpose	The Center for Presidential Transition helps presidential candidates and their transition teams prepare for a first term or second term in office.
Headquarters	Partnership for Public Service 1100 New York Avenue NW
Leader	David Marchick
Website	presidentialtransition.org

The Center for Presidential Transition is a nonpartisan source of information and resources designed to help presidential candidates and their transition teams prepare for their first term or second term in office. The organization is a subset of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service in Washington DC. The Center assists with organizing and executing a transition, helps career officials in federal agencies prepare for new political leadership, helps aspiring political appointees prepare for government leadership, engages with Congress to expand legislative transition reforms, and offers insights to help incumbent presidents prepare for a second term or for smooth transfer of power in the event that a new president is elected. The Center first launched in 2016 to assist the Trump and Clinton transition teams in the run up to the 2016 election. David Marchick is the current director of the Center.

Mission

The mission of the Center can be broken down into four parts. For one, it assists presidential candidates, the incumbent administration, and agencies with planning for presidential transition. The Center published its Presidential Transition Guide to serve as a roadmap for transition planning. The Agency Transition Guide helps career officials prepare critical information for incoming senior leaders. There exists a library of past transition documents on the Center for Presidential Transition website and the organization has historically hosted nonpartisan conferences and roundtable discussions for candidates and their transition teams.

The Center also advocates for reforms and publishes work on modern transition issues. Representatives of the organization work with Congress to promote those reforms that better streamline the appointments process. In collaboration with The Washington Post, the online Political Appointee Tracker provides real-time data on the status of political appointments, holding the administration and the Senate accountable for timely action.

Preparing presidential appointees to succeed is also central to the Center's mission. The Ready to Govern program accelerates the ability of political appointees to lead by deepening their understanding of the unique aspects of managing in the federal government. The Center for Presidential Transition provides content and planning tools to help appointees get ready for rigorous background checks, ethics evaluations, and the Senate confirmation process.

Similar to the mission of the Partnership for Public Service, the Center seeks to identify and promote sound management practices for a more effective government. The organization provides expertise on the government’s talent and operational challenges, and brings together diverse perspectives to sustain momentum and institutional knowledge on federal management issues.

Publications, resources, and research

The Center has published a collection of information, expertise, and documents on transitions. Original research has positioned the Center as the leading authority on presidential transition and has drawn attention to presidential transition issues among several audiences. Much of the Center’s website is dedicated to showcasing this research and making novel data and findings accessible to transition stakeholders and the general public.

The Presidential Transition Act Summary was published in March 2020 and quickly became one of the most popular resources on the Center’s website. In the 20 days between Election Day and the beginning of the formal transition period with General Services Administration ascertainment, this summary was used by key transition stakeholders, journalists, and the public to help contextualize the delay in the transition process and answer questions about the legal role of the GSA in presidential transition. During this period, the summary was accessed 44,000 times, more than any other Center research product.

Following the election of 2020, the Center created a centralized resource hub for what stakeholders and the public needed to know about the transition period, past presidential transitions, and how to become a political appointee. The page is named Presidential Transition Central and initially featured a collection of new reports written in collaboration by the Center and Boston Consulting Group on topics including what the Presidential Transition Act requires post-election, how newly elected presidents have traditionally spent their time and how Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama collaborated during the 2008 transition to address the Great Recession. Launched on the day that the presidential election was called for President-elect Biden by all major media outlets, this hub became a popular one-stop destination for those seeking to understand the transition process.

The Center’s Publication and Resource Library includes a collection of publicly available documents from past transitions. These documents are available for transition teams, journalists, and other key stakeholders in order to inform contemporary transition efforts and developments. The Center’s blog provides research-driven content related to what happens during a transition period, and who works on presidential transition planning. In 2020, the blog provided commentary on current events and thought leadership in the transition space from Center experts and featured guest authors.

Center for Presidential Transition Advisory Board

The 2020 Center for Presidential Transition Advisory Board consisted of bipartisan public servants Joshua Bolten, former chief of staff to President George W. Bush, Michael Leavitt, former governor of Utah and former chairman of the Romney Readiness Project, Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and Penny Pritzker, former secretary to the Department of Commerce. All four board members brought their transition experience and expertise to their role and have publicly elevated the importance of the Center’s work. Through the 2020 transition cycle, they provided advice and insights on how to approach complicated challenges and maximize potential opportunities.

The advisory board also served as surrogates on the importance of transition planning individually and as a group. In January 2020, they released an open letter to encourage all presidential transition candidates to begin preparing–either for a new administration or a second term. Directly after the presidential election was called for President-elect Biden by all major media outlets, the advisory board released a statement urging the Trump administration to immediately begin the post-election transition process and the Biden team to take full advantage of the resources available under the Presidential Transition Act. This statement was covered by multiple outlets as one of the first bipartisan acknowledgements of the election results and substantive calls for the formal transition process to begin.

Political Appointee Tracker with The Washington Post

In 2016, the Partnership launched a first-of-its-kind political appointments tracker with The Washington Post to follow the nominations, confirmations, and resignations of President Trump’s appointees to more than 750 key positions.

During President Trump’s tenure in office, the tracker was the preeminent source of information about political appointments and vacancies. The tracker has provided timely data illustrating how the Senate confirmation process has slowed to a crawl, with the average confirmation taking twice as long under President Trump as it did during the Reagan administration. The data on the Trump administration appointees will remain accessible and will continue to be updated as current appointees tender their resignations.

In December 2020, the Partnership and The Washington Post published a new tracker to follow the progress of more than 800 of President Biden’s nominees. Positions in the Biden Political Appointee Tracker include Cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsels, heads of agencies, ambassadors, and other critical leadership jobs. The tracker provides data on the number of appointments filled and the progress of candidates as they go through the nomination and confirmation process.

Ready to Serve

Ready to Serve is a centralized resource that guides candidates through the political appointment process. The Center launched Ready to Serve to prepare aspiring political appointees for job hunting in a new or second-term administration and preparing for background checks and security clearances, financial disclosure, and Senate confirmation hearings.

Every presidential administration has about 4,000 positions to fill. The Center contributes to the historical presidential appointment process by connecting prospective political appointees with information about the process and the required financial disclosure and background investigation forms required. The Center for Presidential Transition gives job seekers access to these forms and the necessary resources. The Center informs the public about the important responsibility of meeting the highest standards of integrity when serving in an administration. By providing all of the information needed to make the commitments required to hold a politically appointed position in the federal government, the Center allows prospective appointees to consider the obligations and make the decision.

Federal jobs are designated as low-risk, medium-risk, or high-risk public trust, depending on the potential impact that an individual could have on the integrity or efficiency of the agency’s mission. High-risk public trust positions include individuals involved in overseeing large amounts of government funding, law enforcement personnel and those who work with federal information systems. Position sensitivity levels are related to national security, are determined by the potential damage that an individual could cause to national security, and often require a security clearance. The Center for Presidential Transition has published a plethora of information related to these processes. The Center prepares nominees for an extensive financial and ethics screening process. The specifics of the screening process depend on proposed positions, with senior positions requiring more public disclosure. Nominees are asked to provide information about personal finances and the finances of the spouse or dependent children so that ethics officials can identify and resolve any potential conflicts of interest. The Center's resources permit individuals to familiarize themselves with the financial and ethics forms and questions.

The Center prepares nominees for the confirmation process by the Senate by sharing with them a confirmation flow chart as well as the National Academy of Public Administration’s publication, A Survivor’s Guide for Presidential Nominees.

Transition Lab

David Marchick, director of the Center for Presidential Transition, hosts the Center's podcast Transition Lab. He invites former presidential chiefs of staff, transition team leads and other presidential transition experts to share their experiences each week. The podcast was created to inform the public about the importance of a robust transition effort and educate listeners on what needs to happen before a president takes office or starts a second term.

Podcast episodes include:

• Key Transition Lessons from Two Former White House Chiefs of Staff with guests Josh Bolten and Denis McDonough
• Intelligence Briefings During Presidential Transitions with Michael Morell
• Famed journalist John Dickerson on "The Hardest Job in the World"
• Ken Burns on Presidential Leadership During American Crises
• Ted Kaufman on The Biden Transition to Power

Partners and sponsors

In the federal government, partners include the General Services Administration, the Office of Government Ethics, the National Archives and Record Administration, and the Office of Personnel Management. Non-government partners include ACT-IAC, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Brookings Institution, Business Executives for National Security, IBM Center for the Business of Government, Miller Center of Public Affairs, National Academy of Public Administration, Professional Services Council, and the White House Transition Project. Presidential transition sponsors include Boston Consulting Group, IBM, McKinsey & Company, and SoftBank Group. Sponsors • Center for Presidential Transition

Other Center contributors

In January 2020, the Center assembled the Center Fellows, a community of roughly 40 non-resident experts with first-hand knowledge and experience on issues related to presidential transitions, the transition from a first to second-term administration, and running the federal government. These Fellows included senior officials with experience running transitions, former senior White House officials, and those with expertise in topics including vetting appointees and the Senate confirmation process.

The Transition Management Network brought together good government organizations to advance the common goal to support a safe and effective transition. This Network first convened in 2016 and worked to identify six management priorities for successful policy implementation for the incoming Trump administration. In 2020, members reconvened as a Network to focus on sharing information about respective transition efforts and connect on areas of mutual interest. Participating organizations include the American Council for Technology - Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), Brookings Institute, IBM Center for The Business of Government, the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, UVA's Miller Center, the MITRE Corporation, National Academy of Public Administration, Professional Services Council, Results for America, Senior Executives Association, Tech Talent Project, Truman Center for National Policy and the Truman National Security Project, the White House Transition Project, and the Center itself.

References

This article "Center for Presidential Transition" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Center for Presidential Transition. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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