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WHTP's
Report Series Index (4/9/2001)
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The complete
index to reports and briefing materials provided to President Bush's
transition team by the White House Transition Project's WH2001 Project
(pictured at right). The materials derive from extensive interviews
with previous staff about the lessons they learned and the resources
they wished they had had. The index includes materials available on
both the public and the transition team websites, divided into five
series:
[PDF
Format]
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Guide to
Transitions - original essays on presidential transitions. See below.
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White House
Operations - original essays on general White House operations.
See below.
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Staff Resources - resource
materials to smooth contact. Only
available to White House staff.
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Institutional
Memory - office descriptions and other useful resources for
seven key offices. See below.
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Appointments
Reference - information about the appointments process. See below.
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GUIDE TO TRANSITIONS SERIES
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A
shortcut to the Transition Series, The White House World gathers and
digests the same material
provided to the
incoming White House staff in 2001.
To see more
information about this publication, click here.
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Lessons
from Past
Transitions(11/1/2000)
by John P. Burke
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Based on his
new book on transitions, Burke outlines the lessons learned from past
presidential transitions: from what to think about early to how to
start running the day after the election to how to manage the
presidency.
[PDF
Format]
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Tales
of Transitions 1980 and 1988 (11/1/2000)
by John P. Burke
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What are the
differences between the hostile and friendly takeovers of the past?
This report outlines what to expect whichever side wins.
[PDF Format]
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Meeting the
Freight Train Head On(7/12/2000)
by Martha J. Kumar, George C. Edwards, III, James Pfiffner, &
Terry Sullivan
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Seizing early
opportunities eases confirmations, furthers the President's agenda, and
affords a new team a valuable reputation for competence. That is the
consensus of people who have worked in top White House positions over
the course of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton
administrations. A report compiling the lessons learned by some former
White House staff.
[PDF Format]
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Opportunities
and Hazards(9/1/1998)
by Martha J. Kumar
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An early
assessment by the Director of the White House Transition Project
describing what is at stake in the presidential transition and how
scholars working with former White House staff can smooth the way for
the new administration. Commissioned by the Pew Chartiable Trusts, the
study also assesses the use of a website in delivering materials to the
new staff, ala whitehouse2001.org.
[PDF Format]
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Chief
of Staff Forum
James
A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
(a supporting
institution of the WHTP's WH2001 Project) (6/15/2000)
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The former
Chiefs of Staff discuss running the White House at a Washington Forum,
June 15, 2000.
I want to particularly underscore the
efforts of the... White House 2001 Project, guided by Professor Martha
Kumar, has worked so closely with the Baker Institute in preparing for
this Forum. - James A. Baker, III
[Streaming Video]
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WHITE HOUSE OPERATIONS SERIES
Presidency
& the Political Environment(11/1/2000)
by John H. Kessel
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White House
staffing must adapt to a number of significant forces. These forces are
outlined by a leading expert on White House organization.
[PDF format]
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The White House
World: Start Up, Organization, and The Pressures of Work Life(12/12/2001)
by Martha J. Kumar
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The White
House staff extends the President's reach. This essay explores the
nature of White House work, including the pressures placed on staff by
the nature of the offices in which they work. It describes the degree
of scrutiny, scale of operations, rythyms of work, and demands for
error free decision-making placed on all staff. It also outlines the
advantages of White House life.
[PDF format]
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INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY SERIES
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Each office
report has two files.
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The first is a description of the
office written by scholars expert on the office. Available in PDF
format (you will need Adobe Acrobat's free viewer to open).
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The second file downloads a folder of
organization charts in MSWord format. These are zipped together.
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To save essays to your hard drive for
later review, right-click on the file name and choose "Save As".
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TRANSITION PHOTO ARCHIVES
"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."
Lyndon B. Johnson
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President Johnson discusses issues with President-Elect Nixon 1968. |
To save essays to your hard drive for later
review, right-click on the file name and choose "Save As". Having
trouble viewing these files? You must have a copy of Adobe Acrobat
Reader installed on your machine. Click on this link to download.
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| Headlines |
Click on headline to see story.
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WHTP Releases Study on Appointment Reform
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"Its time to consider what we can fix," Terry Sullivan,
Executive Director of WHTP said in a meeting recently. "For five years, WHTP has not considered
the presidential appointments process and the mess that presidential nominees regularly face.
America can do better and we intend to help." With that statement, WHTP released its newest study
from it Nomination Forms Online Program, entitled "Rescuing the Presidential Appointments Process."
Using its unique database on nominee inquiry, WHTP identified the general patterns of trouble for nominees
and assessed a number of strategies for easing the burden on the government's top policy-making officials.
"At least," Sullivan noted, "we can make it esier before they get their jobs."
After detailing a number of problems with the nomination and confirmation process, the report makes
18 recommendations. "Most of these recommendations identify ways to increase redundancy in the some 250 individual questions that
nominees must muster answers for. And these are not easy questions to answer, dealing with financial conflicts of
interest, disclosure, and legal entanglements as well as a whole range of questions about associations, travel, education,
and employment."
To see more about this new report, click here. |
| WHTP cites Prior Sponsors
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"In its
nearly ten year history, the White House Transition Project has done great
things." Professor Martha Kumar recently noted, "It has helped one
presidency get off to a record-setting start. It has helped
document and translate into useful advice the hard lessons learned in
the world's most important governing institution. And it has passed
those lessons on to those who govern, in this country and other
democracies around the world, to their staffs here and abroad, and to
the thousands of political appointees who manage policy-making day in
and day out."
"Over the years, the White House Transition Project has received the
assistance of a terrific board of advisors and the financial assistance
of several institutions, public and private. And for their assistance,
we are especially grateful and want to take this time to acknowledge
them."
The following institutions have provided invaluable assistance to the
WHTP:
Principal Assistance:
- The Pew Charitable Trusts
- Towson University
- The University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill
- The James A. Baker III Institute for
Public Policy of Rice University
Associated Institution:
- The American Enterprise Institute
- The Brookings Institution
- James MacGregor Burns Academy of
Leadership & Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership
at University of Maryland
- National Archives & Records
Administration
- Powell Tate, Washington, D.C.
- Presidency Research Group
at American Political Science Association
- Joan Shorenstein Center on Press,
Politics, & Public Policy,
at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
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Former WH Chiefs' Visions of
Governing
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The White House Transition Project and The
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University (a
WHTP Partner)
announce the release of a new book on transition preparations. The new
book, Nerve Center: Lessons on Governing from the White House
Chiefs of Staff is published as the second book in the presidential
transition collection of Texas A&M University Press. (See below for
the story on its first book: The White House World).
Nerve
Center compiles the collective judgments of 12 of the 14 living
former White House Chiefs of Staff:
- Vice-President Richard
Cheney
- Former Secretary of State James A. Baker
III
- Former Senate
Majority Leader and now Ambassador Howard Baker, Jr.
- Former and
current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
- Former Congressman Leon
Panetta
- Former Governor John Sununu
- Erskine Bowles
- John Podesta,
- Jack Watson
- Thomas "Mack" McClarty
- Former Secretary of Transportatin Samuel
Skinner and
- Kenneth Duberstein.
Their
discussions in Nerve Center
range over topics about staffing the White House, crisis management,
political leadership,
predatory partisanship in Washington, presidential decision-making, and
a host of other topics associated with presidential transitions and
governing from the modern White House.
In addition,
the final chapter provides the first comparative analysis of the George
W. Bush 2001 presidential transition identifying a number of standards
for success and measuring the Bush performance against previous modern
transitions.
For notes on governing taken from Nerve Center, click here for 10 Lessons on Governing in PDF
format.
To see
more
information about this publication,click here.
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Nomination Forms Online Software
Smoothing the way for nominees.
Current version:
2.4i (3
July 2002)
This software designed to help nominees file the
various required forms.
Want to see a preview of the NFO software?
Click here for a Flash
presentation.
Click here for an HTML slide show.
To obtain a copy of the software, go to the

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APPOINTMENTS REFERENCE SERIES
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Rescuing The
Presidential Appointments Process. (9/12/2007)
by Terry Sullivan
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Substantial revision of an earlier NFO reference report, this newly issued assessment
covers strategies for rationalizing the presidential appointments process. It identifes two significant reform strategies each reducing
the burden of inquiry on nominess by 30% without changing the reported information at all.
18 recommendations. An appendix covers questions asked on all forms
and questionnaires nominees must
file, including all of the Senate Committee forms.
[PDF format]
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Additional Appointments Titles
WHTP releases
these studies to help detail the inquiry difficulties
facing
presidential appointees.[All in PDF
format]
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For older WHTP (including WH2001) news, see
our Archived News page.
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