This series provides the essential information needed to assure a smooth transition. Reports in this series detail organization and operations in a range of offices critical to a properly functioning White House. These reports rely heavily on the extensive interviews conducted by WHTP's White House Interview Program, an innovative program that has given practitioners a useful way to pass on their experiences to those that follow, regardless of party. Pictured at left, WHTP Director, Martha Kumar reviews with Bush Transition Director Clay Johnson one of the briefing books WHTP provided for each of the offices covered by the 2001 series: Chief of Staff, Staff Secretary, Director of Personnel, White House Administration, White House Counsel, Press Secretary, and Office of Communications. Mr. Johnson had served as the Bush for President Transition planner and had worked with WHTP staff for almost two years by the time the new administration took office. He would go on to serve as Director of Presidential Personnel in the new White House.

The institutional memory series office descriptions detail basic organizational structures, as well as typical work routines, identify what those who have done the job commonly think has worked and what has not.

The series for 2009 begins with updated descriptions for each of the seven offices covered in the original and highly acclaimed 2001 series. In addition, this series includes organizational charts for many offices typically running from 1978 through 2000 at six month intervals.

A shortcut to the Institutional Memory Series, The White House World gathers and digests the same material provided to the Bush White House staff in 2001.

This series details general challenges to previous transitions. The reports here come from authors and practitioners alike. Click here to jump to the General Transition Series or select one of the individual studies listed below for the specific report. This series has two sets of reports, covering past transitions and the general topic of transitions. [All in PDF Format]

General Guides

• Presidency & the Political Environment by John H. Kessel
• The White House World: Start Up, Organization, and The Pressures of Work Life by Martha J. Kumar
• Meeting the Freight Train Head On: Planning for the Transition to Power by Martha J. Kumar, George C. Edwards, III, James Pfiffner, & Terry Sullivan

Presidential Transition Discussions
A Partnership with the Council on Excellence in Government

• Martha Kumar on the Importance of Transitions.

A Special Symposium of the Public Administration Review (reprinted here by permission PAR)

• Getting Ready for Day One by Martha J. Kumar
• For an Effective 2008 Transition by Clay Johnson III
• Preparing to Be President on Day One by Harrison Wellford

Evaluating Past Transitions

• Lessons from Past Transitions by John P. Burke
• Tales of Transitions 1980 and 1988 by John P. Burke
• Evaluating Transition 2001 by Terry Sullivan

A new series for the 2009 transition, these briefing papers concentrate on issues and resources identified in discussions with past White House staff, including those attending the WHTP and James Baker Institute's meeting of the former White House Chiefs of Staff.

New Institutional Data

• Presidential Work During the First 100 Days
  by Terry Sullivan
• The President on the Road
  by Brendan Doherty
• The Cost of the White House
  by Bradley Patterson from his new book from Brookings
  (released here by permission of Brookings Press)
• Presidential Power in National Security: A Guide to the President-Elect
  by Louis Fisher
• Presidential Communications Lessons Learned by Martha Kumar
• Presidential Interchanges with Press by Martha Kumar

Appointments Database and Analysis

• The 2008 Plum Book has arrived. WHTP makes it available by download (pdf): download here.
• The Details of Inquiry — Fixing the Presidential Appointments Process by Terry Sullivan Revised!
• The Real Invisible Hand: Presidential Appointees in the Administration of George W. Bush by G. Calvin MacKenzie

Special Report: The View from the Nerve Center

In its first book in the special studies series, WHTP and its partner The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University focus on the specific operational problems faced by the White House Chief of Staff. The book, Nerve Center: Lessons on Governing from the White House Chiefs of Staff is published by the Texas A&M University Press.

Nerve Center compiles the collective judgments of 12 of the 14 living former White House Chiefs of Staff who convened to discuss the challenges that present every White House trying to move the nation's agenda forward. "Some of us have tried to oust others of us from office," noted James A. Baker III in his remarks opening the conference, "but on many issues about how to do the nation's business, we are all agreed there is no partisan answer. Every new administration deserves a chance to realize the electorate's will without stumbling through the simplest mistakes. We've all been there and regardless of who steps into this job on the twentieth of January, we want the best for them."

Those involved in the conference and covered in the book include:

• Former Congressman, Sec. of Defense, and Vice-President Richard Cheney
• Former Sec. of Treasury and State James A. Baker III
• Former Senate Majority Leader and Ambassador Howard Baker, Jr.
• Former Congressman and Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
• Former Congressman Leon Panetta

• Former Governor John Sununu
• Erskine Bowles
• John Podesta
• Jack Watson
• Thomas "Mack" McClarty
• Former Sec. of Transportation 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. Two scholarly articles summing up the operational dilemmas the Chiefs face and evaluating the 2001 transition round out this useful resource from the WHTP.

• Midyear Review
• Appointments Summary, Day 160
• WHTP Publishes Appointments Reform Agenda

WHTP Plans Six Month Reviews

In late July, on the conclusion of the first 180 days, the White House Transition Project will publish a series of essays from its Institutional Memory program. These essays from WHTP authors will assess the first six months experience with the Obama administration.

Appointments Summary for Day 160:
Administration Passes Halfway; Senate Backlog Builds

General Summary on Pace

As of day 160, the Obama administration has secured 185 confirmed appointments. This figure represents a significant slowing of the confirmation appointments process. The comparisons between executive processing and Senate consideration, found in WHTP's "workflow" statistics, have now reversed for the third week in a row. Workflow gives a preview based on nominations the administration has yet to forward to the Senate and nominations yet to receive a Senate decision. Currently, the average time in White House vetting (at 53 days) has surpassed the Senate vetting delay (at 37 days). In the past ten days, the White House vetting process has slowed by nearly 25% while the Senate has actually improved on its vetting by almost three days. On completed nominations, however, the administration still takes an average half as long to get nominations to the Senate as the Senate takes to make a decision, 17 days versus 34, respectively.

Summary Of All PAS Positions in Executive Branch
(As of 6/28/09 - Day 160)

Summary for PAS Appointments to Cabinet Departments

Senate Holds Slow Confirmations by Five Weeks

WHTP tracks the impact of Senate holds on the president's nominations. The practice of respecting Senate holds lengthens the nomination process. While Senators have voted for reforms to make holds more transparent, the Senate routinely fails to follow its own procedures making holds hard to document. Currently, WHTP has identified holds resulting in an additional 39 days to clear the Senate, extending the average processing times from 53 days to 89 days.

Gender Differences Remains

Throughout the new administration, female nominations have continued to lag behind their male counterparts in every category WHTP tracks. Recent nominations and confirmations have focused on the EX III and EX IV categories among those PAS nominations WHTP tracks. While EX I and EX II nominations (for secretaries, deputy secretaries, and similar ranks outside the cabinet) have occupied the White House and Senate, in these ranks, women nominees account for about 1 in 6 nominations. Among EX III/IV positions, on the other hand, women make up 1 in 3. Combined with the fact that the Senate has kept EX III/IV nominations on the back burner while completing the higher ranked positions amplified the effect of this gender skew to the lower policy-making positions.

Total overall time from White House announcement to final Senate action remains both statistically different and, at around 10 days, a practical difference.

Notes on Sources

The research relies on White House releases and information found in the Senate and Senate committee calendars for Presidential Appointees requiring Senate confirmation(designated "PAS" in OPM lists). It tracks all appointments from the point of an administration announcement through to a Senate decision. Similar resources inform comparisons with the George W. Bush administration.

WHTP Appointments Process Reform Agenda

One of WHTP's primary missions has focused on understanding the details of the presidential appointments process. "There is so much of that process that is simply myth," said Terry Sullivan, who directs the Institutional Anatomy Series. "Until WHTP got into it, no one really understood the breadth or depth of the inquiry that nominees face and which demoralizes them and threatens the system."

WHTP has published recommendations on reforming the appointments process: The Details of Inquiry. The report covers three problems with appointments: inexperience, lengthening process, and needlessly adversarial and tedious inquiry. It makes 8 recommendations which would relieve nominees of 31% of their reporting burdens. Access this and other reports in the Institutional Anatomy Series on this site by clicking here.