Google Ad #1 - desktop - 728x90

Google Ad #3 - desktop - 728x90

Google Ad #1 - mobile - 300x200

Google Ad #3 - mobile - 300x200

ATD_Half_Page

Googel Ad #1 - Side Bar - Content pages

ATD Footer Logo

Carolyn W. Colvin is acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), and brings more than 30 years of senior executive leadership experience to the agency. Under her leadership, the agency strives to provide excellent customer service in today’s tight fiscal climate while positioning itself to deliver services that meet the changing needs of the public. Previously, Carolyn was the deputy commissioner for the SSA, and has led numerous health and human service organizations at the state and municipal levels of government. She received an honorary doctorate and undergraduate and graduate degrees in business administration from Morgan State University.

Carolyn Colvin

What I Learned at the 2015 Government Workforce Conference

The Public Manager, ATD’s premier publication for federal managers and professionals wrapped up its third successful Government Workforce: Learning Innovations conference in Washington, D.C., last week. Keynoted by three agency directors—Carolyn Colvin, Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration; John Koskinen, IRS Commissioner; and Beth Cobert, Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management—the event attracted nearly 300 federal employees, 25 private-sector sponsors, and 45 panelists representing more than 50 different federal agencies or government working groups. “We’re very proud of this year’s event,” said Ron Sanders, Booz Allen vice president and board chair of The Public Manager. “There was so much enthusiasm on display. It was a real testament to the passion and commitment that government workers bring to their jobs every day.” Government managers and professionals are facing unprecedented challenges, said Sanders, adding that cultivating their knowledge, skills, and capabilities is essential in an environment where engagement levels can be notoriously difficult to quantify. What’s more, building a fully engaged, innovative, and productive workforce in the midst of austere budgets and ever-increasing workload can seem like nothing short of an impossibility for many agencies. Yet every day, dedicated government managers and professionals and their staff come to work, sit down, and do just that, said Sanders. The 2015 Government Workforce: Learning Innovations event put the spotlight on those leaders, with 16 concurrent sessions that examined state-of-the-art human capital and learning practices in the public and private sectors, and covered everything from using workforce data analytics to deliver on agency missions to managing volatility and change to get results. Meanwhile, the release of the new, digital format of The Public Manager magazine was timed to coincide with the event, featuring a cover interview with the conference’s keynote, Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin. “This community of dedicated managers and professionals from federal, state, and local agencies is working to address the public sector’s talent needs,” said Sanders, “and we want this conference and the newly released digital TPM magazine to become two of the essential tools in their toolkits as they tackle government’s many challenges.” (Check out Ron's video detailing the relaunch of the all new The Public Manager.) You can subscribe to The Public Manager magazine today! Click here****, and then click on the September cover image to access the free September issue.

ATD's Government Workforce: Learning Innovations Conference Highlights Best Practices

September 2015 - The Public Manager

The Social Security Administratino's talent development policies have made the agency one of the few in government that can boast high levels of employee engagement. Acting Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin explains how.

Making Significant, Lasting Differences

 As Social Security celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, this program remains the underpinning of the economic security of the United States. The demand for the services we provide has never been greater. As the population aged 65 and older continues to grow, the need for the programs we administer continues to increase. This trend coincides with the threat of our agency losing institutional knowledge, as 29 percent of our permanent workforce will be eligible to retire in the next five years. These challenges, coupled with constraints within the federal government, and uncertainty about future budgets, create opportunities and a mandate for Social Security to be more innovative, efficient, and effective than ever before. So how is the Social Security Administration rising to the challenge?Invest in People For one thing, we focus on the biggest asset we have: our exceptional employees. We support them through developmental opportunities, active engagement, and greater empowerment to make decisions.  Our employees take advantage of a wide range of professional developmental opportunities—both within and outside the agency. Regular training events, mentoring programs, and various detail assignments are a few of the ways we foster skills development and facilitate knowledge transfer. Meanwhile. we work to engage our employees by soliciting feedback and seeking their input and ideas on service and program innovation, which helps them realize they are an integral part of the agency’s operation, policy development, and decision making. Invest in Technology We also embrace new and emerging technologies. We understand the service expectations of the public are evolving, and we need to meet these changing expectations as the demand for our service grows in our data-driven culture. Consequently, we equip our employees with many decision support tools.  However, technology could never take the place of our employees who—through their compassion, experience, and dedication—reflect the “heart of the agency.” Instead, we strive to seamlessly blend the talents of our employees with the impressive capabilities of cutting-edge technology and automated tools designed to support Social Security programs, process data, and support our knowledgeable employees. Putting It All Together This innovative blend of investment, in both our employees and technology, has provided our agency with a customer-centric infrastructure and has made it possible to continue providing the outstanding customer service that has always been the cornerstone of Social Security’s mission. Indeed, now more than ever, it’s all about customer choice—allowing the public to decide how and where they conduct business with us—whether face-to-face in an office setting or by taking advantage of our user-friendly, secure online services.   Bottom line: Social Security is arguably the most successful domestic program in America’s history. Providing outstanding customer service to the public has been the foundation of our agency’s mission since its beginning—and will continue to be for the next 80 years and beyond.Carolyn Colvin will be the opening keynote speaker at the Government Workforce: Learning Innovations conference.

SSA Innovates to Meet Evolving Challenges

Employee engagement is one of the most talked about issues in government today. Amid falling engagement levels across government, and a presidential mandate to improve them, managers and agency leaders are taking a hard look at what works and what doesn’t when it comes to boosting morale. The Social Security Administration (SSA) may have a few answers to that question. The agency’s talent development policies have made it one of the few in government that can boast the highest levels of employee engagement—all while continuing to serve the nearly 59 million Americans who depend on more than $863 billion in Social Security benefits. At the helm of that effort, SSA Commissioner Carolyn Colvin has prioritized training and leadership development to keep engagement levels high despite increasing workloads, decreasing resources, and high attrition. In an exclusive interview with ATD’s The Public Manager, Colvin identified three major factors that have contributed to SSA’s success when it comes to cultivating a culture of engagement. First, training is a top priority for the agency, said Colvin, noting that giving an employee the tools they need to feel confident in their ability to do their job is one important first step towards creating engagement. “Even in this austere budget environment, SSA emphasizes training and development. It’s a natural tendency to cut training when you have budget challenges, but I think that’s the absolute last thing that should be cut,” said Colvin. Second, SSA closely monitors engagement surveys and follows up with departmental action plans designed to identify and address factors that could hurt engagement. “When we get the results of the federal engagement survey, we break it down into its various categories, and each agency component is required to develop a plan of action to raise those engagement scores,” she said. Colvin added that an important follow-up step SSA takes is to actively communicate what the agency is doing as often as possible. And the third way SSA addresses engagement is to take a close look at how, and where, its employees work. With employees in offices around the country, addressing talent needs by moving competent managers and other workers with specialized skills may not be a viable option. Instead, said Colvin, one way to promote growth and prevent attrition may be to make the workplace itself more flexible. “SSA is really implementing telework, and we’ve had a lot of good experience with that strategy. I hope it can give our workforce some flexibility,” Colvin said. Read the full interview with Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin in the debut digital issue of The Public Manager in September. Not a TPM subscriber? Sign up here to receive TPM, the only journal of its kind—an opportunity for public managers and executives to write and share ideas about critical public management issues.

Answering the Engagement Question: Three Basic Steps from SSA

December 2013 - TD Magazine

A review of Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis by Edward E. Gordon

Search results for 'Carolyn Colvin'

Categories

Refine By