What If Our Heroes Worked for… the Government?
In the world of fiction, unlikely heroes can come from almost anywhere. In novels you can find brilliant crime-solving jockeys (anything by Dick Francis) or Nazi-fighting librarians (The Librarian Spy). At my local library, there is a series of 26 books I can read or listen to that feature a murder-solving chef. We have TV shows about crusading mystery novelists (Murder She Wrote), forensic anthropologists (Bones) and meddling kids(Scooby Doo). You can watch movies about heroic historians (National Treasure) and archaeologists (Indiana Jones).
The clear message: anyone can be a hero. Well, almost anyone. When was the last time you saw a series featuring a government worker as a central character?
In social media it’s even worse: government workers aren’t just not heroes; they’re villains. A recent article by William Davies in the London Review of Books took a close look at what messages new subscribers to TikTok in Britain were getting in their feeds if they expressed an interest in politics or government. The finding? TikTok delivered “an algorithmically-filtered vision of society that stokes resentments.” Among other things, new subscribers’ curated “For You” feeds on TikTok sent the message that “government raises taxes on the pretence that it will look after people, but instead ‘wastes’ it through inefficiency or misappropriation.”
The combination of nobody telling stories about government doing good and social media algorithms serving up a steady feed of government doing bad makes it easier to sell the idea that government is rife with waste, fraud and abuse, that government workers are leeches, standing in the way of a new age of American greatness.
If only there were a counternarrative, somebody telling a different story.
Well…
Cynical about government? Try the Sammies.
This past Tuesday I drove up to Washington DC for the 24th edition of “The Sammies,” an annual event sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that exists to encourage and recognize excellence among government workers. What the Oscars are to film or the Grammies are to music, the Sammies (named after the organization’s founder) are to federal government. It’s a black-tie affair, with well-produced videos telling the stories of inspiring federal employees solving big problems, making government work better, inventing the future. Judie Woodruff, the former PBS news anchor who was the emcee of the event, described Sammie winners as the “Timothy Chalamet’s and Zendaya’s of public service.” I’d dare anyone to go to the event and not be inspired by what these government workers are doing.
You can’t watch that ceremony and think it’s a good idea to cut the size of government using blanket buyouts or an algorithm.
Kyle Knipper with his mentor (left) and proud parents (right) after the ceremony.
One of this year’s winners was a guy named Kyle Knipper. He grew up on a farm, so he had a natural leaning toward wanting to help farmers. He found the right place to do that at the US Department of Agriculture, where he developed a system that could end up saving billions of gallons of water. Working in partnership with Gallo Vineyards, Knipper determined that he could use satellite technology to help vineyards determine exactly when their grapevines need exactly how much water. Gallo estimates the techniques can reduce water usage by 25% in water-starved California, and, since the strategies Knipper discovered were developed by the government, they’ll now be available to all other vineyards as well. Next up? Almonds. Estimates are that using remote sensing of “evapotranspiration” rates for almond trees could reduce annual water use by the equivalent of 120,000 Olympic-size swimming pools each year.
“There’s nothing more rewarding,” Knipper says, “Than seeing research we’ve spent years on developing become practical tools that growers embrace and use to optimize their resources and produce the food the world needs.”
Actually that’s a quote from a news release. Unlike in previous years, none of this year’s award winners who are still employed in the federal government were allowed by their agency heads to speak at the event. Their accomplishments were read. The winners stood. People applauded. The winners sat down.
It would have been cool to hear from Knipper about why he stayed in government when he could make more in the private sector, just as it would have been interesting to know more about award winner Johnnie Jenkins desire to stay at the USDA and devote his entire career protecting farmer’s cotton crops by eradicating the boll weevil and other pests. In a release, he described his research as a “real joy.” In the release, he called the US “the best country in the world. I don’t know anywhere else I could have done this.”
It was inspiring to hear at the ceremony about the work of Chad Kahler, Michael Staudenmaier Jr. and Mark Loeffelbein, the team at the National Weather Service who invented a new program to predict serious heat events up to seven days in advance, giving citizens and cities more time to prepare. Would the private sector really swoop in to do that kind of work if those guys lose their jobs? And would the private sector be able to do what Alexander Maranghides, a fire protection engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has for the past 25 years, developing strategies to decrease bad outcomes when wildfires collide with urban homes?
The US currently imports 80% of its rare earth minerals. The work of Mary Anne Alvin at the Department of Energy could help discover those minerals among coal waste.
I would have liked to hear from Mary Anne Alvin at the Department of Energy about overcoming the “pushback” on her efforts to extract rare earth minerals (the kind that supposedly will fuel our technology future) from coal ash – and how she overcame the opposition.
We’ve heard for the past six months (and the past 60 years) about government’s apparent indifference to “waste fraud and abuse,” but until Tuesday night I hadn’t heard about the work of Renata Miskell and Linda Chero, recovering $7 billion in 2024 in fraudulent government claims, or the work of Kristofer Pasquale, Heather McCormick and Alex Meusberger at the US Small Business Administration, who helped recover $1.2 billion in fraudulent COVID-19 relief claims.
In all 28 people were recognized for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America medal this year (from among 350 nominees). Two hundred people – family, friends, colleagues and a few others -- shared the moment. A local TV station will broadcast the event in a month or so and you’ll be able to watch the event online if you go to the Partnership for Public Service website.
The Sammie celebrate public service. But they are swimming upstream against a sea of electrons sending a different message.
But it’s hard for something like the Sammies to go viral. I checked my TikTok “For You” feed the next morning. Along with my dependable supply of videos of people jumping off things, magic tricks and sports highlights (the things they know I get excited about), there were three videos they apparently wanted me to get excited about: a video criticizing the government for its handling of the Iran crisis, another one purporting to show LA protestors firing on National Guard jets (this was later discovered to be taken from a military simulation game called Arma 3) and another video of a person complaining about “the idiots at DMV.”
Also in my feed: a rave review of a new movie available for streaming, a sequel. The hero is a humble accountant, and I think the idea is that he uses his accounting skills to bring down the mob. After my time at the Sammies, I immediately started thinking about the role that the Department of the Treasury or the Department of Justice would play in any real-life version of that story. But that won’t be in the movie. It would just mess up the narrative.
Notes:
Davies article on social media algorithms bias toward cynicism: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n11/william-davies/tv-meets-fruit-machine
Profiles of this year’s honorees at “The Sammies”: https://servicetoamericamedals.org/honorees/?utm_campaign=Public%20Service%20Weekly&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=367405031&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-98MDL_53hrcICvc-gY4f2aBMx-IkFbmBvN6gc1f5AuW_MHiowqNEBKMghUf9kLOxlghuHspR44dxczcIXX7pcP2mRwcg
Fake videos of LA riots: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-videos-conspiracies-falsehoods-los-angeles-protests/
Video of the 2024 Sammies: https://servicetoamericamedals.org/video/highlights-from-the-2024-service-to-america-medals-gala/