For nearly 250 years, the peaceful transfer of power has been a hallmark of American democracy and central to the continuity of government. The United States’ ability to address its most critical challenges rely on this tradition to continue.
Yet executing a successful presidential transition, or the start of a second term, requires serious planning and requires extensive knowledge of federal personnel, policy and budgeting issues. Handled poorly, both first- and second-term presidents can struggle to implement campaign promises and respond to serious national security and domestic challenges.
Since 2008, the Partnership has been the nation’s leading nonpartisan organization that works with federal agency leaders, presidential candidate transition teams, outgoing presidents and those seeking a second term to ensure our next president is fully prepared to govern.
Center for Presidential Transition®
The Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition® is the nation’s premier nonpartisan source of expertise designed to help presidential candidates, their teams and incumbent administrations lay the groundwork for a first or second term.
The Center provides critical assistance on how to organize and execute a transition, helps agencies prepare for new political leadership, offers guidance to political appointees on the unique aspects of government leadership, promotes legislative reform and shapes the national conversation on transition issues.
“Any administration invested in the smooth transfer of power or effective second-term planning should tap the Partnership’s deep knowledge in these areas.”
—Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati, deputy administrator, General Services Administration, 2017-2021
Ready to Govern®
Ready to Govern® is a series of 90-minute onboarding sessions designed to help incoming political appointees and federal leaders navigate the government and succeed in their new roles.
Appointees can participate in up to 11 modules that feature content developed from hundreds of conversations with federal leaders. These sessions are led by bipartisan faculty composed of current or former political appointees and career executives.
Our Ready to Serve resources help aspiring political appointees navigate the federal appointments process. We help prospective appointees learn about possible roles, background checks, ethics requirements and, for the most senior-level positions, the Senate confirmation process.
Agency personnel and dynamics typically change before and after a presidential election. Career civil servants must work to support the continuity of government, and some senior career executives will be called on to serve temporarily in key positions previously held by political appointees to ensure that agency priorities are met.
Ready to Act is a 90-minute seminar to help senior career executives who serve as acting officials during a transition of leadership or administration prepare for their temporary new roles.
Presidents are required to fill roughly 4,000 politically appointed government positions, including more than 1,300 that require Senate confirmation. Despite the importance of these jobs, there is no up-to-date source of information about who holds these positions, which positions are vacant or the status of Senate confirmations.
The Political Appointee tracker, run by the Partnership and The Washington Post, addresses this problem, shedding light on our government’s struggle—regardless of which party controls Congress and the White House—to fill key Senate-confirmed positions.
Our “Transition Lab” podcast offers listeners an in-depth look at presidential transitions, exploring how transfers of power occur, current and past transition cycles, and the relationship between the handoff of presidential power and our democracy.
The Center for Presidential Transition® Advisory Board is composed of a bipartisan group of transition experts who have worked for five different administrations or presidential candidates. The board helps to develop, shape and refine our plans to enable the smooth transfer of power or start of a second term.
The Center for Presidential Transition’s comprehensive guide on the activities required during the transition. This guide for the 2020 presidential election cycle was produced in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group.
Federal agencies face a cascading series of challenges before and after a presidential election and into the early months of a new administration. Throughout the transition, the Partnership for Public Service brought together agency transition leaders from nearly 40 agencies to help improve this process.
Introduction In passing the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, Congress explained: “Any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.”
Almost half of Americans are unsure a 2024 transition would be peaceful
Presidential transitions can only be effective if the public trusts that the people involved will honor the results of democratic elections and value the need for new administrations to prepare to govern even before taking office.
As President Joe Biden’s administration enters its third year, conventional wisdom suggests there will be a number of key changes to the leadership teams running federal agencies. Some senior officials will get promoted while others will leave. Some will just be starting their jobs after finally getting through the lengthy Senate confirmation process. In the past six months, about 230 people have been confirmed by the Senate to begin work in key leadership roles.
Nominees in a streamlined confirmation process are taking almost 50% longer to confirm than all other nominees
The Senate created the privileged nomination process more than a decade ago, a procedure designed to speed up the confirmation of nominees for roughly 280 positions that are typically noncontroversial. Despite this well-intentioned effort, nominees on the privileged calendar are worse off today than they were before the reform was adopted.
Data from the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition reveals chronic delays at nearly every step of the presidential nomination and congressional confirmation process—even for the national security positions that all stakeholders agree are essential to minimize threats during the first months of a new administration.
This report by the Partnership and Boston Consulting Group looks back at the 2020-21 presidential transition and offers key recommendations to improve future transfers of power. Read our findings and watch our special report release event to learn more.
The Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition has been tracking Senate-confirmed presidential appointments since late 2016. This year, we tracked and analyzed how President Joe Biden’s first year in office compares with the previous three presidents, examining his nominations and confirmations from Jan. 20, 2021, to Dec. 31, 2021.
Using appointments data from the Political Appointee Tracker compiled by the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post along with expert analysis, this report highlights key trends in filling Senate-confirmed positions and in the nomination and confirmation process.
Despite unprecedented challenges, President Biden oversaw one of the most well-planned presidential transitions in U.S. history. The Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition supported this process behind the scenes, providing key insights to the Biden team as it prepared to potentially take office and working with stakeholders across government to facilitate an effective transfer of power.
