President Obama came to office promising to change how Washington works. In his State of the Union address, he acknowledged that he had failed to make that happen.

But he has started down a path to success in changing how the executive branch works. That is the consensus view of current and former government executives, academicians, and private- and nonprofit-sector experts and analysts who prepared an assessment of the first year of the Obama management agenda. (See The Public Manager, Winter 2009-2010).

What more needs to be done? The federal government can take five steps to reshape and transform the government, public services and policies that limit our global competitive posture.

1. Create a different culture by taking advantage of the need for new hires.

The next four years will bring an increase in retirements, which will offer a unique opportunity for government to recruit individuals with the desired set of skills and behaviors. Historically, the results of orientation and training of new hires have been mixed. New employees often receive little or no preparation for the government workplace.

This can change. Two-week orientation sessions can be designed to explore what it means to be a "resilient and flexible employee." The government needs to provide skills, training and a cultural orientation in addition to the traditional technical training many employees receive. The Defense Department sets the precedent: Training of our career military takes months or years, compared with training for government civilians, which is often measured in hours or days.

2. Give all employees new collaborative technologies.

We know that millennials will furnish the majority of new hires to government. We also know that these young people have grown up using computers and collaborative technologies. The challenge for government will be learning how to apply these tools — social networking, wikis, blogs and virtual worlds — to make government more connected.

The access to information will change the way government operates and will require consideration of new security and privacy issues and re-engineered processes.

3. Develop new relationships between the government and its contract workforce.

A major challenge for the new administration will be to forge a partnership between employees and contractors. To do so, officials will have to transform a relationship that is adversarial rather than collegial. The number of federal employees may increase in the coming years, but the government is likely to continue to use contractors, and the trend toward a "blended workforce" will remain. We need to build and train our contract officers and program managers, discussing anew what constitutes "inherently governmental."

4. Enhance collaboration between the federal government and state and local governments, as well as with the nonprofit and private sectors.

The federal government alone cannot effectively respond to all the challenges now facing the nation. Citizens have more interaction with their local and state governments than they do with the federal government, which argues for a local-state-federal approach rather than the other way around. The administration must develop new ways to improve intergovernmental collaboration to meet these challenges. This concept also applies to the federal government's work with the nonprofit and private sectors.

5. Become more citizen-centric.

Citizens want government to work effectively, seamlessly and openly. They don't care what happens in the "back office" but are concerned about how quickly their applications are processed, their claims are adjudicated and their questions answered. A transformed government would focus on seamless and transparent interactions between government and citizens. And it would concentrate as much — or more — on responsible execution and operational excellence as on the initiation of new policies or programs.

Alan P. Balutis is distinguished fellow and director of the Cisco Business Solutions Group. His e-mail is abalutis@cisco.com. Mark A. Abramson is president of Leadership Inc. His e-mail is mark.abramson@thoughtleadershipinc.com.