________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
not going to run a school and run everybody through it for 14 days at a time because those
things don't come out.
Q:
Of course, our staff action handbook, which was a product of the last couple of years, is
trying to address some of these very issues.
A:
Yes, that's helped.
Q:
I'm sure it's helped, and I think there's been a great improvement.
A:
Yes.
Q:
You're saying we have a ways to go yet.
A:
Yes, I think there has been improvement, even this year, but we still have a ways to go.
Q:
Now, a frequent complaint we might hear is that everything has to go to counsel, and that this
becomes a real bottleneck. Do you have any comment on that?
A:
Well, in today's world--
Q:
Today's world?
A:
At the high level we deal with in civil works, in military programs, in real estate, in resource
management, I mean, counsel's pretty important. And, in fact, our counsel is more than just a
lawyers' shop. They provide counsel too.
You get a guy like Les Edelman, who's served on the committees of Congress, and with his
great sense of Washington you get more than your money's worth. You're not just getting a
legal check for dotting i's and crossing t's.
Q:
Yes.
A:
You're getting counsel. So, it's pretty hard to argue. Every individual item can be looked at
on its own merit. Does this one need to go to counsel or not? It's pretty hard to argue that the
sense of important kinds of things, that our counsel shouldn't have access--be able to be
monitoring and have an opportunity to view an issue and say, "Chief, that's no problem with
us," or "This seems to be not thought out," or "Somebody forgot that in 1884 somebody did
this to that," and that sort of thing.
Q:
There were three specific areas that I wanted to look at a little more closely, and one of those
is the information management area. The CEAP [Corps of Engineers Automation Plan]
seems to me to be one of the major areas that's occupied you in the last year. That was
something that had started before, I believe before you came into the position. You were
referring to the fact that General Withers had worked in the information management area a
lot. You've already alluded to it in terms of dealing with it as a headquarters thing, but it
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