Bantle Symposiums

Rethinking the Government-Business Relationship:We Need Each Other - Now More Than Ever

Thursday, March 31, 2016

YouTube buttonPanel discussion featuring

Anne Rung, Administrator, Office of Federal Procurement Policy

Rung was nominated in July 2014, as Administrator of OFPP at the Federal Office of Management and Budget. Rung was senior director of administration at Commerce, and was with the General Services Administration, where she was chief acquisition officer and associate administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy. Prior to her federal government service, she served as Deputy Secretary for Administration and Procurement for the Pennsylvania Department of General Services (DGS). As Deputy Secretary, she led four Commonwealth-wide operations supporting 77,000 employees, including the Commonwealth’s procurement program. She served for three years as DGS Chief of Staff prior to becoming Deputy Secretary.

Stan Soloway, Founder, Celero Strategies, LLC. 

Soloway recently stepped down from his 15-year tenure as president and CEO of the Professional Services Council. He served as the deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition reform during the second half of the Clinton administration. Under his leadership, PSC’s membership has grown more than 300 percent and the association has completed three acquisitions, including, most recently, the acquisition of the TechAmerica Foundation. His new company, Celero Strategies, will bring insight borne of experience in both government and industry, as a thought-leader and driver of change. Widely regarded as one of the most significant thought leaders on the government-industry nexus and the federal marketplace, Soloway has regularly testified before Congress, is a sought after speaker for industry and government organizations and has been a contributing author for more than a half-dozen books. 

Lloyd Blanchard, Director, Finance and Monitoring Services, IEM

Dr. Blanchard is currently at IEM, a global security consulting firm. He is a former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Program Associate Director who oversaw $150 billion of US federal budget, including budgets for the Treasury Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Justice, and Commerce, among others. He helped implement President George W. Bush’s President’s Management Agenda, and oversaw FEMA’s budget realignment in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Other positions Blanchard held include Deputy Chief Financial Officer for Policy at NASA, Senior VP and COO at Medgar Evers College of the The City Univeristy of New York, Vice Provost for Fiscal Management at LSU, and even a member of faculty here at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.


Larry White, Professor of Economics, George Mason University

Can the Banking System Regulate Itself? Is Government Regulation an Improvement over Laissez Faire?

March 20, 2015

Historically, banking systems have not operated purely on the basis of profit-and-loss market discipline. Where the role of market discipline was politically circumscribed, as in the United States, cooperative self-help and self-regulatory institutions evolved, particularly clearinghouse associations.  Government regulation of banks in the United States has a complex history. Before the New Deal, our banking system was weakened with geographic and other restrictions, and since then we have again weakened our banking system with privileges like (systematically underpriced) deposit guarantees and the promise of “too big to fail” rescues.  Much as we use a baseline model of free trade to understand the impact of tariffs and trade restrictions, I propose that we should begin with a baseline model of free banking to understand the impact of bank regulation.  Just as many tariffs and trade barriers can be understood as resulting from fiscal concerns combined with “rent-seeking,” so too can many contemporary banking regulations. Apparent rent-seeking actions at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the 2007-09 financial crisis are particularly troubling. The crisis gives us a window into the dangers of allowing discretionary rule by authorities to trump the principle of the rule of law.


Dustin Brown, Deputy Assistant Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, and MPA ALUM  

March 3, 2015

Dustin Brown is the Deputy Assistant Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget. He is a member of the Senior Executive Service and helps lead the Office of Performance and Personnel Management which is responsible for government-wide efforts to improve agency and cross-agency mission performance, and works with the Office of Personnel Management to advance Federal human capital issues.  He also helps lead the Administration’s efforts to modernize the inter-agency infrastructure permitting process and reform the suitability and security clearance process.

Dustin leads the inter-agency Performance Improvement Council, which coordinates the government’s performance management policies and implementation.  In 2010, he worked with Congress to design the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act. 

Dustin joined OMB’s Housing Branch in August, 2001, has worked in OMB’s International Affairs Division, and as the OMB Director’s Special Assistant for Policy.  He has a Master’s in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and has a bachelor’s degree from Manchester College in Indiana. Dustin also received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Quito, Ecuador.  He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.


Prajapati Trivedi, Former Secretary to the Government of India

Government Performance Management: International Best Practice and Indian Experience

February 3, 2015

Until August 2014, Dr. Prajapati Trivedi was Secretary to the Government of India with the responsibility for Performance Management in Government of India. Based in the Cabinet Secretariat, he reviewed and reported on the performance of all government departments to the Cabinet Secretary and Prime Minister. He designed and implemented the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System for Government of India that covers 80 departments and 800 responsibility centers under them. Under his guidance 18 States of the Indian Union are at various stages of adopting PMES.

During 2009-2014, Dr. Trivedi was involved with a large number of administrative reforms and helped pioneer implementation of many of them. Some of his other major contributions are: implementation of Citizens’/ Clients’ Charter and Grievance Redress Mechanism in government departments, ISO 9001 certification of government departments; E-office implementation; and implementation of Corruption Mitigation Action Plans. He also served as Chairman of the National Authority for Chemical Weapons Convention, representing India in the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, The Netherlands. Today, India’s National Authority is considered to be an example of best practice globally.

Dr. Trivedi has worked in more than 25 countries of the World and published four major books on various aspects of public sector management and privatization.