Now that you’re a pro at navigating OMB’s website, select the link to the Historical Tables. Here you will notice many different tables with different names. Each presentation has a slightly different purpose but they’re no doubt connected. For the following exercises, you will be working with Table 16.1. This table is called “Total Executive Branch Civilian Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Employees 1981-2017.”

Important: Full-time equivalent (FTE) “is the basic measure of the levels of employment used in the budget. It is the total number of hours worked divided by the number of compensable hours applicable to each fiscal year” (OMB, Circular A-11).

1. Open up the FTE file. You should note that there are several executive branch agencies that run across the top. Down the left-hand side of the page you should see the years stretching from 1981 forward. You will notice that these executive branch agencies are further divided by Department of Defense vs. Civilian. Check that the totals in column B are equal to the total in columns C and D. As with BA, the FTE figures are reported in thousands. Remember, as a public administrator, you’ll have to become accustomed to connecting the interrelationships between numbers! For example, in budget speak, column B would be said to be a “rollup” of columns C and D. Pick three different civilian agencies and include the Department of Defense as one of the three. Then, make a basic table that reports FTE for the years 2005 to 2016. Include the percentage increase or decrease in FTE from year to year. It may be helpful to include the Total Executive Branch FTE as a point of comparison. Do you notice any trends over these years?

2. Using the table that you created for part 1, describe any differences that you among the agencies’ increases or decreases in FTE. Can you think of any reasons why these changes may have occurred? Can you support your findings with information from current or past events? Feel free to research the Internet for relevant information.

3. Now let’s connect the FTE dots back to the Budget Authority (BA) that you explored in the data exercises for Chapter 1. For this exercise, you may wish to build off of the table that you created for question 1. However, this time you will need to add BA from the file under “Supplemental Materials” (recall the XLS file for Budget Authority under the Public Budget Database section).

Pick one of the executive branch agencies that you selected for the FTE exercise. Then, using the BA data, report the BA for one account (differentiated by column F) for each year from 2005 to 2016 so that it corresponds to the FTE. You may set your table up any way that you wish. Remember that some years do not report a dollar amount. Be sure to select an agency/account that has full reporting from 2005 to 2016!

Now that you have your data, pretend that you are a budget analyst for the agency that you selected and that you have been asked by you supervisor to make a very brief presentation for the newly Senate-confirmed administrator. The new administrator is completely unfamiliar with the FTE and BA over the last decade or so and you must brief him with your table and few sentences explaining how these numbers have fluctuated. Be sure to provide him with your “expert” opinion on why these changes occurred using the research that you conducted for question 2.