K-School May Sponsor Seminars for White House

Kennedy School of Government professors may soon launch a series of seminars on public management for members of the Reagan Administration. K-School officials confirmed this week. The program would be the first of its kind, the planners said.

White House officials have been negotiating details of the proposed seminar series with Jonathan Moore, director of the Institute of Politics, since a group of K-School affiliates conducted a two-day "pilot program" in Washington this January.

Moore declined this week to discuss the details of the talks, or whether the two sides are close to agreement.

Craig L. Fuller, the presidential aide responsible for the negotiations did not return telephone calls to his office. Both White House and K-School officials have said they do not want to affect the negotiations publicly by describing them.

January Meeting

Three K-School professors and three administrators met on January 15 and 16 with more than 25 sub-cabinet officials from almost every major Executive department of the Reagan Administration. During separate meetings, they discussed case studies illustrating "the context of public management, managing agency operations in a political context, and managing the political environment," according to a brief memo describing the seminar.

The seminars were run similarly to those held regularly by the K-School's four main executive training programs. Almost every case study discussed was taken directly from previously developed curricula, said Philip B. Heymann, professor of Law and a K-School lecturer who has participated in the planning of the White House program.

The case studies discussed in January included one using the "swine flu" crisis of the Ford Administration as an example of how government officials must simultaneously deal with substance, politics and implementation problems.

Another exercise examined the Environmental Protection Agency as an example of how to share management responsibilities and deal with conflicting interests. A third used the Bureau of Security and Consular Af-