Congratulations, your candidate won the election for United States president! So…now what?
The presidential transition marks the pivotal step from campaigning to governing. The incoming administration has a very short amount of time (November-January) to stand up a new government and get going on their new agenda. While the bureaucracy keeps churning in many areas of the federal branch, the president-elect is in charge of essentially starting a multi-billion-dollar company from the ground up in just a few short months. Given the sheer size and complexity of the federal government, transition planning is a daunting task, which is why this process starts before a given candidate has even won the election and continues well after the new executive’s inauguration in January.
There are three phases to a presidential transition:
Typically, candidates name a “transition chair” and begin the transition process during the spring before the election. The Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010 allows for office space, IT, etc. via the General Services Administration (GSA) for the official presidential transition teams. Typically, at this point, the team is extremely bare-bones and has the primary goals of organizing leadership and staff for the various internal components of the transition and developing an overall plan to guide the entire transition process.
There are about two months between the election in early November and the inauguration in late January. These short few weeks are when the bulk of transition activity happens. Typically, this is when campaign staff becomes fully integrated into the transition process. In other words, the campaign staff’s duties are no longer focused on winning support for the candidate. Instead, they are focused on supporting the transition team. The priorities of this phase of transition are the real “meat and potatoes” of the transition operation, including: staffing the White House and agencies; deploying agency review teams to visit agencies; building out the president-elect’s policy and management agendas; and scheduling and identifying the key talent necessary to execute the new president’s priorities.
The transition doesn’t end when the president is sworn in, either, as the various placements throughout the executive branch often take weeks or months to finalize (or get approved by the Senate). Furthermore, the administration will have to officially close down the transition operation while making sure to preserve important records for historical value and to aid future transition teams. After the inauguration, the responsibilities of the transition operation are offloaded primarily to the Office of Presidential Personnel in the White House.
