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Federal News Radio
Civil service
reform should be high on the next president’s to-do list
By Jeff Neal
April 21, 2016
Civil service reform is badly needed, but for a long time I believed
the political situation in Washington made it too risky to attempt. The
polarization that infects our political system also infects views of
the civil service. To hear some people tell it, civil servants are
either saints who can do no wrong, or they are leeches sucking the
blood out of America. Federal workers are either underpaid, or they are
paid 50, 60 or 70 percent more than their counterparts in the private
sector.
That kind of disagreement over what ought to be factual makes talking
about civil service reform risky. Remember what happened when
politicians decided they would come up with a way to force themselves
to do their jobs and pass a budget? They created sequestration. It was
supposed to be an outcome that was so horrible that neither party would
allow it to happen.
After all, who would think that just mindlessly cutting the budgets of
virtually every agency in government would work? How would defense
hawks allow DoD to get whacked? How would proponents of social programs
allow them to get whacked? But whacked they were.
Even with a gun of their own creation aimed squarely at their heads, we
did not get a budget passed this year. Or last.
So why on earth would I think that we should start looking at civil
service reform in that environment? Why not just ask the Office of
Personnel Management to find every flexibility it can within the
current laws and make do with that until we get to a more normal
political process?
Because that is not happening. We have seen some tweaking of rules and
processes, but OPM has not done a comprehensive look at their own
regulations to try to find every possible way to make the civil service
better within today’s laws.
There is a lot of room within existing laws to make things better. For
example, we do not need 400+ job series. Having that many makes keeping
classification standards up to date more difficult and makes it much
harder for job seekers from outside government. OPM has the authority
to reduce the number to something manageable (I’d suggest no more than
100). There are many other examples of simplification and streamlining
that can be done without congressional action. The benefits could be
significant and achieved quickly.
Even if OPM did that, some of the biggest problems the government faces
with its people programs are not fixable by regulation or process
changes. They need a new legal underpinning to make big changes happen.
With every passing day, the federal government moves closer to a talent
crisis. The government workforce is aging and turning over at
increasing rates, and high quality replacements are not coming fast
enough. The time to fill jobs is on most leaders’ lists of problems
that need to be fixed. So is the quality of applicants, the abysmal
process for advertising jobs, the poor job most agencies do at
screening applicants, the cumbersome and hard to understand job
classification system, and last, but certainly not least, a pay system
that offers few tools when competing for in-demand talent.
There are real costs to not having the right talent in place. For
example, in January 2015, the Government Accountability Office said “…a
decline in telecommunication expertise across multiple agencies
compounded the General Services Administration’s (GSA) challenges in
transitioning those agencies to a new network of telecommunications
services, contributing to delays and cost overruns of 44 percent.” Not
having the right people can interfere with vital operations of
government. Whether you are a proponent of more or less government, it
is safe to say most people would prefer that the Department of Defense
be able to do its job. Defense is finding more and more problems with
recruiting and retaining talent for civilian jobs. Those jobs are an
essential part of our war fighting capability. Without them, ships,
boats, aircraft and tanks do not get rebuilt. Our troops do not get the
spare parts they need, nor do they get the food, fuel, medical
supplies, uniforms, or anything else they need.
It is not limited to those examples. Do we want the Social Security
Administration to be able to pay benefits? Do we want NASA to explore
space? Do we want the Department of Energy to ensure the integrity and
safety of our nuclear weapons, advance nuclear nonproliferation and
promote international nuclear safety? Do we want the Weather Service to
give us weather information? There are hundreds of other programs that
are vital to our national security, the free flow of commerce, and the
general operation of our society. Without the right talent they do not
work.
So I believe civil service reform has moved from “nice to have” to a
national imperative. We can argue about what that reform should look
like, but it is getting harder and harder to argue that it does not
have to happen. The next president should make civil service reform a
priority and begin the process (in cooperation with the House and the
Senate, unions, and other appropriate parties) of crafting a set of
civil service reforms that build a 21st century civil service.
While that is happening (it may take a couple of years) the new
president should order a comprehensive interagency review of existing
OPM regulations to identify every reasonable way of enacting reform
through executive action. In order to ensure that legal questions are
resolved quickly and with an expansive view of what is possible, the
Department of Justice should provide legal advice to the reviewers. The
objective should be identifying the most needed and impactful
regulatory changes and drafting interim regulations within 120 days of
the inauguration.
If we do not address the weaknesses of the current civil service
system, the kind of problems we have today are only the beginning.
Agencies will struggle to recruit, develop and retain talent, costs
will be higher than they need to be, and vital programs that our nation
depends upon will be put at risk every day. Those risks are real,
growing and pose a significant danger – so much so that, despite the
political mess, we have to act.
Read this and other articles at Federal News Radio
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