Lawmakers to team up on hiring legislation

The House Government Reform Committee is taking aim at the federal government's hiring practices with new legislation. Union officials, however, are watching to ensure that proposed changes do not contribute to a system also notorious for hiring the well connected.

Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., and Federal Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Jon Porter, R-Nev., are teaming up to write legislation.

"The inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in the federal hiring process are long-documented. These problems lead to substantial hiring delays, forcing many qualified candidates to look elsewhere for employment and discouraging many others from even applying for the civil service," Davis' spokesman said.

An official from the American Federation of Government Employees said that while the union is not opposed to change, it is concerned that a shakeup of the process could include provisions making it more difficult for federal employees to take on new positions.

"The kind of changes that sometimes get proposed are changes that essentially block off promotion opportunities for the existing workforce," said Jacque Simon, public policy director for AFGE. She said the union also was worried that sweeping revisions could undermine the merit-based hiring system.

"There should be a real search to make sure that people hired into the job are the best qualified, not the best connected," Simon said.

Porter's subcommittee held two hearings on this issue last year, and members also are looking for administrative avenues to streamline the process, said a spokesman for the panel.

While the Office of Personnel Management is considering steps to cut the 102-day average hiring timeline for federal employees by more than half, a spokesman for the agency said the process needs to be shortened further. He also said many agencies are not taking advantage of personnel flexibilities included in the 2002 Homeland Security law. OPM recently set up a Web site to show government managers how to use those tools.

Under the 2002 law, managers are sometimes allowed to sidestep the requirement to identify three top contenders for each position. In certain cases, the law gives managers direct hiring authority.

The House Government Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees will continue monitoring the Web site's effectiveness. Porter's subcommittee also is receiving complaints about the complexity of OPM's recruitment Web site. Although the site has improved since Monster.com assumed management of it, many of the job announcements still are written in bureaucratic jargon, the spokesman said.