OPM chief advises agencies to prepare well for personnel reforms

Agency officials need to put considerable time and deliberation into planning their implementation strategies for personnel reforms, according to Linda Springer, the director of the Office of Personnel Management.

"If an agency came to OPM and said, 'we're ready to do this 100 percent' on day one, I would be very skeptical that they haven't" taken the necessary preparatory steps, Springer told a crowd Tuesday during the Excellence in Government conference, co-sponsored by Government Executive.

OPM, along with the Office of Management and Budget, is floating a draft of legislation, titled the Working for America Act, which proposes to reform the personnel system for all federal workers. Personnel reforms are pending at the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

Part of that legislation would give OPM the power to determine if individual agencies are ready to proceed with personnel reforms. Each agency will have some flexibility within the framework of the legislation to form their own personnel regulations.

One of the major components of implementation strategy will be measuring employee performance.

"A lot of it comes back to training and getting good at it and practice," Springer said. She told the audience that while the government is "not very good" at measuring performance, it is "not doing anything that's new, that hasn't been done by millions and millions of people for decades," and that measuring performance competently is possible.

While Springer stressed the importance of agency preparation, she rejected the notion that domestic agencies should wait until Defense and DHS implement their new systems to begin comparable systems of their own, despite pressure from some members of Congress to do so.

"It's important to not have a split type of playing field," Springer said. "It's fair to say that many [members of Congress] think it makes all the sense in the world" to monitor the progress new personnel systems have made at DHS and the Pentagon before extending parts of those systems governmentwide.

However, Springer said she disagrees, and that the draft bill will be examined in congressional hearings in the near future.

Springer also told the audience that managers are "going to have more of a burden of responsibility" after personnel reforms kick in. She said when it comes to appraising subordinates, managers will be "asked in the new system to do the right thing" and not inflate performance evaluations.

The director also said she understands those who are skeptica of reform efforts.

"You're talking about our money," Springer said. "This is cause for great interest. I recognize there's some anxiety about this."