What Should OPM Be?

Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, has some advice for John Berry in the Washington Post today. He's got a laundry list of suggestions, including a Federal Applicant's Bill of Rights, but the most important idea he has is a philosophical one: OPM, Stier argues, should be more a source of innovative ideas, and less bogged down in regulations.

Obviously, the Office of Personnel Management's regulatory and oversight functions aren't just going to disappear oversight. And they may actually increase if Rep. Danny Davis pursues and passes his legislation to centralize data collection on Senior Executive Service diversity in OPM. But it's true that the centers of idea generation on federal management are fairly diffuse. Those ideas are coming from non-profits and good government groups, from the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, from innovators and agitators within individual agencies and departments.

I don't know if it makes sense for OPM to try to centralize that thought process. But the idea that it could be more of a clearinghouse has currency in a lot of areas, from Stier's column to the GAO. There's not a consensus on what that clearinghouse might look like. But a series of authoritative reports on pay for performance systems, on bonus payments, on the efficacy of other practices, stamped with the OPM imprimatur, might do a lot to establishing consensus on what works and what doesn't.