New rule eases barriers to employing the disabled

The Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday released the final version of a regulation aimed at making it easier for federal agencies to hire people with disabilities.

The rule expands the types of proof that prospective employees can offer to show they have a disability qualifying them for excepted service positions. It also broadens the ways by which they can demonstrate job readiness.

But the final regulation contains stricter documentation requirements than the draft version, published in January 2005. That version would have granted agencies the authority to make eligibility decisions on a case-by-case basis, based on medical documentation provided by the applicant.

After reviewing comments on the draft, OPM revised the regulation to allow agencies to accept disability certifications from medical professionals, vocational rehabilitation specialists or federal or state agencies that provide disability benefits. The same entities can provide proof that an applicant is prepared to succeed in the position, or in lieu of that, agencies can hire a candidate temporarily and then evaluate readiness.

"We are … concerned that agency personnel lack the expertise to make medical disability determinations," the Federal Register notice of the final rule stated. "This may result in inconsistent determinations across and within agencies and unanticipated inequities to disabled individuals; people who are not disabled could be appointed at the expense of those for whom these [hiring] authorities were intended."

Even with the change, Wednesday's regulation, which will take effect in late August, is more expansive than existing rules that allow certification of disabilities only from the Veterans Affairs Department or state vocational rehabilitation agencies.

At an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission meeting late last month, Michael Mahoney, manager of the staffing group in OPM's Strategic Human Resources Division, said the regulatory change will ease barriers to using existing hiring flexibilities. Current certification requirements have proven onerous, he said.

The new rules, which also consolidate separate authorities for excepted service appointments of applicants with mental retardation, severe physical disabilities and psychiatric disabilities into one, can help agencies boost the falling representation of the disabled in the federal workforce, Mahoney said.

From fiscal 1996 to fiscal 2005, the number of federal employees with nine targeted disabilities -- such as blindness and paralysis -- decreased by 16 percent, from 29,930 to 25,142, according to an EEOC report published last month. People with disabilities represented 0.96 percent of the total federal workforce in fiscal 2005, compared to 1.18 percent in 1996.

"Over the past 20 years, the federal government's efforts to improve the participation rate of employees with targeted disabilities have failed to result in any significant progress," the EEOC report stated.

Agencies can begin using the authority for new appointments on Aug. 25, and must convert all employees serving under the two existing authorities eliminated by the consolidation by Jan. 22, 2007.