Deputy OPM nominee receives bipartisan support at hearing

Senators from both sides of the aisle expressed strong support on Thursday for Christine Griffin, President Obama's choice to be deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, during her confirmation hearing before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said he looked forward to working with Griffin, currently acting vice chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to accomplish an array of workforce reforms before he leaves office at the end of 2010. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who introduced Griffin on behalf of himself and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., described her as a trailblazer in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and his work with the civil service.

"She was one of only 11 women in the second co-ed class of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy… . I admire her training and her moxie," Kerry said. "In her third year at the academy, a car accident confined Christine to a wheelchair, but she has never truly been confined to it. She has never allowed that disability to define her."

Griffin's experience as a disability rights advocate was at the fore in her discussions with senators about efforts to improve the diversity of the federal workforce and to encourage agencies to make greater use of hiring authorities, such as Schedule A, which allows them to hire severely disabled applicants quickly.

"The more I learned as commissioner at the EEOC, the more I learned that everything I wanted to change happened at OPM and not at EEOC," Griffin said. "Looking at the data we collect with the various agencies, and interacting with the EEO directors of the various agencies, a lot of the fixes that I think will make the federal government be a better employer can only be done at OPM."

Griffin said she and OPM Director John Berry have not discussed the exact parameters of her responsibilities at the agency, though Berry has said publicly that he intends to ask her to lead efforts to improve diversity in the federal workforce. Griffin told Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who chaired her confirmation hearing, that she supported his legislation (S. 1180) to increase the diversity of the Senior Executive Service. One of the provisions of that bill would create an office in OPM that tracks the demographics of senior executives and develops training programs for them. Griffin said she thought better and mandatory training for managers needed to be a priority as well.

Both Voinovich and Akaka said they expected Griffin to focus on management issues within OPM. Akaka cited the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service's rankings of the Best Places to Work, which placed OPM at number 20 out of 30 large agencies, as evidence of its need to improve. Griffin said Berry would play a hands-on role in OPM's revitalization, but she expected to take an active role in making OPM a model employer.

The subject of federal pay came up briefly when Voinovich asked Griffin if she had a position on the Transportation Security Administration's pay-for-performance system, or the Pentagon's National Security Personnel System. Griffin said she would wait for the results of the panel currently reviewing NSPS. Those preliminary conclusions, released during Griffin's confirmation hearing, called on the Defense Department to substantially overhaul, but not repeal, NSPS. Griffin said she believed there were authorities within the General Schedule system that agencies could use to distinguish better between poor and excellent performers, but those provisions were not being used to their fullest.