Senator pushes personnel overhaul measure

A Senate lawmaker introduced a bill Thursday that he hopes will completely renovate the federal government's human resources management infrastructure. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, crafted the Federal Workforce Management Improvement Act with the help of union leaders, good-government groups, university scholars and the Bush administration in an effort to supply the government with better methods for managing its workforce. "Getting and keeping good people is a must, and this bill helps the federal government do that by updating archaic personnel management systems with the new tools required for federal agencies to become attractive places to work in the face of stiff competition from the private sector," said Voinovich, the ranking Republican on the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia. "Streamlined hiring processes, better retention tools, better training, and a more careful eye to personnel needs all will help workers, managers, and, most importantly, the citizens we serve benefit from a better-run system of federal services." Voinovich's bill would put a chief human capital officer in major federal departments and agencies, form a human capital council to be an interagency advisory and coordinating body and require the Office of Personnel Management to design a set of systems, including performance measures, to assess agencies' human capital management. Other provisions of the bill would:

• Reform the competitive service hiring process to allow federal agencies to rank applicants in categories while maintaining veterans preference and merit principles.
• Offer agencies additional flexibility in using recruitment, relocation and retention bonuses.
• Increase the limit on total annual compensation from Level I of the Executive Schedule ($161,200) to the vice president's salary ($175,400).
• Allow agencies to offer a transit subsidy to student volunteers and interns.
• Correct anomalies in the Civil Service Retirement System's computations for part-time service.
• Authorize the use of voluntary separation incentive pay and voluntary early retirement across the executive and judicial branches in order to restructure workforces.
• Repeal the recertification of senior executives.
• Simplify the current SES limited appointment authority to better meet agencies' short-term staffing needs.
• Require inclusion of human capital planning, including training, in Government Performance and Results Act performance plans and annual performance reports.
• Require agencies to link training activities with performance plans, appoint a training officer, work with OPM to institute comprehensive management succession programs and provide special training to managers to deal with poor performers.
• Lift restrictions on payment for academic training.
• Reform the policy that dictates the accrual rate of annual leave for new mid-career federal employees, allowing agencies to count an equal number of years of prior professional service as federal service for the purposes of leave accrual, and allowing all senior executives to be placed in the maximum leave accrual category (8 hours per biweekly pay period), regardless of federal service.
• Expand the types of federal jobs that National Security Education Program grant recipients could accept to fulfill their service requirements to the federal government.

Paul Light, vice president of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution and a long-time critic of the government's human capital practices, praised the bill. "It couldn't come at a better time: you have a bill moving to create a Department of Homeland Security, a bill that has a very broad but ambiguous, even vague, provision dealing with human capital management," said Light. "I think the committee should consider using the Voinovich legislation as the floor for expanded authority and they should go further than the legislation to make sure the secretary has maximum authority to move quickly." A confederation of business leaders, academics and good-government organizations sent the lawmaker a letter Wednesday showing support for the bill and asking for quick action on the legislation. "I look forward to working with Sen. Voinovich on crafting a bill that will have the support of the various groups who will be key to passing a human capital measure," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the subcommittee. "Some of the parties hold strong views as to what is and is not suitable and the challenge is to reach a middle ground on compromise legislation."