This year will probably go down as one of the most significant years in the history of the civil service, ranking up there with 1978, when Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act, and 1949, when it created the General Schedule pay system.
During the past year Congress has granted the Defense Department authority to create a new personnel system. Agencies have been granted permission to raise overtime pay for some employees, to offer employees more assistance with their student loans, and to lift pay caps for members of the Senior Executive Service. They've also been freed from the much-despised "rule of three" hiring regulation, enabling managers to choose from among a greater number of job applications.
Even so, Congress departed for the holidays leaving much still on the table, and 2004 may see even more changes for civil servants.
Among the bills that did not pass were the Federal Workforce Flexibility Act (S. 129) and the Generating Opportunity by Forgiving Educational Debt for Service (GOFEDS) Act (S. 512), both sponsored by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.
The Federal Workforce Flexibility Act would allow agencies to spend more on recruitment and retention bonuses, in some cases up to 100 percent of an employee or job applicant's salary. It would also allow agencies to offer mid- and senior-level hires more vacation time. And it would let the Office of Personnel Management authorize 10-year personnel demonstration projects that involve up to 10,000 employees. Currently, OPM, under authority granted in the Civil Service Reform Act, can only authorize projects involving up to 5,000 employees and lasting no longer than five years.
The bill would also require agencies to evaluate their training and employee development programs and work to link them better with agency goals. Almost everyone agrees that for pay-for-performance systems to work, agency managers need substantial training in how to appraise individual employee work. That training, to this point, has been sorely lacking.
The Federal Managers Association, in congressional testimony last spring, pointed out that currently neither the Office of Management and Budget nor OPM collects information on agency training budgets and activities. Many agencies, said association official Karen Heiser, do not have dedicated training budgets. "The federal government must, once and for all, take the issue of continuous learning seriously," she said.
American University professor Robert Tobias, a former president of the National Treasury Employees Union, and the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington nonprofit group, came to a similar conclusion after analyzing OPM survey data last year. Government employees complain about their agency leadership more than anything else, they found. The survey results revealed that many employees questioned not only their supervisors' skills, but the entire culture of their agencies. Indeed, employees felt that communication between employees and management was sorely lacking.
GOFEDS, the educational debt bill, would expand on action taken this year to help federal employees pay off their student loans. The legislation already passed increases the amount that federal agencies can pay to assist their employees with loan debt from $6,000 to $10,000 a year, and increases an individual's maximum loan assistance from $40,000 to $60,000. Employees would have to agree to work for the government for at least three years to receive any assistance. GOFEDS would make loan payments made by agencies tax-free for the employee. Currently, employees must treat the assistance as taxable income.
Still, the student loan repayment authority will only be useful if agencies use it. In 2002, only 10 agencies actually made any loan payments for their employees. The State Department led the pack, spending $2 million to assist more than 400 workers. But the numbers at other agencies were much lower. In fact, the number two agency, the Energy Department, spent just over $50,000 to assist 17 employees. Recent college and graduate school alumni routinely cite student loan debt as one of the primary reasons for selecting better-paying private sector jobs rather than going into the government.
Other pending legislation is more agency-specific. The NASA Workforce Flexibility Act, for example, would allow the agency to boost its recruiting efforts by offering scholarships to students who agree to work for NASA; paying relocation costs; and offering recruitment bonuses and greater vacation time to incoming hires. Managers would also be able to offer higher starting salaries.
General Accounting Office chief David Walker is also hoping that Congress will push ahead with the GAO Human Capital Reform Act. The bill would allow GAO to set annual pay raises for its employees in lieu of the governmentwide pay increase currently approved by Congress. The bill would also allow GAO to demote employees and limit their annual salary increases. The legislation would let GAO permanently offer employees early retirement and buyout incentives, an authority the agency first gained three years ago on a temporary basis. And it would create an exchange program so the agency could bring on private sector employees for temporary stints and also send its analysts to work at private firms.
Other provisions in the bill include the authority to pay relocation expenses to a larger pool of newly hired workers and to grant more vacation time to experienced new employees. Finally, the bill would change GAO's name to the Government Accountability Office.
If the number of bills still on the table is any indication, 2004 may be just as exciting and turbulent as 2003.
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