What's On Your Mind?

As the federal government embarks on a broad range of personnel reforms, the Merit Systems Protection Board decided to mine the thoughts of key players in the government's human capital efforts. The results returned a long laundry list of concerns.

"The array of new and experimental flexibilities is dizzying-and matched only by agencies' calls for more of the same," MSPB said in a report released this month, What's On The Minds of Federal Human Capital Stakeholders? "We asked stakeholders what issues they believe most needed our attention and examination."

The results were supposed to direct the board's research in the future, but the authors acknowledged there are too many issues to address all of them.

"Over the next several years, we will tackle a number of the topics proposed by our stakeholders. The range of topics is so great that our office -- indeed, any one institution -- is unlikely to be able to investigate them all," the report said. "We invite others interested in the study of federal human capital issues to consider examining these research questions."

More than 800 personnel officials responded to the survey, which was conducted between November 2002 and January 2003. Respondents raised concerns that have been at the forefront of congressional hearings for the past year, including the federal hiring process, outsourcing, pay for performance, and labor relations. MSPB officials did not make recommendations or analyze the survey results, choosing instead to report the questions that were raised and suggest lines of further inquiry.

Several respondents raised performance pay as an issue, especially considering the human capital reforms under way at Defense and Homeland Security. The MSPB report suggested a study to determine if performance pay and pay banding will "resolve federal pay issues, or will these flexibilities create more problems than they solve."

Nominations The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee announced this week that a public hearing will be held Monday on two MSPB nominations. Committee members will consider the nomination of Neil McPhie to be chairman of the MSPB, and Barbara Sapin to serve on the board.

McPhie, a former assistant attorney general in Virginia, is the board's acting chairman.