Schedule F

Schedule F looms over trust in government summit

New survey data from the Partnership for Public Service shows there is strong bipartisan support among the public for a nonpartisan civil service.

  • Sean Michael Newhouse

Bush-era national security officials warn against Schedule F

In a letter to congressional committee staff directors, a cadre of former Republican appointees urged lawmakers to pursue a “middle ground” of federal employee accountability that preserves merit systems principles.

  • Erich Wagner

OPM’s new acting director defends federal telework, anti-Schedule F regulations

Rob Shriver defended the Biden administration’s workforce policies, citing new data suggesting fewer federal employees telework than their private sector counterparts.

  • Erich Wagner

Governance experts launch a group to oppose Schedule F

The new organization hopes to offer a consensus way forward on civil service reform issues in addition to opposing efforts to politicize the federal workforce.

  • Erich Wagner

Employee groups laud Biden’s anti-Schedule F regulations

Unions and management organizations alike applauded the Office of Personnel Management’s effort to at least slow a future Republican administration’s efforts to strip federal employees of their civil service protections.

  • Erich Wagner

The positive impact of policy entrepreneurs in the public service

COMMENTARY | The rewards for entrepreneurial leadership by top government careerists are low. They shouldn't be.

  • Jim Tozzi and Donald F. Kettl
Updated

OPM issues its final rule for Schedule F protections

The federal HR agency finalized its rule offering protections for career civil servants meant to safeguard against the potential reemergence of the Trump-era Schedule F policy.

  • Carten Cordell

The MacGuffin of Schedule F

COMMENTARY | Plans to convert federal workers in policy-related positions into at-will employees leave the workforce dangling.

  • Donald F. Kettl

MSPB political firing case raises new questions on Schedule F

The Housing and Urban Development Department’s 2017 firing of a probationary employee over alleged leaks was politically motivated, the agency tasked with enforcing civil service laws said last week.

  • Erich Wagner

Politicians may rail against the ‘deep state,’ but research shows federal workers are effective and committed, not subversive

COMMENTARY | "Our years of research about the people who work in the federal government finds that they care deeply about their work, aiding the public and pursuing the stability and integrity of government," write two scholars.

  • Jaime Kucinskas and James L. Perry, The Conversation

One agency’s Trump-era plan included stripping protections from 68% of its workforce

The Office of Management and Budget appeared to have taken a maximalist approach to the controversial job category, proposing to strip the civil service protections from IT workers, recruiters and even executive assistants.

  • Erich Wagner

Trump’s civil service plans unsettle labor leaders at start of campaign season

Lawmakers and leaders of the American Federation of Government Employees warned that the former president represents a “threat to democracy” at the union’s annual legislative conference.

  • Erich Wagner
Featured eBooks
Budget Outlook for Fiscal 2025
Cyber Workforce
Missile Defense

That Time Abraham Lincoln went to a war zone to escape office-seekers

The front lines of the Civil War were a vacation compared to being literally stalked in Washington.

  • Tom Shoop

Keeping an eye on Schedule F and other proposals to reform federal workforce and pay protections

COMMENTARY | Former President Trump's plan to convert large swaths of federal employees into "at-will" workers may be on ice for now, but he and other GOP contenders have proposed to revive the proposal or institute a more drastic one.

  • Nathan Abse

Union coalition throws support behind OPM’s anti-Schedule F rules

A group of 14 labor organizations led by the National Treasury Employees Union urged the federal government’s HR agency to adopt its proposal to hamstring future efforts to strip feds’ job protections “promptly.”

  • Erich Wagner

Will an attack on federal employees swing the election? Probably no

COMMENTARY | A closer look at what a recent series of focus groups revealed.

  • Donald F. Kettl

‘Neutral competence,’ partisanship and efforts to overhaul the civil service

COMMENTARY | One scholar argues that a radical movement to shift powers to the president would be disastrous for the federal workforce.

  • Donald F. Kettl

Regulations aimed at derailing a Schedule F revival proposed by OPM

An effort to insulate the federal workforce from future efforts to strip them of their removal protections could accelerate an “existential” debate over the nonpartisan civil service system, experts said.

  • Erich Wagner

Deconstructing the administrative state: At what cost?

COMMENTARY | Americans should be frightened by the prospect of a return to the spoils system, argue two scholars.

  • James L. Perry and Gordon Abner

Retiring NTEU president reflects on three decades in organized labor

Tony Reardon on Thursday handed the reins of the National Treasury Employees Union to newly elected national president Doreen Greenwald.

  • Erich Wagner

What the United States can learn from Australia’s recent catastrophic failure to listen to career government experts

COMMENTARY | A hastily launched 2016 program to reduce overpayment of government benefits was plagued by “unfairness, probable illegality and cruelty,” an Australian commission later found.

  • Donald F. Kettl