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I was reading through OPM Director John Berry's speech at the Human Capital Management Forum yesterday, and while most of it's his fairly standard stump speech, two things stood out to me. First, Berry said:

Next, before the year is out, I hope to introduce recruitment and hiring reforms that will make us more aggressive in our outreach to the best potential candidates and more competitive with the private sector in our hiring methods and timelines. These reforms will make it easier for applicants to apply for our jobs and easier for hiring managers to hire the best and the brightest.

I'm not sure whether this will come in a stand-alone bill or whether it'll be part of a budget outline for next year released by the White House. But this was something Berry has promised to do. And so far, he's done a better job than many administration officials of meeting his deadlines, or at least getting within the ballpark of them.

Continue reading "Two Interesting Things From OPM Director Berry's Speech Yesterday" »

I'm glad to hear the Postal Service's Letters to Santa program will continue, albeit with closer oversight, even after a registered sex offender slipped into the volunteer pool. The lesson of situations like this shouldn't be that something bad happened. Rather, it should be that controls are good enough that the person got caught. And it's nice that a program that provides not just a basic and necessary service, but that serves a bit of an emotional need, will get to continue. I don't know that the Letters to Santa program should be the Postal Service's core mission, but it's a nice thing to do. And precisely because the agency is struggling, this is a decent way to build goodwill for what may be difficult political fights over issues like going to five-day deliver ahead.

Remember about the conflict between that foreign aid bill I mentioned and the State Department's first major quadrennial review I wrote about earlier in the week? The arguments over it are continuing, with Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew asking for the review to be given room to breathe, and Sen. Jim Webb coming out against the legislation. The Cable reports:

"I believe that the problems in foreign assistance effectiveness are largely those of poor leadership and supervision, to be solved by the streamlining of executive branch responsibilities rather than the creation of yet another layer of infrastructure," Webb wrote.

Webb was talking about the bill's proposal to create a Council on Research and Evaluation of Foreign Assistance, or CORE, that would have oversight powers over all government foreign-assistance programs, a key component according to committee staffers.

When I wrote my first post about this commenter Danielle Ellingston wisely chimed in that some of the changes in the bill might be quite important and minimally interfering:

Continue reading "Foreign Aid Bill v. State's Quadrennial Review, Cont." »

By Robert Brodsky

As expected, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee moved the nomination of Daniel Gordon to serve as the administrator of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget Thursday afternoon. Gordon's nomination was approved by voice vote.

Gordon, the former deputy general counsel of the Government Accountability Office, is expected to easily win approval of the full Senate when he comes up for a vote.

Both Erroll Southers' nomination to lead the Transportation Security Administration and Chai Feldblum's nomination to be a member of the Equal Employment advanced today, as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved Southers' nomination and Feldblum had her first confirmation hearing. It's good news to see both of these nominations proceeding. TSA has substantial workforce issues, and looming over them, the question of whether workers there will be granted collective bargaining rights, something Southers will have to decide. And EEOC is desperately short of members right now. In all the flurry over health care reform, it's easy to forget that for some agencies, not much has changed since the administration. At least these two are closer to having leaders, now.

Not that it's surprising, but lawmakers are sharply divided on the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act at a markup being held in the House Oversight and Government Reform. After ranking Republican Darrell Issa cited unemployment figures among African-American men to make the case that the bill wasn't necessary to attract workers into the federal government, DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton snapped back "I'd be pleased to work with him if he is interested in [minority employment], which I'm sure he is." After Rep. Jason Chaffetz declared that "I recognize the sensitivity of this subject, but I also want to stand tall for traditional marriage. I don't' think we should be bashful and shy away from the fact that there are some of us who believe in the precepts, and believe in this issue of traditional marriage," a variety of Democratic lawmakers have come back with parables of love and tolerance. It's an interesting intrusion of the culture wars into federal management. But with a majority on the committee, it's hard to believe the measure won't pass later this afternoon.

A proposal to create the Roosevelt Scholars Program -- sort of a civilian ROTC program to encourage college students to pursue careers in government through scholarships and stipends -- has been introduced in the Senate by George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Congress has twice stalled on the legislation, which would give up to $60,000 per year in scholarship money for those who pledge to pursue "mission critical" occupations within the government after graduation. In 2008, Rep. David Price, D-N.C., introduced it as a stand-alone bill, and in March of this year Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., offered it as an amendment to a larger bill. Neither efforts received a vote.

Price and Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., again introduced the bill, H.R. 3510 this July, and it is currently before three House committees.

In one key area, the Voinovich/Gillibrand version will go further than the legislation in the House. Although the language of the bill hasn't yet been revealed, according to Voinovich's comments when he introduced the measure, it would cover both undergraduate and graduate students. Price's version in the House would only help fund graduate studies.

The Partnership for Public Service has long been an advocate of the legislation. Earlier this year, the Partnership released a study claiming that the government's efforts to protect cyberspace were hindered by a lack of available experts. The goal of this program would not only be to make sure that the government gets more of the talented and well-educated professionals and technicians out there--it would also help grow more of those people at the ground level.

"The only way our nation can fill these jobs with top talent is to raise our game in recruiting and investing in our federal workforce," the organization said in a released statement.

You can read more on this topic here and here.

It's not a theoretical question any more, as the Senate is moving forward on foreign aid bill that will strengthen the U.S. Agency for International Development, even as the State Department is doing a significant review of how it is organized and operates that will have implications for USAID. The White House had asked Sen. John Kerry to hold off on the legislation, but, concerned over losing the support of Sen. Richard Lugar if there was a delay, Kerry moved forward anyway. I think there are a number of questions to be asked here. Was Lugar key to passing the bill, or does Kerry simply like working with him? If the former, moving forward may have made sense. Second, does the bill actively damage the work of the State review team by changing the ground from under them? If the ways it strengthens USAID aren't significant and structural, it doesn't seem like a disaster to move forward. And third, can State get an interim report on the review to the committee in a timely fashion so they can begin to review and implement the results before next summer?

I understand that it's hard to sync up the timing of agency actions with Congressional calendars, and that Senatorial relationships and prerogatives can't always be built and pursued in ways administrations would like. But the more synced up all those factors can be, the better chance the policies and changes that will be made will be stronger. That way, State and Congress don't run the risk of acting at cross purposes.

I have to say, the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is using a matchmaking program as an incentive to keep agency employees happy, strikes me as a little strange. Not that there's anything wrong with people finding happiness, in fact, it's great. But I'd be curious to hear more about how the program is prepared to deal with things like sexual harassment claims, or the impact of breakups on the workplace, since from what Chief Human Capital Officer Jim McDermott says, it sounds like the pairings that have resulted are between agency employees, rather than between agency employees and folks who work outside NRC. And even if it's said in jest, isn't there something a little odd about a CHCO saying this about his employees?

"Now, engineers study a lot in college. They neglect very important extracurricular activities. My girls went to school with engineers, [and] they said, 'Dad, they don't know how to dance, they don't know how to dress, they don't even know how to talk.' "

Isn't that a bit stereotypical? And doesn't it ignore the fact that there are, you know, female engineers?

I'm always both interested in and annoyed by Gallup's annual survey that seeks to measure how Americans view different parts of the federal government. It makes sense to me that the military is held in high esteem, if only because Americans are generally fond of their homeland, and even if they aren't fond of how the military is used, no one can really deny the sacrifice that members of the military make that most of us wouldn't. But I also think the fact that most Americans have no direct experience with the military or intelligence agencies (which also scored high this year) actually makes it easier for Americans to think highly of them.

Think of it this way. While Americans may have complex feelings about issues like the treatment of detainees, it's not an issue they're directly affected by. The Central Intelligence Agency isn't coming after you because they think you owe more taxes than you do. They aren't taking longer than you'd like to remediate a former industrial site you think might make a dandy playground for neighborhood kids. You never have to stand in line to mail a package to your aunt at a CIA field office. It's much harder to have a personal good experience of an institution you never interact with, but it's impossible to have a bad customer service experience with an agency that's totally inaccessible to you.