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Paid Parental Leave, which the administration publicly supported, clears the House 258-154.

On Monday, I reported that new OPM Director John Berry plans to put some teeth into his agency's proposals by marching lock-step with OMB Director Peter Orszag, who has considerably more leverage over how various departments and agencies allocate resources. (For example: Making increasing use of pots of money that an agency loses unless the funds are put against workforce training.)

With that in mind, OMB's issuance of a Statement of Administration Policy (link to PDF) in support of paid parental leave for federal employees has to be seen as some early evidence of Berry's ability to drive action in the EOP. Quoth OMB:

The Administration supports the goal of H.R. 626, which would provide Federal employees with access to paid leave upon the birth, adoption, or fostering of a child.

Being able to spend time at home with a new child is a critical part of building a strong family. The initial bonding between parents and their new child is essential to healthy child development and providing a firm foundation for the child's success in life.

Measures that support these relationships strengthen our families, our communities, and our nation. The Federal government should reflect its commitment to these core values by helping Federal employees to care for their families as well as serve the public. Providing paid parental leave has been successfully employed by a number of private-sector employers, and can help to make job opportunities accessible to more workers.

The Administration is currently reviewing existing Federal leave policies to determine the extent of their gaps and limitations. The Administration looks forward to working with Congress to refine the details of this legislation to make sure it meets the needs of Federal agencies and employees, as well as their families.

Ed O'Keefe rightly notes that the President's backing isn't entirely unexpected, and candidate Obama was fairly methodical in his outreach to federal employees. But it's not always the case that intentions and promises equate to action, and minor actions like this are a fairly reliable indication of whether certain issues are being successfully kept on a busy young Administration's radar screen.

Alyssa herself may be away, but that's no reason that her ongoing quasi-obsession with new OPM Director John Berry has to go with her!

As fate would have it, I was fortunate enough to hear Director Berry speak to an intimate group this past Friday at the National Academy of Public Administration (a.k.a., my employer) at an event convened by government IT legend Alan Balutis. (Here's a blurry iPhone picture of them together!) Like Alyssa, I found that Berry's unique mix of expertise and enthusiasm around people issues (he hates the term "human capital," and now I kind of do, too) makes for a really encouraging and energizing encounter.

I've put some general observations below the fold, but one thing Berry said was particularly interesting to me: He announced that, as part of recruiting efforts specifically as well as public engagement efforts more broadly, he would be assembling a group of 20-somethings who would be tasked with engaging young people in the missions of government and, ultimately, with attracting them into the federal workforce. Obviously a lot of this game is won at the paying-off-some-of-your-student-loans level, but a non-trivial part of it really is just about getting the message out.

Berry's focus on a squad of 20-somethings reminded me of someone I once met in federal government. She was in her mid-20's, had just graduated with an Ivy League MBA, and was recruited by the FBI right out of school as a GS-14. (Talk about public-private pay parity!) But the rub was, despite her relative inexperience in FBI's mission, she was incredibly effective because she knew how to connect and share information with other people across FBI who were in this same program. Her skills had little to do with law enforcement, and everything to do with collaborating and connecting.

The moral of this story, I think, is that increasingly, "collaboration" -- defined roughly as "the ability to build and lead purposeful social networks that act as agile problem-solving communities" -- is going to be a critical skillset in the federal workforce. So-called "digital natives," who grew up using these skills as a matter of daily life on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter (and more recently GovLoop!). What's truly noteworthy is that our new OPM Director -- who is by his own admission not a Tech Guy -- recognizes the importance of this skillset and is leading by example.

Continue reading "To Build Social Networks, Hire Social Networkers" »

Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama just began a question by asking if employees who serve under NSPS go through a ratings system. I don't normally like to give lawmakers a hard time for what they don't know, but this one seems like a big omission...

Brad Bunn, NSPS's Program Executive Officer, provided some details on the upcoming review of the National Security Personnel System by the Defense Department and the Office of Personnel Management:

I can assure you that Deputy Secretary Lynn recognizes that there are a variety of viewpoints regarding NSPS, and is committed to a thorough examination that includes outreach to Congress, other federal agencies, personnel management experts, labor organizations, and other stakeholders....We expect that it will include a review of the underlying design principles of NSPS, including the guiding principles and key performance parameters found in the operational requirements document, and the extent to which the system is achieving its goals. We expect the review to also focus on key issues of fairness and transparency, not only in the design but also in the imlementation. Another key issue to be examined is the effect of operating under NSPS for the non-bargaining unit workforce and the General Schedule sstem for our bargaining unit employees, and the challenges associated with that approach.

It appears that there's no leader, and no start or end date set for the review set. But its parameters are taking shape.

I'm here, trusty laptop and broadband card in hand, at the House Armed Services committee hearing on NSPS, and I'll be bringing you updates throughout the hearing. One interesting element: in its press release announcing the testimony it's submitted to the committee, the American Federation of Government Employees said its received reports that employees continue to be converted into NSPS, despite the halt on conversions while the OPM-DoD review is underway. It seems like most of the conversions they're hearing about are coming from Base Realignment and Closure processes. I don't know if some exception exists for folks who are getting BRACed, but it does seem odd that such conversions would continue. AFGE says they've told DoD that this is proof that NSPS needs to be shut down. I'm not sure what it's proof of, but it's interesting.

The Post's Joe Davidson did a Q&A with House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa, who said the following:

I have issues with our current pay-cap structure [for high-level civil servants], because I don't believe in pay caps. I take issue with having an employee's salary capped for the purposes of calculating your salary but not for retirement. This doesn't make sense -- if anything, these employees should be paid a full salary and have the theoretical cap apply to retirement. You should make what you earn.

Davidson didn't follow this up, but I'd be curious to see how Issa thinks pay should be assessed in the federal sector and where federal pay should be in relation to private-sector pay. Thus far, all the significant pay and benefits bills have originated from the Democratic side of the aisle in the House, or from a bipartisan cooperation between Daniel Akaka and George Voinovich in the Senate. I think it would be a good thing for debate if the Republicans were presenting more bills and proposals for how to move forward with workforce reforms.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Government Executive last week that he wants to bring more rigorous performance management to his department:

"Tying what we do to specific articulated results is a very important function of what the management side of this agency has to do," Vilsack said. "To do that not only requires a commitment by leadership to make that happen, the president has been very clear in his expectation in that respect."

While he didn't discuss pay-for-performance specifically, I'd be curious to see how Vilsack is going to handle the pay-for-performance demonstration project he's inherited at the Food Safety Inspection Service. If the Secretary intends to establish strong performance management measures before diving into pay for performance systems, he'll have to keep an eye on FSIS where he'll have no choice but to move both together in tandem.

Yesterday was BUSY, everybody, and I just wanted two things. The Senate Budget Committee also moved to add pay parity to its version of the budget (the House did it on Tuesday). And Sens. Daniel Akaka and George Voinovich introduced their version of the telework bill. So pretty much everything workforce related is rolling along in concert in the House and Senate. I think this could be the session of Congress that some workforce bills actually pass in both houses and are signed by the president. A lot of bills got introduced last year, and there where a lot of hearings. While at the time, the stalling of those bills in committee or on a docket calendar seemed frustrating, my guess is they'll prove to be useful groundwork.

Nate Silver, the very smart statistician who runs FiveThirtyEight, has a novel idea for how we should handle regulation of the financial industry. We should make government salaries higher, so the smartest people will have more incentives to move into regulation, rather than on to Wall Street! Nate writes:

This is a very real problem. Some of the work that I did in my first job after college at KPMG involved valuing intellectual property in conjunction with international tax disputes. We had our economists, and the IRS had theirs. The thing was, however, that our economists were better than the IRS's, because if someone at the IRS was any good, we'd hire them away and treble their salary. Part of a good regulatory reform plan, then, would be to increase the salaries paid to employees at institutions like the Fed, the Treasury, the IRS, and the FDIC.

I also happen to think that's an awesome idea, but, sadly, it is not remotely as easy as it sounds. To jack up salaries significantly in those agencies would require big adjustments to those budgets. And once it's done, it raises the question of why we aren't making National Institutes of Health salaries competitive with top hospitals? What about CIA agents and corporate espionage? I think it would be great if that Pandora's Box got opened, and we had a serious conversation about government compensation, the pay gap, and societal values. I would love it. But to say, let's raise salaries for some smart people who we need right now totally ignores the realities of federal pay, and how compensation is out of whack up and down the pay scale.