outsourcing the State redux

[Ian Murray <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

[yet more evidence that Conservative is a pretty meaningless label...]


Overhaul of Federal Workforce Sought
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 8, 2003; Page A01


The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, is pressing
Congress to enact the biggest overhaul of the federal civil service system
in a quarter-century.

In the name of reshaping the federal bureaucracy to better counter global
terrorism, administration officials are seeking the authority to rewrite
long-standing pay and personnel rules governing 746,000 civilian employees
at the Department of Defense. The powers would be similar to those won by
the administration last year in a contentious battle over the formation of
the Department of Homeland Security, which has about 180,000 employees.

Administration officials say the current personnel system is too
restrictive, giving managers little flexibility to create a modern
workforce. They want to tie pay to performance, discipline bad workers
without lengthy appeals, hire employees more quickly and limit union
bargaining rights over workplace conditions. Confined to these agencies
alone, the changes would affect more than 45 percent of the government's 2
million civilian employees. But few analysts expect the changes to stop
with defense-related agencies.

"The lineup of agencies for these kinds of authorities is going to be
equal to that of a summer blockbuster movie," said Paul C. Light, a
government scholar at New York University and the Brookings Institution.
"Everyone wants out. Once Defense goes, it's everybody for the gates."

The rush has begun already.

The Department of Education said last week it wants to revamp many of its
personnel systems by moving all 5,000 employees into a demonstration
project. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the
Securities and Exchange Commission are also seeking some freedom from
civil service rules in recruiting and hiring practices.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee, said the prospective overhaul at Defense could usher in
major changes in a civil service system with origins in the 19th century.

"That's why I feel so strongly about making sure that we do this right,"
said Collins, the chief sponsor of a bill that would grant Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld much, but not all, of the authority he seeks.
"[T]his is likely to become the template for either government-wide civil
service reform or other departments' and agencies' [efforts]."

The civil service system dates to the Pendleton Act of 1883, which
replaced the "spoils system" of doling out jobs through political
patronage with a merit-based system. More changes followed, with the
biggest overhaul in recent decades coming under President Jimmy Carter.
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 did away with the Civil Service
Commission and divided its responsibilities chiefly among three agencies:
The Merit Systems Protection Board hears employee appeals; the Federal
Labor Relations Authority deals with labor-management relations; and the
Office of Personnel Management sets policies to create a level playing
field in hiring and pay for all federal civilian workers.

Although some government officials and scholars have called for further
changes to make it easier to reward good workers and get rid of poor
performers, presidents and most lawmakers over the past 25 years have
shown little interest in spending political capital on such arcane and
complicated issues. In eight years of promoting "reinventing government,"
the Clinton administration never found a way to sell major civil service
legislation on Capitol Hill, particularly with federal employee unions
resistant to major proposals.

Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Pressured by Democrats to
create a Department of Homeland Security, Bush eventually embraced the
idea. But the president insisted on freedom from many civil service
constraints to effectively merge 22 disparate agencies. In April, Rumsfeld
asked for similar authority, arguing that Defense needed a more "flexible"
workforce to fight terrorism.

"In an age when terrorists move information at the speed of an e-mail and
money at the speed of a wire transfer, and fly around in commercial
jetliners, we still do have bureaucratic processes of the industrial age
as opposed to the information age," Rumsfeld told Collins's committee last
week.

House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), whose district includes many
government workers, said some changes may be needed. But he and other
Democrats are skeptical of the administration's motives and speed. He said
officials should wait to see how the new freedoms work at Homeland
Security, which is still crafting its personnel system.

"It's trying to take advantage, on this and so many other issues, of the
national security argument being the rationale for moving everything
quickly without careful consideration," Hoyer said.

Last month, the House agreed to grant Rumsfeld much of what he wants.
Collins and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) have introduced more restrictive
legislation in the Senate. With Republicans in control of Congress,
analysts say Defense probably will get the authority to implement
substantial personnel changes, although the final package remains unclear.

In the biggest change likely to be approved, Defense employees could no
longer count on the guaranteed annual pay raise that many federal workers
hold sacred. Officials would implement pay-for-performance systems in
which compensation would be tied to annual job evaluations, with poor
performers getting little or no raise, or perhaps even a pay cut. The
General Schedule, the current 15-grade pay system, would be replaced by
more general pay ranges in a system known as pay banding.

Another major change would make it easier to fire or discipline workers by
allowing agencies to streamline the employee appeals process. Rather than
take their claims to the Merit Systems Protection Board, workers would
have to go through a faster internal appeals process devised by their
agency. Some lawmakers, however, want to require that the board be the
final arbiter.

The prospective changes at Defense would also restrict employees'
collective bargaining rights, allowing management to bargain with national
union leadership, rather than union locals, on issues that have an impact
on more than one bargaining unit. Labor-management disputes could still go
before the Federal Labor Relations Authority, but would have to be
resolved within 180 days.

Also mentioned as significant possible changes at Defense and other
agencies are more latitude in offering bonuses and other incentives in
recruiting top talent, and the ability to hire job applicants "on the
spot" -- or at least more quickly than the five months or so the current
process requires.

Proponents say that, besides national security issues, such changes are
needed to promote general government efficiency. They say the current
system is outdated and protects mediocre workers without rewarding good
ones.

"We have an opportunity, the likes of which [has] not existed for many
decades, to make a real and constructive change in the way the civil
service is managed," said Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve
chairman who twice has led commissions that called for overhauling the
civil service.

Critics, including unions and many Democrats, agree that change may be
necessary. But the rapid, far-reaching revisions sought by Bush could
erode protections against patronage and discrimination, demoralize the
workforce and make government less efficient by concentrating power in the
hands of incompetent or politically motivated managers, they say.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal
employee union, has opposed the Defense plan as a threat to workers'
rights. And Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury
Employees Union, said administration officials have offered few specifics
about what they intend to erect in place of the current system, while
sending a message that they have a low opinion of federal employees.

"Most federal employees would say that they are accountable every day, and
they want to be," Kelley said. "But they want to know that there is a
credible system in place that they will be measured against, and that it
won't be a system of favoritism or of nepotism."

A few other agencies have already broken out of the traditional civil
service system. In 1996, Congress agreed to allow the Federal Aviation
Administration to implement faster hiring practices and an alternative
employee appeals process. The Internal Revenue Service has been permitted
to create a personnel system that includes a pay-for-performance program
that, so far, covers about 2,000 managers.

"I think we're moving from a one-size-fits-all to agency-centered
[personnel] plans," Dan Blair, deputy director of the Office of Personnel
Management, said in a recent congressional hearing. "We operate under
100-year-old rules. Agencies chafe and find ways of going around and find
ways of operating in a system that was not designed for the 21st century."