GovernmentExecutive.com

The Pentagon's new strategic blueprint, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), vows that improving the skills of its existing workforce and recruiting a new generation of Defense workers will be a "top priority." But don't expect any new paybanding plans or new hiring demonstration projects to come from the Pentagon anytime soon.

Civilian personnel reform advocates will be disappointed to learn that in the 79-page report, only a few paragraphs mention civil service reform. Moreover, the QDR presents no new ideas for overhauling Byzantine civilian pay and personnel processes. Indeed, the report makes a stronger case for closing military bases and repairing aging buildings - it cites a $60 billion backlog in repairs--than it does for making it easier for managers to hire, fire, retain and reward employees.

"Many of the advances in private sector human resources management have not been incorporated into the Defense civilian personnel systems," states the QDR. "For civilian personnel, the human resources approach will include modernized recruiting techniques, more flexible compensation approaches, enhanced training and knowledge management and career planning and management tools," the report continues, reiterating what federal managers and studies have said repeatedly over the last decade.

It's not news that the Defense Department is giving short shrift to civil service reform. Rewriting Defense acquisition rules and reforming weapon systems management have been higher Pentagon priorities for years. Those reforms are an easy way to score political points with lawmakers who are always eager to make it easier for contractors to do business with the government. Civil service reform does not have such a powerful constituency.

The momentum for reform however, appeared to have changed in the past year. The General Accounting Office announced the federal government would soon face a shortage of workers and called the "human capital crisis" one of the top challenges confronting federal agencies.

And last year, the Pentagon released "Shaping the Civilian Acquisition Workforce of the Future," its own chilling look at the Defense Department's aging acquisition system. The report concluded that Defense is "facing a [workforce shortage] that can dramatically affect our nation's ability to provide warfighters with modern weapon systems needed to defend our national interests." About half of Defense's 150,000 acquisition workers could retire in the next five years, and there is no strategy for replacing them, the report found.

But the QDR offers no solution for the worker shortfall facing the Defense Department. The report's writers simply restate the conclusions and initiatives outlined in previous reports, including a call for a strategic human resources plan for Defense. Another report or plan however, is not what is needed. Those reports have already been written and pilot programs that attempt to fix such problems have been in place for years.

Instead, Defense should immediately propose legislation to make permanent existing personnel demonstration projects and use the authorities it already has to expand these efforts. For example, Defense should dramatically expand a demonstration project that allows 5,000 acquisition workers to be grouped into broad career paths with pay based on performance. Congress has already given the department permission to include as many as 95,000 workers in the demonstration project.

Defense also should make common sense changes in its processes for hiring new workers. The National Security Agency, historically one of Defense's most conservative organizations, has been able to cut the time it takes to hire workers by scheduling their background and polygraph checks concurrently. There's no reason why similar approaches could not be adopted at other Defense agencies.

The QDR's failure to offer details for overhauling the Defense workforce is surely a disappointment for the advocates of civil service reform who believe that the agency, which employs more than half of all federal civilians, must lead the way in improving the federal pay and personnel system if there is ever any chance of governmentwide reform. Defense has vowed to make its workforce a "top priority." Now, it must be held to its own standard.