GovernmentExecutive.com

Contrary to earlier reports, the Office of Personnel Management has been working quietly behind the scenes to assist the Treasury Department as it prepares to hire a large number of high-level federal employees to work on the bailout of the financial system.

"We started conversations with them while the legislation was being debated up on the Hill about what they might need down the road," said Kevin Mahoney, OPM's associate director for human capital leadership and merit system accountability. "Our products and services folks are working with them on what will ultimately be a very large hiring effort. We've tried to stay very closely attached to them."

An OPM spokesman erroneously told GovernmentExecutive.com on Oct. 14 that the agency was not involved in the hiring effort.

While Treasury has focused first on finding contractors to manage the distressed assets Congress has authorized it to purchase, Mahoney confirmed that the department will need to hire large numbers of senior-level staff, though the timeline for this is not yet clear.

The 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (H.R. 1424) gave the Treasury secretary direct hire authority, which allows Secretary Henry Paulson to fill positions more quickly than normally is possible under the federal hiring process.

But Mahoney said OPM had worked to give Treasury other flexibilities, including expanding the number of Senior Executive Service, senior level and scientific/professional positions in the department so Treasury can hire more high-ranking officials without exceeding its quotas. OPM also is helping Treasury use Schedule A hiring authority, which allows agencies to bring new employees on board quickly in times of acute staffing shortages.

Mahoney also said OPM was assisting Treasury in developing job classifications and postings for USAJobs.gov. Some of the positions the department will fill have comparable jobs in government, according to Mahoney, but others will require Treasury to look outside government for employees with asset management experience, and therefore require new job classifications.

Treasury also is studying the experiences of other agencies that have had to make large numbers of hires quickly when faced with policy crises, Mahoney said.

"Every individual crisis has its own unique parts to it, if you will," he noted. "If you go back to the Enron problem a number of years ago and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen where the Securities and Exchange Commission brought in a lot of accountants and analysts, they were given a lot of flexibilities, and that's one way to go."