GAO chief seeks last piece of personnel flexibility puzzle

The General Accounting Office needs new personnel flexibilities in legislation pending on Capitol Hill to complete an overhaul of the watchdog agency's performance appraisal system, Comptroller General David Walker said this week.

After Walker took over as head of GAO in 1999, the agency rolled out a new performance appraisal system for its analysts, who conduct audits of executive branch agencies and programs. The system requires employees to commit to a set of goals on which they are regularly evaluated. At the end of the year, employees are graded based on their performance and ranked within their teams. Top performers get the biggest raises, while poor performers receive no raise and may even be fired.

Both the House Government Reform Committee and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee approved legislation this fall that would expand GAO's human resources flexibilities, which date from the 1980 GAO Personnel Act and revisions to the law in 2000. The bill would allow GAO to set annual pay raises for its employees in lieu of the governmentwide pay increase currently approved by Congress.

Walker said if Congress passes the pending bill, GAO would tie pay increases for all of its employees to performance. Currently, all GAO employees receive the annual governmentwide pay increase, while top performers receive an additional raise. The bill would also allow GAO to demote employees and limit their annual salary increases.

On Monday, Walker told Government Executive that the proposed legislation would allow GAO to finish development of its new performance appraisal system. He also said he believed the bill contains adequate safeguards against abuse by agency managers because it will continue to allow employees to file grievances challenging performance ratings. In addition, Walker has committed to providing all GAO employees with a minimum annual raise reflecting inflation rates. Locality pay adjustments also will be preserved under the bill.

The legislation also would allow GAO to permanently offer employees early retirement and buyout incentives, an authority the agency first gained three years ago on a temporary basis. And the bill would create an exchange program so the agency could bring on private sector employees for temporary stints and also send its analysts to work at private firms.

Other provisions in the bill include the authority to pay relocation expenses to a larger pool of newly hired workers and to grant more vacation time to experienced new employees. Finally, the bill would change GAO's name to the Government Accountability Office.

The new flexibilities would allow GAO "to lead by example in connection with human capital policies and practices," and let the agency move from a hybrid pay system involving both annual and merit raises to a pure pay-for-performance system, Walker said.

"We want to reward people for their skills, knowledge, and performance, rather than for the passage of time," Walker said.

GAO employees-while initially resistant to giving up guaranteed annual pay increases-now largely support the changes, Walker said. In a recent survey of more than 2,000 GAO employees, few criticized the plan, according to Walker.

The personnel flexibilities in the bill are less far-reaching than those recently granted by Congress to the Defense Department and Homeland Security Departments. "I'm a lot more comfortable with our legislation than with the DoD's," Walker said. "I do believe we need civil service reform [governmentwide] and that management needs more flexibility. But there need to be safeguards against abuse."