OPM enters management reform debate

Office of Personnel Management Director Kay Coles James marked her entrance into the debate over the future of the federal workforce this week, making two public appearances at which she voiced support for targeted buyouts and pay banding, and blasted the government's job classification and pay system. Until this week, personnel-related announcements, including an order to conduct workforce analyses and develop workforce restructuring plans, have come out of the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget. OMB Deputy Director Sean O'Keefe said OPM is helping formulate President Bush's Freedom to Manage initiative. ""Kay Coles James has taken on as a personal challenge an effort to modernize the federal personnel system," O'Keefe said. Dwight Ink, a fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration, said OPM has not always been a player in management reform efforts. OPM had little say in the Clinton administration's management reform effort, which was run out by Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government, Ink said. The challenge for James and other OPM leaders will be to show agencies that they can be leaders on reform issues, he said. "OPM has to rebuild the leadership role that it lost in the early days of the reinventing government program," said Ink, who in 1978 helped design the last major overhaul of the civil service system. OPM's leadership role will likely be affected by the push toward pay banding, which would weaken the unifying force of the General Schedule. OPM will also be affected by the response of outside groups to the Bush administration plans. James said on Monday that OPM would involve unions and other stakeholders in plans to overhaul civil service rules. But the leaders of such stakeholder groups haven't been impressed with their level of involvement yet. National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley and Senior Executives Association President Carol Bonosaro said their organizations have yet to be included in the Bush administration's efforts. "I'm hoping that the message [James] is sending is that that will change," Kelley said. An American Federation of Government Employees spokeswoman said that AFGE union officials have not been consulted either. Still, Doris Hausser, OPM's assistant director for performance compensation systems design, said that the unions and other groups were included in discussions of compensation reform during the Clinton administration, which considered some of the same types of reform as the Bush administration is weighing. The groups will be included in the future as well, she said. --Jason Peckenpaugh contributed to this story.