OPM pushes new kind of buyout

Federal employees who have skills that their agencies don't need could be targeted for buyouts of up to $25,000, under a Bush administration plan to change some civil service rules. The new targeted buyouts would be offered during agency-by-agency restructuring efforts over the next five years, not as part of a 1990s-style governmentwide downsizing push, Office of Personnel Management Director Kay Coles James said at a press briefing Monday. In the 1990s, the government offered buyouts to federal employees to avoid reductions-in-force, or layoffs, as it downsized the civil service by more than 300,000 positions. "There is no new governmentwide buyout program," James said. Instead of using buyouts to reduce across-the-board staffing levels, agencies would use the buyouts to free up positions that could be given to new employees with more relevant skills. For example, an agency could use buyouts to encourage the retirement of computer programmers who know only older programming languages and then fill the positions with Web application programmers. "We're trying to get to the right size of government," James said, adding that some agencies may increase their staffs while others may cut positions under the Bush restructuring drive. The administration is not looking to reduce the federal workforce to any specific size, she said. James' explanation of the new buyouts came two days after President Bush unveiled a 14-point management agenda aimed at improving government performance. Improving personnel management is one of the agenda's 14 goals. Bush plans to introduce legislation that would make some changes to civil service rules. The buyout plan would be one of those changes, along with plans to start shifting federal compensation and classification away from the one-size-fits-all General Schedule. The final legislative package has not yet been drafted, James said. OPM officials said they wouldn't discuss the specifics of the package before Bush sends it to Capitol Hill. Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said reforms of civil service rules need to be accompanied by more funding so that federal employees can be better paid and agencies can offer bonuses and other incentives where needed. "The federal salary chart is not competitive with private sector salaries," Kelley said. Kelley said she supports the use of buyouts to reshape, rather than downsize, agency workforces. Buyouts will help agencies conduct workforce planning in a strategic manner as Baby Boomers retire in the coming decade, said Carl DeMaio, director of government redesign at the Reason Public Policy Institute. "The human capital challenge is more than saying we'll lose people to retirement," said DeMaio. "It involves thinking about the strategic allocation of staff within agencies, not just solving a retirement problem." Jason Peckenpaugh contributed to this story.