Government Executive - Authors - Alyssa Rosenberg

Personnel chiefs on the hook for hiring reform

Alyssa Rosenberg — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

In early May, President Obama released a long-anticipated hiring reform memorandum, replacing a requirement that federal job applicants respond to essay questions with a resume-based approach more in line with private sector practices. The memo also outlined new responsibilities for managers and supervisors, requiring them to get more involved in the hiring process.

The job of making sure the hiring reform effort and the Obama administration's other personnel priorities are implemented falls to the government's chief human capital officers.

"This is going to be proving time for the [Chief Human Capital Officers Council], for the CHCOs and for the Office of Personnel Management," says Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. "They're going to be asked to change a broken system. That's a big demand, and how they respond to it is going to define their legacy."

But it's also a time of great opportunity. A new director of the CHCO Council hopes to galvanize its members to help address each other's problems. Experienced CHCOs have found new allies in their quest to shine a light on the needs of the human resources workforce. And new chiefs have found that with a little determination, they can get the resources they need, and by applying them right, can get more done than anyone thought possible. CHCOs are coming of age as a community at the precise moment their interests are converging with those of a young administration that's willing to back up some of its ambitions with resources.

In the June 15 issue of Government Executive, Alyssa Rosenberg outlines the issues chief human capital officers face.

Click here to read the full story.

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Facing the Music

Alyssa Rosenberg — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The government's maestros of personnel must manage a series of high-profile challenges.

The job of making sure the hiring reform effort and the Obama administration's other personnel priorities are implemented falls to the government's chief human capital officers.

Leveraging Resources

The tenure of Jeff Neal, chief human capital officer at the Homeland Security Department, illustrates both the challenges and the opportunities the chiefs face. Just 10 months into his stint at DHS, Neal became the fourth longest-serving of the five people who have held his position at the relatively new department. "My goal is to be the longest-serving before I leave the department," he says. "I do believe some stability in this position is important."

It's particularly important in a department as large, young and with as many diverse challenges as DHS. But the scale of those challenges-DHS is 10 times larger than the agency where Neal was previously CHCO, the 23,000-employee Defense Logistics Agency-is giving him the opportunity to implement his ideas on a broader scale and to create programs that could be models governmentwide.

Along the way, Neal has questioned the conventional wisdom about, for example, the process by which agencies and departments are assigned their allotments of senior executives. Those numbers are assigned in a biennial review process, during which, Neal says, agencies tend to overstate how many executives they need with the expectation they'll reach a compromise with OPM and the Office of Management and Budget to get as many as they actually require. In keeping with that tradition, DHS had submitted a request for several hundred senior executive positions.

Neal says he went to OPM Director John Berry and told him, "This is a ridiculous request. We don't need that many."

Instead he asked for about 100 executives, and Berry got him 90. Berry himself cites that conversation, and the weeklong turnaround time on Neal's request, as evidence that his agency is doing business differently in the Obama administration.

With his allotment of executives in place, Neal has the capacity to pursue two of his biggest goals: reducing DHS' reliance on contractors, and expanding its focus on leadership training and education-a hallmark of his stint at DLA.

"There was a tendency to want to rely on the private sector," Neal says of the previous administration's approach to DHS. "You combined that with the needs of an organization that's just standing up [and] that overreliance on contractors is now part of the culture. Even a seven-year-old organization can develop a culture very quickly."

To tackle the problem, Neal assigned a senior executive to head up a team of a half-dozen people to examine the DHS workforce. That team has been ordered to determine just what DHS' needs are, and then figure out whether contractors really are necessary to do those jobs.

To better prepare DHS employees to handle the work contractors have done, Neal tapped another executive to lead one of his pet initiatives, leadership development. Too often, he says, agencies promote talented employees to key positions, ignore them and then blame them when they fail. In these and other areas, Neal says it's important to develop solutions that can work on an enterprise level, rather than investing in multiple modules containing essentially the same lessons.

He says his experience shows agencies can leverage significant change using their existing resources. "None of these are things that require massive organizations to do," he says. "It's not like we're sending a man to the moon. We're doing some things that are fairly basic that government just doesn't tend to do well."

Innovation and Automation

Some CHCOs entered the transition to the Obama administration and its priorities already firmly ensconced in their agencies. They're using the opportunity not to adjust to new surroundings, but to pursue new challenges. Among these is General Services Administration CHCO Gail Lovelace, who says she "couldn't be in a better place."

In part that's because the new administration is providing an opportunity for Lovelace to shine attention on one of the issues most important to her, the state of the human resources workforce.

"We are asking the federal HR community to step up, embrace these changes and make them happen, but I don't know that we've helped our workforce get ready to make those changes," Lovelace says. "We've lost a high number of really talented people over the last few years. While we're making changes, they're trying to meet the mission."

Lovelace calls Berry the "best cheerleader we possibly could have out there," but stresses the importance of substantive, communitywide efforts to address the projected increase in federal retirements and its particular impact on the senior ranks of human resources professionals. The CHCO Council has become a nexus of those efforts, Lovelace says, as the chiefs try to implement major new human capital initiatives while also figuring out how to "change the tires" by recruiting and training a new generation of experts in the field.

One way to ease the transition, she says, is to automate basic HR tasks, such as processing pay and benefits, so they'll take up less time and energy. That would free human resources specialists to focus on strategic issues and to deal promptly with unique cases that don't fit standardized models.

Lovelace praises Berry's approach to automating the federal retirement process, saying it's more important to build a system that will work for most retirements, rather than getting bogged down in trying to deal with every single exception to standard procedures.

GSA's headquarters are near those of OPM in downtown Washington, so Lovelace has been Berry's collaborator on efforts to create a model work-life balance program that also includes the Interior Department and the Federal Reserve Board. The effort has seen the agencies work together on events such as Earth Day celebrations and fitness walks. They're also sharing resources and facilities. Early this year, OPM opened a renovated health clinic that's available to the other agencies. And Lovelace says the impending renovation of GSA's headquarters, funded through economic recovery legislation, also will allow her agency to make investments in wellness facilities it will share with other federal workers.

Lovelace says the biggest hurdles she and her fellow HR chiefs need to overcome involve resources and coordination, not motivation.

"Our challenge isn't the challenge of being excited, or ready for this change," she says. "We are there."

Working Together

The person tasked with facilitating coordination among the personnel chiefs is Kathryn M. Medina, executive director of the CHCO Council. Medina has made it her mission to clarify the council's role and to "move from being thought leaders to being action leaders."

She began her tenure at the council by creating an e-mail bulletin to keep the chiefs up to date. That publication will go on the council's revamped website when it launches. She's working on a new organizational plan, and in April hosted a full meeting of the council at GSA's Interagency Resources Management Conference, where the chiefs debated what the organization's goals should be.

Medina has been thinking about how best to support the CHCOs, some of whom, she says, are "wearing many, many hats," balancing roles as information or finance experts with the job of managing human resources. Medina wants to make sure those who have multiple areas of responsibility are staying up to speed. She and Lovelace say the CHCOs' deputies, who now attend the full council meetings, have been instrumental in meeting that goal. And Medina wants to build connections with the councils for other C-level officials.

As she gets a handle on her job, Medina has found an immediate way for the CHCOs to have an impact, consulting them on the components of the administration's hiring reform package, and working with them on OPM's efforts on diversity policy. She, Lovelace and Neal share the goal of creating governmentwide training modules and curriculums to reinvigorate the HR workforce.

The Partnership's Stier says given the administration is focusing on issues like hiring reform, it's particularly important that the chiefs pay attention to their staffs' capabilities. "If you move to a résumé-based selection process, change itself requires new energy from the workforce, but in that instance, it's going to require more effort from the HR staff and the agency staff, and less from the talent pool," he says.

Medina says despite the workload the Obama administration is asking human resources officials to take on, she is confident the chiefs and the community they lead will be able to handle the new responsibilities. "When you're doing something you love," she says, "you find a way to do it."

Jeff Neal, Homeland Security
THE COMPOSER

Jeff Neal knows from long experience how complicated federal human resources issues can be. A career senior executive, he jokes he "burrowed out" to a political appointment, serving as chief human capital officer at the Defense Logistics Agency before coming to his current post. Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, says Neal is on a short list of "some real stars . . . a very, very talented individual and really a great pick for DHS."

At DHS, Neal faces the challenge of creating a coherent community out of a department cobbled together like Frankenstein's monster from different organizations-and a wholly new one, the Transportation Security Administration, which he says was invented by "a handful of people who were stuck in a conference room and told to build an agency."

Among the issues Neal is attacking head on are what he says is an over- reliance on contractors and the need for a deep, comprehensive leadership development program. One of his first moves as CHCO was to expand the department's Senior Executive Service corps and to tap talented executives to work on broader issues.

Neal isn't concerned only with his own department. He has been part of conversations with the Office of Personnel Management about how to revitalize the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, and he gave the agency feedback on its hiring reform proposal. "That's very nice to see, that OPM is not developing solutions and lobbing them over the transom to people," he says.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley says Neal has won her respect by opening his door not only to her, but also to the rank-and-file Transportation Security Administration employees and Customs and Border Protection officers her union represents. Those meetings might not have resolved the tricky legal questions around unionization at TSA, where NTEU and the American Federation of Government Employees want to represent workers, but Kelley says simply holding the sessions has helped build good will.

Neal is "a very open guy," Kelley says. "He was very well-received. He's a good listener, and he's a thoughtful guy. There's no hesitancy to be upfront in a discussion or a conversation, and that goes a long way."

CHIEF HUMAN CAPITAL CHALLENGES

The Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive, asked dozens of managers what they wish the chiefs would focus on . . .

Vacancies

Managers believe that senior leaders lack awareness and concern about significant staffing shortfalls at many agencies, and that they continue to pile on work despite the pressure it puts on an already strained workforce. Hiring

The hiring process remains a stumbling block both for federal agencies and job seekers. Managers want chief executives to take ownership of reform, including updating hiring systems and ensuring all job applicants receive a timely response to their inquiries. Onboarding

Managers aren't pleased with the process of bringing new employees on board. They want to see extensive programs established to give new hires the necessary equipment, a clear set of tasks, a mentor and training on their agency's culture. Career Development

Professional development programs can have a significant impact on recruitment, retention and morale, and ensure the best people make it into leadership positions, managers say. They believe CHCOs could create career tracks and programs to lead people along those paths.

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Chief of the Year: Human Capital

Alyssa Rosenberg — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

On June 15, Government Executive is featuring the government's chief officers of acquisition, finance, human capital, information and information security in a special issue of the magazine. This year we've identified individuals to highlight as Chiefs of the Year -- not necessarily because they are unsurpassed in their fields, but because their peers have much to learn from their experiences.

Chris Flynn

Jeff Neal
Chief Human Capital Officer
Homeland Security Department

At DHS, Neal faces the challenge of creating a coherent community out of a department cobbled together like Frankenstein's monster out of different organizations-and a wholly new one, the Transportation Security Administration, which he says was invented by "a handful of people who were stuck in a conference room and told to build an agency."

Among the issues he's attacking head on are what he says is an overreliance on contractors and the need for a deep, comprehensive leadership development program. One of his first moves as CHCO was to expand the department's Senior Executive Service corps and to tap talented executives to work on broader issues.

Neal isn't just concerned with his own department. He's been part of conversations with the Office of Personnel Management about how to revitalize the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, and gave the agency feedback on its hiring reform proposal.

"That's very nice to see, that OPM is not developing solutions and lobbing them over the transom to people," he says.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley says Neal has won her respect by opening his door not just to her, but also to the rank-and-file TSA employees and Customs and Border Protection officers her union represents. Those meetings might not have resolved the tricky legal questions around unionization at TSA, where NTEU and the American Federation of Government Employees want to represent workers, but Kelley says simply holding the sessions has helped build good will.

Neal is "a very open guy," Kelley says. "He was very well-received. He's a good listener, and he's a thoughtful guy. There's no hesitancy to be up front in a discussion or a conversation, and that goes a long way."

Chiefs of the Year 2010 main page ]]>

Goodbye and Thank You

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:02:11 -0400

After almost three years at Government Executive and a year and a half as the voice of FedBlog, it feels bittersweet to type this: this is my last day at GovExec. I'll be moving over a neighborhood and into a whole different world of reporting to take up a position at Washingtonian, and handing the reins of this blog back to Tom Shoop.

I can't say enough what a pleasure it's been work at Government Executive, a fantastic home for any young journalist looking to learn Washington and the craft of reporting, and to spend time with all of you. You've pushed me, made me laugh, and made me think. I'm so grateful to you for sharing your collective wisdom. The work you do is critical. I'll never forget that.

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Marketing Federal Service

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:49:41 -0400

The Service to America Medal finalists are out. And it makes me wonder the same thing I wonder every year. Is it enough to highlight their service in Washington, DC? The lawmakers who showed up to extol federal service are the ones who are pretty much already invested in federal workforce issues. Is it enough to have them on board? I don't know how to expand the public service caucus--with legislators, they've pretty much got to have a high concentration of federal employees or installations in their districts to get seriously invested in federal management issues. And in my experience, it's pretty difficult to get national-level publications seriously interested in profiles of civil servants or pieces on the importance of the civil service to national issues. I know some folks are suspicious of Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry's plans for a federal service marketing campaign. But it seems like paid media might be the way to stir up attention that outside of Washington, is currently pretty tepid.

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TRICARE Triage

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

During a hearing earlier this week on a range of military budget issues, Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, told lawmakers the ballooning expense of providing health coverage for retirees "eats into [funding for] our other programs." Roughead and two other high-ranking military leaders recommended that for the first time in more than a decade, the Pentagon ask retirees to contribute more money to their insurance coverage. Several Government Executive readers argued, however, that service leaders don't understand the effect higher health insurance fees would have on rank-and-file military retirees.

"I agree with letting the admirals pay more," a reader named George commented. But "for them to suggest [or] request [a fee hike for] retirees who receive a meager sum compared to their retirement amount is bordering on insane."

Paul Kruger said retired flag officers don't necessarily depend on TRICARE and might not understand its limitations. The Government Accountability Office recently reported participants have trouble finding providers -- particularly mental health professionals -- who accept TRICARE as insurance.

"They will never be turned away from a doctor or clinic [that] refuses to accept TRICARE," he commented.

Alan Goldstein wrote in to say military leaders were approaching the problem from the wrong direction. "Get the ballooning cost of health care under control by proper management; not charging the retirees more," he said.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is looking at other ways to control TRICARE costs. One possibility is to do away with incentives for participants to pick TRICARE over other health insurance programs. On April 9, the department published a rule in the Federal Register implementing a law that would forbid employers from encouraging TRICARE-eligible employees to stay in the program, through incentive payments or other inducements.

Defense estimated the annual cost of TRICARE per active-duty family member under 65 is $3,975, and in 2010, as many as 14,921 enrollees could leave TRICARE for another employer-provided insurance plan. In an April 27 letter to lawmakers, the Government Accountability Office estimated the rule could save $64.1 million in fiscal 2010 and generate savings of $81.8 million annually by fiscal 2015.

The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and TRICARE are unique in their size. But when it comes to cost containment, they face many of the same challenges as other health insurance programs. Supporters of President Obama's health care reform law hope more universal coverage will reduce emergency care costs and preventative care will mean Americans need fewer and less expensive medical procedures and services. But those changes could take a long time. Until then, TRICARE is joining others in looking for solutions.

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Counterprogramming at OPM

Alyssa Rosenberg — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:10:47 -0400

I'm at the Office of Personnel Management right now for a meeting at the National Council on Labor-Management Relations. In a cute twist, the agency's setting up for its Public Service Recognition Week cookout, which can't start until the meeting is done, because a band is set up to play pretty much right outside the conference room window. I like the idea that a meeting about how to create good working conditions in federal agencies is being kept running efficiently by a program to make folks feel like they've got a good work environment. That's synergy.

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Pay Perils

Alyssa Rosenberg — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:27:17 -0400

The financial crisis is a horrible thing, a cascading series of events that has ruined or seriously damaged the lives of millions of Americans. It's also a reminder that pay-for-performance isn't just an issue that the federal government has to figure out: the financial sector has an aggressive pay-for-performance structure. Reihan Salam defends it as an economic system:

But note that bonuses, commissions, and piece-rates are used throughout the economy, and indeed had been fairly common in the service sector long before the financialization of the U.S. economy took off. The reason these forms of compensation proved successful is that, in the so-called "war for talent," they proved a powerful inducement for highly-productive and potentially footloose workers to stay on the team.

As advanced economies have shifted from manufacturing, and in particular forms of manufacturing that involve repetitive tasks, to highly complex services, it hardly seems surprising that we'd see more room for performance pay. The productivity gap between one employee and another matters more. Moreover, the rise of bonuses had another happy consequence. In his 1984 book The Share Economy, Harvard economist Marvin Weitzman called for heavier reliance on bonuses (gain-sharing or contingent compensation schemes) on the grounds that it might smooth out the boom-bust cycle: bonuses would allow firms to lower costs without shedding workers.

But Mike Konczal has doubts. It's definitely interesting to look at the problem from the other side of the mirror. And I'm not sure government or the financial services industry has achieved the right balance.

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Wanted: Inspectors General, and A Congress Willing to Confirm Them

Alyssa Rosenberg — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:25:18 -0400

The Center for Public Integrity has a cri de coeur up on the need for a fully confirmed and in-place corps of Inspectors General. I agree with everything they're saying, and I'm glad they're acknowledging the glacial pace of the nominations and confirmation process more generally.

But I think it's important to include some context here. According to the appointments the Washington Post is tracking, only 70.9 percent of the positions Obama has to fill are filled with confirmed appointees. 79.5 percent of Inspectors General positions are filled with permanent officials, according to the Center's own statistics. So watchdogs are actually doing somewhat better than federal positions as a whole in terms of getting appointed and confirmed.

And I also think it's worth interrogating the idea that career officials in acting positions are actually less stable than confirmed people, given the scandals that have rocked the IG community, and that the Center points out. I think it would actually make a lot of sense to have career folks hold IG slots for set term limits. But then, of course, as the Government Accountability Office proves, when it comes to filling someone when that term is up or that person steps down, the molasses-like pace of the appointment and confirmation process is still going to prevent a smooth transition.

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Lawmakers and Military Pay and Benefits

Alyssa Rosenberg — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:34:29 -0400

I understand that military pay and benefits are a sacred cow. For a couple of years now, I've watched lawmakers fall all over themselves to meet or exceed the president's requests for military pay raises. But it's a bit difficult for me to square Congress's refusal to tick up the amount military families pay for TRICARE when the military itself is asking for that change. It isn't worth sacrificing the effectiveness of other programs, which keep servicemembers functional and perhaps safe, just to avoid violating propriety. If top brass are saying TRICARE costs are cutting into the budgets for other programs, that needs to be addressed.

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Personnel agency clarifies policies for insuring adult children

Alyssa Rosenberg — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

guidance to its website on how health care reform will affect federal employees' adult children, clarifying that it will not begin covering dependents age 22 through 25 until Jan. 1, 2011.

"Though we are eager to provide coverage to young adults prior to January 1, the current law governing the [Federal Employees Health Benefits] Program specifically prohibits us from doing so," OPM wrote in the guidelines.

Currently federal employees' children qualify for FEHBP until they get married or turn 22, whichever comes first. But under the health care reform law President Obama signed in March, insurers will be required to offer dependents coverage until they turn 26.

That provision doesn't kick in until Sept. 23, 2010 -- six months after President Obama signed the law. Health insurance companies must start implementing the change on the first day of their subsequent plan year. A number of insurers have announced they will begin allowing adult children to stay on their parents' plans before the deadline. But because the FEHBP plan year begins on Jan. 1, OPM says it is blocked from implementing the coverage extension early.

Children who turn 22 before Jan. 1 do have an option, OPM reminded participants. The Temporary Continuation of Coverage Program will allow adult children to purchase insurance that will tide them over until they are eligible to reenroll under their parents' coverage on Jan. 1.

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Lawmakers sponsor bill to allow earlier FEHBP enrollment for adult kids

Alyssa Rosenberg — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

A group of Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday introduced legislation that would allow the Office of Personnel Management to extend insurance coverage to more adult children of federal employees during 2010.

"This coverage would be particularly helpful to dependent children about to graduate from trade school, college or university who could have difficulty finding employment with health benefits in the present unfavorable job market," said Margaret Baptiste, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.

As part of the health care reform legislation President Obama signed in March, insurance companies now are required to cover the unmarried adult children of FEHBP enrollees until they turn 26, effective the first day of a new insurance plan year after Sept. 23. Current plans have to cover such dependents only until age 22. Many health insurance providers have said they will begin extending coverage to adult children earlier. But OPM has maintained the law means they cannot extend such coverage until Jan.1, 2011, the first day of the new FEHBP year after Sept. 23, 2010.

But the FEHBP Dependent Coverage Extension Act, sponsored by Reps. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Gerry Connelly, D-Va.; Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Pa.; and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., would amend the laws governing FEHBP so employees could continue to add coverage for their adult children who qualify under the new guidelines during the current year's plan.

In its guidelines on health care reform, OPM said, "we are eager to provide coverage to young adults prior to Jan. 1," and cited current law as the only obstacle, suggesting the agency is likely to support the legislation.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley said a number of the union's members had asked her about whether the government would allow them to enroll their adult children as soon as insurance companies were prepared to cover them. American Federation of Government Employees Legislative Director Beth Moten said Van Hollen had "once again shown federal employees his unwavering support and exhibited his understanding of the burdens that young people face while making the transition into the working world."

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Freudian Slip, Or Army Humor?

Alyssa Rosenberg — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:48:54 -0400

By Katherine Peters

Last week, we wrote about the new Army modernization strategy and created our own hyperlink to the document. A careful reader pointed out that the original document posted by the Army (to which we created our own link) contained a graphic with a reference to something called the Ground Based Intercourse. Apparently he wasn't the only reader who took notice. The Army has updated the document (and so have we); the graphic now refers to the Ground Based Midcourse Interceptor.

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Oil Slicks

Alyssa Rosenberg — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:12:23 -0400

If you're interested in the government's response to the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Ed O'Keefe has put together a nice roundup of a map of the spill, twitterers to follow, and links to the official website for the cleanup. The magnitude of this is overwhelming.

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Is The Obama Administration's Pro-Government Push Having An Effect?

Alyssa Rosenberg — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:19:41 -0400

I was thinking about that this weekend, reading through Obama's Michigan speech on the importance of government. We've seen a lot of polling out recently about anti-government views. But are the speeches by Obama himself and members of his administration making any headway against those negative ideas? I'd be curious to see before-and-after polling in areas where those speeches are happening. The sample size might be too small to be meaningful, but I'm still curious.

And I also wonder about the rhetorical strategy of making concessions about government's impact:

Obama acknowledged that in "certain instances," government has been inefficient and restricted personal freedom. Examples, he said, included a welfare system that discouraged personal responsibility, a tendency to neglect the role of parents in their children's education and failed regulatory efforts.
But on the whole, Obama argued, government is a powerful force for good.

"Government is the police officers who are protecting our communities and the service men and women who are defending us abroad," he said. "Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. Government is this extraordinary public university -- a place that is doing life-saving research and catalyzing economic growth and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small."

I understand that this is a long-term project. But I think, as the administration proceeds in its second year, it's one that's been underexamined.

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TSP funds thrive in April

Alyssa Rosenberg — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Following months of strong returns, nine of the 10 funds in the Thrift Savings Plan continued to enjoy modest growth in April.

The S Fund, which invests in small and mid-size companies and tracks the Dow Jones Wilshire 4500 Index, had the largest increase in April, rising 4.82 percent. It has made greater gains than any other fund in 2010, growing 15.21 percent, and also has produced the biggest rate of return during the previous 12 months, increasing 50.87 percent.

Other funds also climbed. The C Fund, invested in common stocks of large companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, had the second-largest growth in April, rising 1.58 percent, while the F Fund, invested in fixed-income bonds, increased by 1.07 percent, and the government securities, or G Fund, the plan's most stable offering, was up 0.28 percent. Since January, the C Fund has grown 7.06 percent; the F Fund increased 2.90 percent; and the G Fund is up 1.09 percent. During the past year, the C Fund has jumped 38.97 percent, while the F Fund has increased 8.40 percent, and the G Fund is up 3.22 percent.

The I Fund, which invests in overseas companies, was the only fund to lose value in April, falling 2.35 percent. It has fluctuated since the beginning of the year, dropping 5.17 percent in January. The fund's value is down 1.52 percent in 2010, but has grown 34.76 percent during the past 12 months.

All five life-cycle funds, designed to shift investors from a more aggressive portfolio earlier in their careers to more stable investments as they near retirement, made small gains in April. The L 2040 Fund rose 1.05 percent; the L 2030 Fund grew 0.94 percent; the L 2020 Fund was up 0.76 percent; the L 2010 Fund rose 0.51 percent; and the L Income Fund increased 0.50 percent.

Since January, the L 2040 fund has grown 5.44 percent; the L 2030 Fund is up 4.87 percent; the L 2020 Fund has increased 4.07 percent; the L 2010 Fund has risen 2.36 percent; and the L Income Fund inched up 2.23 percent. All five funds have grown during the last 12 months as well: the L 2040 Fund by 33.42 percent; the L 2030 Fund by 29.34 percent; the L 2020 Fund by 24.48 percent; the L 2010 Fund by 12.30 percent, and the L Income Fund by 10.31 percent.

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KSA Quandaries

Alyssa Rosenberg — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:54:44 -0400

Our readers apparently have pretty different views of whether Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities statements are useful. KC says they can be faked:

C'ommon people! How could you know that the applicant even wrote the KSA? There's no guarantee. I was in a panel and read someone's writing scoring the max points. Was in the interview and let me tell ya: no way that woman talking wrote the KSAs I scored for that position. I didn't recommend this woman but a guy; my boss hired her. Six months later, my boss was able to "transfer" her out because she discovered she was not who she portrayed to be, and hired the guy I recommended originally. We found out later (with another writing piece) that her husband wrote things for her as she admitted. I said to my boss: "Told ya! I knew this woman didn't speak they way her KSAs were written..." I rest my case. I applaud that the stupid KSAs are finally gone; sometimes they asked the same thing using different words. Time-wasters! If management is interested in seeing someone's writing, they should ask the last 2-3 candidates interviewed to submit KSAs as a deciding factor. There, that's a simple solution.

But Fed HR Employee says it's unclear how resumes differentiate candidates enough to narrow down the pool to candidates who should be asked to write KSAs:

This is reactive medicine. Who is going to screen 1,000 or more applicants for a single position to determine who should fill out the KSA's??? AND BASED ON WHAT? How will managers be able to determine from a generic resume, who is best qualified to interview. I like the elimination of the rule of 3 (and I cannot think of a SINGLE hiring official that would support continuing the rule of 3 despite what the article says). I am VERY concerned that someone is out of touch with reality when I see that type of statement!!! You think "cronyism" was happening before? Now wait until you aren't even asked to submit a KSA in round 2. Based on what? No substantial documentation to support or defend anything.

I do wonder if having folks write KSAs later in the process might help prevent fraud, if only because then interviewers will have a better sense of a candidates' style.

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Blue Ribbons and Government Needs

Alyssa Rosenberg — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:04:54 -0400

Joel Achenbach's piece on government-sponsored awards for innovation, both as a concept and as a history is really quite good. He points out that there are large advantages to a prize-based approach, but cautions that the contests have to be structured appropriately:

Last September, the Obama administration released the Strategy for American Innovation, which called on agencies to use prizes and challenges. The obvious advantage of the prize approach is that the government pays only for results. The competitors invest their own money in research and development.
...

"You can't just ask, 'invent for me antigravity'-type of questions. Or 'cure cancer,' " said Karim Lakhani, assistant professor of management at Harvard Business School, who has written extensively on open innovation.

To me, the diversity argument for prize competitions is probably the strongest. An individual may be able to create something great, but completely unable to get attention for it through the normal procurement process. But in contests like this, merit will out as long as you've got the right judges.

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Labor relations authority begins regulatory reform effort

Alyssa Rosenberg — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

As the Federal Labor Relations Authority moves forward with the first changes to arbitration regulations in 25 years, unions say the proposed reforms could make the process more fair and efficient.

In the initial phase of a more extensive process, FLRA on Thursday announced some proposed changes to how arbitrators award damages and how parties could appeal awards in those cases. FLRA Chairwoman Carol Waller Pope called the changes "another step in our efforts to better serve our customers and provide them with meaningful and clear guidance."

Pope said FLRA designed the changes after an internal working group met with arbitrators, labor relations experts and members of the federal employee community in Washington, Chicago and Oakland, Calif.

The reforms include changing the appeals period to begin the day after an arbitrator makes an award, rather than the same day; allowing labor and management to ask FLRA to expedite its decisions on conflicts other than unfair labor practices; and extending the filing period if parties have asked for help through the Collaboration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Program, which helps labor and management resolve their differences without turning it over to an arbitrator.

CADRP participated in only 16 cases in fiscal 2009, but managed to resolve or convince the parties to withdraw 15 complaints during that time. FLRA issued 215 decisions during that same period.

Teresa Idris, general counsel for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, praised FLRA for focusing not simply on streamlining the arbitration process, but also on arbitration education -- an area Pope said will be a priority. FLRA expanded its training programs in October, and is conducting training sessions in collaboration with the Merit Systems Protection Board in support of President Obama's executive order creating labor management partnerships.

"This two-pronged approach is in keeping with the FLRA's overall focus on becoming more user-friendly and effective," Idris said.

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said she would examine the new rules closely and submit formal comments, but the proposed regulations "appear to be positive steps towards reducing misuse and abuse of the process." She cautioned, however, that FLRA needs more than regulatory reform.

"What is really needed to improve the work of the FLRA is adequate funding, including funding for staffing," she said. "FLRA staffing has not kept pace with the demonstrated need, causing lengthy delays in decisions related to exceptions filed to an arbitrator's decision. Given the vital role of the FLRA in federal sector labor-management relations, that has to change for the better."

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Health Care For Kids Turning 22 Between Now and January 1?

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:28:18 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management is apparently saying that they can't start covering kids through their 25th birthdays until January, even though some health care companies are starting coverage earlier, because of the way federal law is written. If this changes, we'll let you know. But for now, it looks like you'll need bridge coverage for your children until you can get them covered again in January.

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Internship Intrigue

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:50:02 -0400

One of the things I'm most curious to see about hiring reform, if in fact the details of the plan are announced next week, is what gets done about internships, which are a critical part of candidate recruitment and vetting. There's just so much dissatisfaction with the current, sprawling internship structure. The National Treasury Employees Union is still pursuing legal challenges to the Federal Career Intern Program on the grounds that it bypasses veterans' preference and undermines the competitive hiring process. On the other hand, some groups think the competitive process is keeping promising interns out of government. I don't know how to reconcile the competing concerns. And so far, the Office of Personnel Management hasn't let anything slip about what, if anything, they've figured out about how to do it.

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The Pay Game

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

This week, members of Congress denied themselves an annual pay raise for the second consecutive year. The decision to forgo a $1,600 increase to their salaries in 2011 is a reflection of the government's current fiscal austerity when it comes to pay, including President Obama's proposal to give federal employees and service members a 1.4 percent raise next year. But despite the belt-tightening for both branches of government, the pay rules for executive branch employees and lawmakers are quite different.

Some of those differences are due to the nature of their work. Members of Congress enjoy long recesses, but the demands of their position mean they're on the job even when they're away from Washington. Members of both chambers earn $174,000 annually (House and Senate leaders earn more), and do not receive overtime pay. That's almost as much as senior executives at agencies with certified performance appraisal systems can make -- $179,700 annually. At agencies without such certified systems, SES pay tops out at $165,300.

But unlike senior executives, or other federal employees, Congress is guaranteed an automatic annual pay raise. How did they get that unique guarantee? They gave it to themselves, in a 1989 amendment to ethics reform legislation, in exchange for waiving their ability to accept fees for public speeches. The adoption of an annual raise formula based on the Employment Cost Index was designed to let lawmakers off the hook from having to request pay raises and then defend them.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who backed the adoption of the formula in 1989, defended it in 2009 when Sen. David Vitter, R-La., tried to kill automatic pay raises. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who introduced the Senate bill this year, also has advocated the end of automatic congressional raises. Byrd said settling the matter prevented lawmakers from grandstanding on the pay raise issue. But the claims of fiscal conservatism that accompany lawmakers' votes against their own cause celebre, and the rituals of returning pay raises to the U.S. Treasury, as Feingold does and Byrd suggested, could be interpreted as grandstanding.

Those rituals also illustrate how lawmakers treat federal employees' pay raises versus how they handle their own salaries. Debate over the fiscal 2011 budget -- and the federal pay raise -- hasn't even started yet. When it does, it will be contingent upon which lawmakers are interested in championing federal pay, and how nervous lawmakers are feeling about their job prospects as the 2010 mid-term elections heat up in the fall. And ultimately, President Obama will decide how the raise is divided between base salary increases and locality pay.

Groups that represent the 2 million federal employees waiting for news of their pay raise can lobby Congress for salary increases but have no direct control over the outcome. That lack of control makes rank-and-file federal workers much more like most Americans than members of Congress.

As Feingold says in his position statement on the issue, "Few working Americans have the power to raise their own pay. Congress should exercise that power openly, and subject to regular procedures that include debate, amendment, and a vote on the record."

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Military v. Civilian Compensation

Alyssa Rosenberg — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:57:55 -0400

The Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability were talking civilian v. military pay up on Capitol Hill today, and both organizations have some interesting points to make about compensation. On the question of the effectiveness of recruiting bonuses, CBO sagely points out:

The relationship between specific changes in pay rates and benefits and the amount of recruiting and retention is not clear. In particular, a variety of factors--including economic conditions--may have significant effects on DoD's ability to recruit and retain personnel during a given period.

And GAO takes a good look at the methodology of federal pay studies:

While many studies of active duty military compensation have attempted to assess the value of the compensation package, most did not consider all of the components of compensation offered to servicemembers. CBO, RAND, and CNA have assessed military compensation using varying approaches. All of their studies include some components of compensation--for example, cash compensation beyond basic pay, which includes housing and subsistence allowances, the federal income tax advantage, and, when possible, special and incentive pay. However, these studies did not assess all components of compensation offered to servicemembers.

It's always seemed to me that it's not useful to compare military and civilian pay. The motivations and means of compensation are just too different. Someone who wants to do stem cell research isn't going to be the same person who wants to fly jets. The comparison assumes they're competing for the same pool of people. And I think with some exceptions, of course, they're just not.

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Dating, Damage, and Dossiers

Alyssa Rosenberg — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:12:23 -0400

From the Cable comes the account of Mari Carmen Aponte, President Obama's nominee to be ambassador to El Salvador--who also happens to have dated a Cuban-American who the Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point thought might have been some sort of double agent. The relationship, and her talks with the FBI about it, scuttled another nomination in 1998.

Now, on one hand, I really believe people shouldn't be locked out of government jobs for things they did when they were young. If government is ultimately full of people who spent their whole lives in sanitized preparation to go through a confirmation process, then government is going to have a whole lot less strategic capacity than if it has folks who have had diverse life experiences, who have made mistakes, and who have grown from them.

On the other hand, Aponte was fully grown-up when the relationship happened. It's not like she was 18, and fell for a guy way more sophisticated than she did who concealed a lot of things from her. So I can understand questioning her judgement, especially since she socialized with some of the folks who were involved in Cuba efforts with him. But if the FBI has given her a clean bill of health, intelligence-wise, I think a judgement debate is about as far as it can go. She might have chosen a bad person to date, but it's probably not fair to treat her as if she's actually compromised.

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House votes to forgo congressional pay hike

Alyssa Rosenberg — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The 402-15 vote will keep lawmakers' salaries at $174,000 next year, abandoning a scheduled $1,600 boost. The Senate unanimously passed the bill last week.

"In the midst of the steepest economic decline in 80 years, this is no time for Congress to give itself a pay raise," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. "As someone who takes the deficit seriously, I believe Congress must do everything possible to reduce red ink. If deficit reduction doesn't start with us, where will it start?"

Sen. Russ Feingold spearheaded the movement to scrap the increase. The Wisconsin Democrat has long campaigned against automatic congressional pay raises, and has not accepted a salary increase since coming to Capitol Hill. He has sponsored legislation to force lawmakers to actively introduce pay raises.

President Obama requested a 1.4 percent pay increase for civilian federal employees and members of the military in the fiscal 2011 budget, but lawmakers have yet to take up the proposal.

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