Government Executive - Authors - Jeffrey Neal

How a culture of unaccountability permeates the federal government

Jeffrey Neal — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 06:00:00 -0500

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a series from the National Academy of Public Administration looking at the challenges and urgency of modernizing the civil service. Find the Academy’s full essay here.

The federal government is often criticized for failing to deal effectively with poor performance and misconduct. Accountability – being responsible for tasks, answerable to someone for accomplishing those tasks, and subject to consequences for failure and rewards for exceptional work – is essential for an organization to function effectively.

Criticism directed at the federal government often focuses on career civil servants. Critics point to the low numbers of employees being fired every year and conclude that the number should be higher. They often point to the private sector, which they argue is more effective in dealing with conduct and performance problems.

The truth is that we don’t know what the right number would be, and comparisons to the private sector are based on anecdotal evidence rather than data. Labor Department data regarding private sector terminations lumps terminations for cause and layoffs into a single category, and neither the Labor data nor Office of Personnel Management data on civil servant terminations take into account the number of people who voluntarily leave when it is apparent they may be fired.

A working group of National Academy of Public Administration Fellows has examined this subject as one of several reports on civil service reform. We concluded that calls for firing more career civil servants are missing the mark because they are just a subset of the people in government who should be held accountable for their performance and conduct.

Discussions of accountability typically start and end with the bottom of the food chain: the employees. Employees are expected to do their jobs and that is it. Employees should be held accountable, but their contribution to the process can only occur following actions by the people above them in the executive branch, enabled and overseen by the legislative branch.

When we look at those entities, we find that a culture of unaccountability permeates government. Congress is tasked by the Constitution with the power of the purse, yet for the past half-century virtually every year they have failed to pass appropriations bills and resort to stopgap measures and massive omnibus appropriations bills that are often (as this year) passed many months after the beginning of the fiscal year.

They fail to act on nominations of political appointees, use federal workers as political footballs, and turn constitutional oversight into political theater. A recent Pew Research study showed only 26% of Americans view Congress favorably, but other studies and, most importantly, election results, show that voters like their individual representatives more thanCongress overall, and rarely hold them accountable for getting results.

The executive branch leadership doesn’t fare much better. Presidents, much like Congress, tend to let political needs interfere with effective government. They do not make timely nominations for many political appointments, and political motivations often overlook common sense solutions that might offend a president’s political base. Impeachment is an option, but no president has ever been removed from office via impeachment and none is likely to be in our lifetimes.

Political appointees are, in theory, fully accountable and can be quickly removed with little effort. What they do not have are performance standards, performance ratings, and any real means of being held accountable for getting results. Absent a scandal, they typically serve until they decide to leave or the administration changes.

Career senior executives are responsible for formulating and carrying out policy, working with the White House and the Congress, the public, and various interest groups. The 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey results show that only half of federal workers believe their senior leaders generate high levels of motivation and commitment, and only 62%believe their senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity. Accountability for career executives is much like that of political appointees – theory and execution are very different. Most receive high performance ratings and terminations of senior executives are exceedingly rare. In fiscal 2022, the most recent year for which full-year data is available, OPM’s Fedscope shows that only six of the more than 7,200 career SES members were terminated for conduct or performance.

Supervisors and managers, the group responsible for day-to-day leadership of the career workforce, receive the same types of performance appraisals as other workers. Few supervisors are removed for poor performance or misconduct (just over 1/10 of 1% in FY 2022), and supervisory probationary periods have not proven effective in weeding out bad supervisors.

Rank-and-file employees, the group most people think of when they refer to federal workers, actually carry out the mission of agencies. They have probationary periods when hired, annual performance appraisals, and can be fired for poor performance or misconduct. When that happens, employees can file grievances, appeals and Equal Employment Opportunity complaints. Their appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board are typically resolved in favor of the agency. Accountability for this group is typically one-way. Employees are given performance standards which they may or may not have substantively participated in developing, and then evaluated on their performance. Few agencies offer meaningful participation in developing objectives, and employees are often left on their own to identify the connection between their work and the objectives of their agencies. About one-half of 1% of such employees were terminated for performance or misconduct in FY 2022.

What we have is a government where people at the bottom are subject to criticism that they do not do their jobs, often from those whom the American people clearly believe do not do their own jobs. The biblical admonition that “he who is without sin should cast the first stone” clearly does not apply.

The National Academy of Public Administration has published a paper on this issue that identifies levels of accountability and addresses the culture of unaccountability that hampers the government’s operations. We identified a number of potential solutions for every level except the president and members of Congress. For those folks, the solution is in the hands of voters. The good news is that the solutions that do not require a ballot box also do not require Congress to change the law. They can be implemented with current civil service law and can be implemented quickly. More on this is available from the Academy report.

Jeffrey Neal, former chief human capital officer for the Homeland Security Department, is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

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The Federal Government Can Expand Opportunities for Veterans and Simplify Hiring, Too

Jeffrey Neal and Angela Bailey — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 06:00:00 -0400

Editor’s note: This is the third in a five-part series from the National Academy of Public Administration looking at the challenges and urgency of modernizing the civil service. Find the Academy’s full essay on the merit system here.

Would it surprise you to learn that not all veterans receive a preference for hiring? Or that there are more than 100 hiring authorities, including some for specific agencies to deal with specific issues, and others designed with the sole intent of helping agencies navigate the complex federal hiring rules, including the application of veterans’ preference?

The federal hiring process is a culmination of decades of litigation, legislation, special interests and perceived inequities. To fully appreciate just how complex it is, look at the 351-page Delegated Examining Operations Handbook from the Office of Personnel Management. While Human Resources Specialists must have a thorough understanding of all of the content in the handbook, hiring managers are often left scratching their heads over the guidance they receive to hire qualified people, and applicants are even more puzzled by a process that makes one feel that a PhD in astrophysics is needed to navigate what should be a simple “click and apply” process.

The problem is neither the guidance nor the people who wrote it, but rather the processes the handbook describes. What reasonable person would set out to design a system that confuses applicants, hiring managers, and even the human resources specialists who must interpret these 351 pages of rules and agency policies that govern hiring?

The National Academy of Public Administration strongly supports the goal of simplifying the competitive hiring process, while also ensuring significant agency hiring for our nation’s veterans. If we want to base hiring on merit and on the mission requirements of agencies, veterans’ preference as we know it does not do the job. That process might be worth it if it provided opportunities for all veterans, but it does not. It leaves out many veterans, focuses on preference rather than mission, and creates most of the complexity in the hiring process.

Our Working Group of Fellows strongly supports providing preference to veterans in a way that opens opportunities for all veterans and people with derived Veterans’ preference (such as surviving spouses) and ensures the hiring of the most qualified individuals based on their experience, skills, education, and performance history.

Generally, veterans who did not receive a Purple Heart or serve during wartime or a recognized military campaign do not receive preference, nor do those who retire at the rank of Major or equivalent and above. Veterans who apply for most professional positions also do not have preference. Veterans who serve right out of high school and exit the service during their 20s have preference, but few federal jobs are targeted at their skill sets and even fewer offer significant promotion opportunities. As a result, young veterans still suffer from unemployment at twice the rate of older veterans and all non-veterans. Moreover, once hired by the federal government, veterans leave government service at a significantly higher rate than non-veterans. Most veterans who enter military service now will not have preference under the existing rules.

The Solution

We believe the best solution is to simplify the competitive hiring process and provide veterans’ preference via a special hiring authority for all veterans, except those who retire at the rank of Major or equivalent and above, coupled with statutory requirements to develop and execute veteran hiring programs in all agencies with more than 500 employees.

This proposal would replace the current approach to veterans’ preference by granting every agency special hiring authority for veterans with an honorable or general discharge for all positions for which they are qualified at grades GS-15 or equivalent and below. Veterans would also be allowed to apply for merit promotion announcements regardless of the area of consideration in such announcements. OPM would issue regulations to implement the new processes to ensure that job opportunities for veterans are announced on job boards, at hiring fairs, on college campuses, or at other venues that would provide opportunities for substantial numbers of Veterans to apply. Hires would be based on merit. The extensive “Public Notice,” as prescribed in 5 U.S.C. § 3327 and § 3330, would not be required.

To ensure that agencies do not stop hiring veterans, our proposal requires agencies to maintain at least the 2022 percentage of veterans in their workforce, unless granted an exception by OPM due to a lack of qualified Veterans in the labor market or a national emergency. Given that the new hiring authority simplifies and greatly expands opportunities for veteran hiring, there should be few excuses for not maintaining at least the current numbers of veterans in the workforce.

Agencies with 500 or more employees would be required to establish full-time veteran employment coordinators, reporting to the agency chief human capital officer, who would be responsible for developing, implementing, and administering a comprehensive veteran employment program in the agency. The 500-employee threshold covers more than 99%t of federal jobs. Agencies would be held accountable for exercising this new authority and providing significantly enhanced opportunities for veterans. We recognize the special debt owed to veterans whose service resulted in a disability and propose a statutory requirement to identify barriers to employing disabled veterans and ways to create opportunities to hire and provide career advancement opportunities to disabled veterans. Agencies would be directed to establish developmental programs that would allow veterans (such as infantry soldiers) whose service-developed skills may not translate easily to civilian employment to enter career programs with significant promotion potential.

An agency that backslides in veteran employment could be placed on an improvement plan overseen by OPM. We do not propose changing the use of Veterans’ preference in reductions in force.

While we do not propose immediately eliminating the plethora of competitive hiring authorities, most would no longer be necessary. Replacement of the current veterans’ preference process with the special hiring authority would dramatically simplify the competitive hiring process. Over time, OPM and Congress could eliminate most of the 102 or more hiring authorities currently in place, leaving a far less complex hiring process that puts merit front and center.

Benefits

This approach simplifies hiring for everyone. It enhances and expands veterans’ preference by providing a special hiring authority for veterans with honorable or general discharges (except those who retired at the rank of Major or equivalent and above). It also provides protections to ensure agencies do not backslide in their employment of veterans. At the same time, the proposal would eliminate the maze of hiring processes and bureaucratic hurdles jobseekers and agencies must currently navigate. Complexity would be swept away, replaced with an easy-to-understand process that puts merit front and center.

Jeffrey Neal and Angela Bailey are former chief human capital officers for the Department of Homeland Security, and Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration.

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The Challenge of Modernizing the Civil Service

Jeffrey Neal — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The federal civil service, with its merit-based foundation, is essential to delivery of critical services to the American people. Hiring and retaining skilled workers are essential aspects of the civil service that need immediate attention.

More than four years ago, the National Academy of Public Administration issued No Time to Wait, Building a Public Service for the 21st Century, a report that identified five challenges that pose substantial risks to effective government. Successfully meeting those challenges with civil service rules that are 74 years old is just not going to happen.

Building on three principles – Mission First, Principles Always, and Accountability for Both – No Time to Wait made specific recommendations to improve hiring, accountability, retention, and effectiveness of the civil service.

Sadly, we have been waiting four years and virtually nothing has been done. Partisan politics seems to make meaningful civil service reform impossible. Rather than more moderate voices on both sides of the aisle combining to lead reform, those on the extremes dominate debate.

Should there even be a debate over the size of government? Sure. But reasonable people should also agree that a government of any size must be effective for the American people.

Calls for civil service reform are not new. Everyone knows that the federal hiring processes are a nightmare that no one would deliberately design. The process is so miserable that it appears to be designed to see how desperately an applicant wants to work for the government. Government pay is equally opaque, and the combination of a byzantine hiring process and inflexible pay make it difficult for the government to recruit top talent, especially in high demand occupations. There is also a widespread belief that agencies neither adequately reward high performers, nor deal effectively with poor performers. Even common-sense solutions that could satisfy most reasonable people have not made their way through the politics and bureaucracy.

So why does common sense not prevail? Why does a system that many believe simply does not meet the challenges of a 21st century workplace continue without significant change? Discussions with interested parties typically lead to the same result – interest groups agree reform is necessary, but partisan and interest group differences lead to widely diverging solutions. Most groups insist their favorite aspects of the existing rules must remain untouched. There is no consensus on specific changes that would comprise comprehensive civil service reform.

Tackling Critical Issues to Address the Most Compelling Federal Workforce Challenges

A working group of Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration, with government HR and management expertise, including former career and political executives, concluded that proposing a comprehensive reform of the civil service would be futile. Instead, the group decided to adopt a targeted approach to modernization that focuses on issues of broad agreement that could address the hiring, pay and accountability issues that comprise the biggest weaknesses in the civil service.

Over the coming four months, the Academy will release a series of white papers that address these challenges and our recommendations. We will start with the Merit System and the future of work, and the reasons that a merit-based civil service is essential for a federal government that serves the needs of the people. Next we will bring our recommendations on hiring, along with a proposal (including specific legislative language) to modernize veterans’ preference in a way that dramatically simplifies federal hiring while providing more employment and advancement opportunities for Veterans.

In the third installment we will address pay and job classification, with specific legislative language that would speed the adoption of modern pay practices and provide agencies with more tools to compete effectively for talent in the rapidly evolving 21st century workplace. In May we will address accountability, including the questionable data comparing federal employee and private sector accountability, and the challenges of rewarding good performers and dealing effectively with poor performance.

We believe we must balance the compelling need for modernization with the political realities. We will propose reforms that can gain acceptance across a broad spectrum of interest groups that are active in civil service issues, along with bipartisan support in Congress. We cannot wait until the government faces a crisis without the talent to solve it – that will be too late.

Jeffrey Neal, former chief human capital officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

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Creating a 21st Century Federal Workforce

Jeffrey Neal — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 15:18:18 -0400

A key element of the president’s management agenda is “Developing a Workforce for the 21st Century.” Clearly, the more than 2 million federal workers can make or break any reforms. The PMA includes proposals for human capital management reforms, strategic workforce management, talent acquisition, continuous learning and agile operations. None of the proposals are unreasonable, nor are they partisan. They are simply sound management practices that are essential for any kind of large-scale government transformation to succeed.

But being reasonable and nonpartisan does not guarantee that the government has the capability to execute the proposals. One essential element that can stand in the way is the federal government’s human capital infrastructure. Does the HR community have the capability to do what the president has proposed? And do laws, regulations and practices provide a framework for success?

The answer is probably no. The federal human capital infrastructure is primarily transaction oriented, and there has been no successful large-scale human capital reform since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.

Agencies have underfunded their human resources offices, and the Office of Personnel Management has focused on asking agencies to do more rather than updating their own outdated regulations. There are three steps that the administration should take if it hopes to make the PMA’s goal of a 21st century workforce a reality.

1. Review and update OPM regulations to provide the most flexibility allowed under the law.

While observers typically point to federal laws as the barrier to good hiring, the reality is that much of what gets in the way is contained in OPM regulations rather than in statute. That means OPM could rewrite many of them with an eye toward simplification, flexibility, and modernization. For example, the job classification process is so slow, rigid and confusing that potential job seekers may have no idea what kinds of jobs they should be looking at. There are as many as 400 different job series, with multiple grades for each. Add to that job qualification standards that are often outdated and unnecessarily complex, and it is not just job seekers who are frustrated. So are federal managers who want to move employees around to better use their skills and meet mission requirements.

The grades in the General Schedule are prescribed by law, but the hundreds of jobs series and the qualifications standards were mostly created by OPM. That means OPM has the power to reduce the number of job series and the complexity of the classification and qualifications processes, with no legislation required. There are other steps that can be taken under authorities granted to the Director of OPM.

2. Pursue statutory relief to modernize federal hiring, beginning with veteran preference.

The federal hiring process is complicated, slow and burdensome. Virtually no one is happy with it, and it is a substantial barrier to the government’s ability to recruit top talent. While the private sector is content to recruit using resumés, the government continues to demand lengthy job applications and uses dozens of hiring authorities that leave managers and applicants alike confused and frustrated.

One of the chief drivers of the complexity of the hiring process is veteran preference. Veteran preference has been a requirement of the civil service system since President George Washington first considered military service for appointments in his Administration. The objective of recognizing military service with preference in hiring continues to justifiably receive strong support from the public and the Congress. It has also resulted in the profusion of hiring authorities that agencies use, most of which are designed to allow agencies to bypass veteran preference.

A dramatically different method of providing preference to veterans could lead to a radically simplified federal hiring process. The current approach screens out almost all nonveterans from many jobs and leads agencies to pursue simplified hiring authorities that give them greater control over hiring. Congress could authorize OPM to replace the current veteran preference rules with a blanket “direct hire” authority that would allow any agency to hire any veteran for any job for which the veteran is qualified. That approach might improve hiring opportunities for veterans, while eliminating the plethora of hiring authorities that complicate hiring.

In addition to simplified veteran preference, Congress could expand “demonstration project” authority to enable agencies to test human capital practices that are working in the private sector and in state and local government. Such practices, once proven effective in demonstration projects, should routinely be made available to every agency.

3. Modernize federal HR offices.

Federal HR offices tend to have a transaction focus, based in large part on the clerk-to-specialist career path of many HR practitioners and the crushing workload that many of them experience. With the requirement that they understand and apply hundreds of rules for hiring, job classification, and every other aspect of human capital management, it is a wonder that federal HR offices succeed to the degree they do. Most are so busy just keeping the basics working that they have no time to focus on strategic human capital issues.

HR practitioners have pursued the holy grail of “strategic advisor to managers” for decades, but the inability to keep the hiring process running smoothly means many of them will never reach that goal. If that is not enough, we can add the antiquated systems that many are using, including some systems written decades ago in COBOL. Even if the Congress could muster the bipartisan support for reformed federal hiring processes, there is little certainty that an unreformed HR community would be able to execute reformed processes. They will need better training, adequate resources, and modern HR systems to have any chance of successfully making the transition from transaction processors to strategic advisors.

Modernization of the government’s human capital legal and regulatory frameworks are essential underpinnings of a 21st century workforce. Building a professional HR capability is equally essential.

Jeffrey Neal is a senior vice president for ICF, and formerly served as chief human capital officer for the Homeland Security Department and chief human resources officer for the Defense Logistics Agency. This piece originally appeared in Perspectives on the President’s Management Agenda, published by the National Academy of Public Administration. It is republished here with permission.

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How to Get Millennials into Government

Jeffrey Neal and Kris Tremaine — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 12:40:07 -0400

Millennials remain one of the most socially-minded generations of Americas. Still, their presence in government—an institution that at its core is designed to promote the general welfare—lags far behind the private sector. Critically, millennials comprise less than 10 percent of information technology employees in the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s FedScope data. They note that more than one-third of the federal government’s IT workers are age 55 or older. In fact, more federal tech workers are over age 60 than are under 35, governmentwide. For the public sector to move into the digital age, agencies must recruit and retain young tech talent by recognizing what millennials want in a workplace.

Most millennials go to work for the private sector and avoid the government’s antiquated systems and rigid hierarchy. But there’s no better generation to help lead agencies’ shift to digitization than the one with both savvy technological capabilities and the passion for social good. Agencies can court millennials for public service by taking these critical steps:

Focus on meaningful opportunities. Not every project needs to be (or can be) a mission to Mars, but that doesn’t mean other initiatives and developments shouldn’t be inspiring. Millennials believe in using technology to change the world. Agencies with inspiring missions, like the National Park Service, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institutes of Health, should focus their recruitment messaging on the unique opportunities they offer. Other agencies can market how they protect the nation, serve disadvantaged people, and protect the environment.

Create hiring authorities targeted to recent college grads. America’s millennials seek mission-driven employers that offer purpose-driven career opportunities with geographic flexibility. Arguably, there is no company or organization more mission-driven than the government and none that is in as many countries, states and localities. But public sector opportunities aren’t always made visible to recent grads like private sector and consultancy jobs are. In the same way the CIO Council coordinated hiring fairs where people could interview and be offered employment on the spot, agencies should more regularly make themselves present to engage with millennials through internship programs, career fairs, and leadership seminars. New recruitment efforts should complement current programs for military veterans and draw from their best practices.

Facilitate open communication. While agencies often work in silos, millennials are keen on design thinking. It’s important to strategically bring the right people from all facets of a project together in a room to produce the best result, regardless of organizational structure. In doing so, agencies are creating diverse skill sets at the office level that will lead to new conversations, solutions, and approaches to the challenges at hand. Creating the appropriate physical space for such collaboration is a good first step.

Preserve and create perks that address millennials’ concerns. From student loan repayment programs to casual dress codes, the public sector is already offering many of the perks millennials are seeking—they just don’t know it. Agencies must be bold in communicating their diverse (and often unknown) employee benefits, like recruitment bonuses and retention incentives. And new perks don’t have to break the bank. Creating office community spaces, offering leadership development opportunities, and encouraging staff to pursue extracurricular activities are all micro changes that make a big impact.

To help lead America’s public sector modernization, the government needs young, eager people to contribute at every level. Agency recruitment, training, professional development, and retention programs need to be revamped for the demands of today’s increasingly millennial workforce. We’re approaching a critical moment when baby boomers will retire en masse, but generation X is far too small to fill these gaps alone.

Younger people want to gain experience, do work that improves the world, and enjoy themselves along the way. The government can be a place for young professionals to do all three. Millennials will make up the core of the nation’s workforce for the next several decades. They are well-suited to bring their tech familiarity and social awareness to government agencies. To get there, the public sector needs to modernize thinking around recruiting and retention efforts.

Kris Tremaine is a Senior Vice President at ICF, leading the firm's federal digital, communications, and human capital practice.

Jeffrey Neal is a senior vice president at ICF, former chief human capital officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and publisher of the blog ChiefHRO.com.

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The Case for Moving Agencies Out of Washington

Jeffrey Neal — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 12:10:33 -0500

Washington is the seat of government, but it is not home to the majority of federal workers. The District of Columbia itself has only 170,000 federal workers. California has almost as many (143,000). Texas is home to 115,000. So, when folks say they want to move agencies out of Washington, what many of them really mean is they want to move agency headquarters functions out of D.C.

Is that a good idea? Absolutely yes. And absolutely not. It depends on why you do it, which agency headquarters are moved, and where they go.

Let's look at some of the reasons why federal agencies might move in the first place, because those drive the selection of agencies to relocate, and where they might go:

If the reason is to maintain continuity of government during a crisis, then maybe we should move large chunks of the Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury, Justice and State departments. They could move just about anywhere in the continental United States, but they most likely need to be near major cities with adequate transportation and housing.
If the reason is to put agencies where their work is located, then maybe we should move more of Agriculture and Interior to the Midwest and West.
If the reason is just to save money, forget about it. The cost of disrupting agencies and moving or separating a lot of people are so great it’s unlikely taxpayers would see any savings in the near future.
If connecting agencies to the people they serve is the intent, then it would probably be best to relocate agencies that have the most direct interaction with the people. That means the IRS, the Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a few others.
If the reason is just to mess with government, then it really doesn’t matter what agencies move or where they go.

Just as there are good reasons to move some agency headquarters, there are some great reasons not to. No one would argue that interagency communications and collaboration are as effective as they should be. Imagine how it would be if those agencies were located all over the country. A radically dispersed government may be less effective and less responsive to the people. Moving Social Security to Dallas or Topeka or Dayton might make it more responsive to the people in one of those cities, but how does that make them any more responsive to the people of Seattle, Chicago, Cleveland or Atlanta? If the intent is to "drain the swamp," do we really think that the lobbyists would not pick up and move to wherever the agencies they want to influence are located?

The disruption that massive relocation of agencies would create makes it more likely that those agencies will be less able to meet their mission requirements. From a continuity of government perspective, it might make it harder for an enemy to wipe out the leadership of most agencies, but it might also pin a target on more cities. While we are on the topic of disasters, what about natural disasters? Would fear of hurricanes and earthquakes prohibit locating any agency headquarters in Florida? Or Texas? Or California? Or New Jersey? Or Louisiana?

I understand the motives of folks who talk about moving government agencies. Sometimes it is for good reasons, sometimes for political reasons. I have some experience in moving government work out of the Washington metro area. When I was HR Director for the Defense Logistics Agency, I relocated headquarters human resources support to Columbus, Ohio, and New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. The move was driven by the difficulty in hiring skilled HR professionals in the Washington area and the high grades that competition for talent created here. It was a good move and I would do it again. It was driven by effectiveness and efficiency, not politics.

The bottom line is that relocating agencies is a big deal. It should be done for valid reasons, and only after extensive analysis of the options and the likely outcomes. And it should not be done by politicians. If there is to be any serious consideration of moving agencies, it should be done by a non-partisan commission. That commission should conduct public hearings, hear from experts who can outline the consequences of options, and deliberate in public, rather than behind closed doors. If that happens, we might find that we should move parts of the government. We might find that it is a bad idea. If we are not willing to make decisions based on good government rather than good politics, let's just leave agencies where they are.

Jeffrey Neal is a senior vice president at ICF, former chief human capital officer for the Homeland Security Department, and publisher of the blog ChiefHRO.com.

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To RIF or Not to RIF

Jeffrey Neal — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 12:00:00 -0400

Reduction in force is a term that frightens most federal workers. It means uncertainty, potential loss of a job, disruption, and usually more questions than answers. Politicians (even the ones who want to shrink the federal government) oppose them. So do managers, unions, and most people who write about government issues. Most agencies have been “successful” in recent years in avoiding RIFs. They have used attrition, hiring slowdowns and buyouts to reduce their workforce without resorting to a RIF. Most people will tell you a RIF is something to be avoided at all costs.

During my federal career I developed an early understanding of the RIF process when I faced a reduction in force in my first federal job. I immersed myself in the subject when I had to conduct several RIFs over the next 30 years. The last large scale RIF I conducted abolished 700 occupied jobs in a Navy command of 3,200 employees. With that background, I should join the chorus that says RIFs are always bad and attrition is always better. The problem is that it is just not true. Sometimes the alternatives are worse. In fact, sometimes the alternatives do much more damage and disrupt the organization far longer than a RIF might.

Let’s start with that Navy RIF. How could abolishing 700 jobs be better than downsizing through attrition? The command was the Naval Aviation Depot in Jacksonville, Florida. The Navy had more aviation depots than it needed and everyone knew one or more would be closed via the Base Closure and Realignment process. Our conclusion was that Jacksonville would most likely fall victim to BRAC because we were too expensive to compete effectively for work. The NADEP’s senior leaders and the leaders of the five unions that represented the bulk of the workforce agreed that costs had to come down if the command had any hope of remaining viable. We agreed to restructure and abolish 700 jobs. I led the RIF team.

The process was tortuous. We had families in which both breadwinners lost their jobs. The “bumping” and “retreating” during the RIF caused the number of people affected by reassignment, change to lower grade, or separation to swell to over 1,500. The process was expensive, painful and took months to complete.

The outcome? The 1993 BRAC Commission closed three of the six NADEPs (Alameda, California; Norfolk, Virginia; and Pensacola, Florida). Additional work was assigned to Jacksonville, and the NADEP grew from the 2,500 jobs it had after the RIF to a peak employment of more than 5,000 jobs. In recent years it has downsized again, but still has more than 4,000 civilian and contractor jobs (it is now called Fleet Readiness Center Southeast). None of that would have happened if the organization had not made itself more competitive by reducing its costs and doing it quickly.

Most downsizing is not as dramatic as the story of NADEP Jacksonville. Usually it is smaller numbers and is driven by budget cuts or mission changes. The first choice of solutions is generally to let attrition take care of the problem. If normal attrition is not adequate, agencies accelerate it by offering buyouts. There are some problems with that approach. Here are just a few:

Buyouts are not what they used to be. When buyouts were first introduced in the 1994 Workforce Restructuring Act, employees were offered up to $25,000 to voluntarily leave, either by retiring or resigning. Twenty years later, buyouts are still $25,000, even though they would have to have increased to $39,300 to keep pace with inflation (as measured by the consumer price index). The $25K that looked like a good deal 20 years ago looks a lot less desirable today.

Buyouts are usually not targeted effectively. The intent of buyouts was to (a) accelerate turnover to maximize savings and (b) target where that turnover occurred so agencies would lose people in the jobs and grades they no longer wanted and keep the ones they needed to keep. In the interests of “fairness” many agencies simply offer blanket buyouts first-come, first-served. The acceleration factor remains, but the targeting is lost. What was intended as a precision tool for making targeted reductions becomes a blunt instrument. Agencies often lose the people and skills they need to retain and keep the people and skills they need to lose. What is touted as fairness is often leadership cowardice and unwillingness to make the tough decisions leaders are paid to make. The wrong jobs are vacated, the wrong people leave, and buyouts just help an agency get to a bad outcome faster.

Rumors of buyouts often stop attrition. People are not stupid. When they hear their agency may be contemplating buyouts, those who are planning to leave but have options will wait until the offer is made.

Attrition leaves staffing decisions to chance. Rather than making intelligent decisions based upon specific needs that are identified via a thorough workforce planning process, jobs are abolished based upon who chooses to leave. It is not a well-thought-out process, it does not take workload and required skills into consideration, and it does not necessarily encourage the best talent to stay.

The most marketable people are among the first to leave. When an agency is struggling and needs to downsize, the most talented people are the ones who can more easily find other employment and are among the first to get out.

When all of the above are combined, the result might achieve the desired downsizing numbers, but with the wrong skill mix and little or no capacity to quickly recover. The effect on mission may be immediate and long-lasting. The effects on morale can be equally damaging. Imagine an organization that allows too many people to exit from critical jobs. The work has to continue, usually with little relief on volume of work, so the remaining staff become overtaxed and stressed. They burn out quickly, morale tanks and turnover in the most critical (and overworked) skills increases. The outcome of not making the hard decisions is that the survivors pay for the bad decisions for years.

There is clearly a better way. Agencies can downsize with less impact on productivity and more control over the outcomes. Here are a few guidelines for downsizing in a planned and predictable way:

Develop a workforce plan that includes workload and required competencies, tempered by the realities of the budget.
Consult with the union(s) representing the workforce early and include them in the planning process.
Freeze hiring (including internal promotions) in all surplus occupations for the grades that are surplus.
Identify cross-placement opportunities for people in surplus jobs, based upon realistic assessments of the competency match between the excess jobs and existing and anticipated vacancies.
Target buyouts and early retirement and limit them only to positions that the plan identifies as surplus.
Never, ever offer across-the-board buyouts and early retirement with a first-come, first-served way of meeting the overall reduction number.
Be prepared to deal with external stakeholders (such as Congress) with a clear and convincing explanation of the agency’s planning process and intended outcomes.

When agencies take these steps and still have more employees than they can retain in surplus occupations, they should consider whether a thoroughly planned and executed reduction in force is a better option than letting attrition takes its course. Although the RIF process has perils of its own, it may be a better course of action than random attrition, depending on how long the agency has to get to its downsizing targets and the degree of flexibility it will have to fill critical vacancies in the interim.

If the agency can use attrition only for surplus positions, but continue fill critical jobs with critical skills, attrition is the best choice. If they have no flexibility and have to do mindless cuts where virtually no jobs can be filled until the target is met, they are better off with a RIF. It allows officials to target surplus jobs, place people based on a clearly defined set of reduction in force regulations, getting the reduction over and done and letting the organization and its workforce move on. If an agency gets to the point of conducting a RIF, it can take steps (such as retraining and outplacement) to reduce the number of people who are involuntarily separated, and it can offer many outplacement options to the affected employees.

A RIF is not a great experience and it should never be the first tool to pull from the agency toolbox. But it should be in that toolbox and should not be a forbidden subject. It is far more effective and less dangerous than random attrition, untargeted buyouts and early retirement.

Jeffrey Neal is a senior vice president for ICF International and founder of the blog ChiefHRO.com. He was formerly the chief human capital officer at the Homeland Security Department and chief human resources officer at the Defense Logistics Agency.

(Image via Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com)

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The Future of Federal Service Doesn’t Have to Be So Bleak

Jeffrey Neal — Wed, 14 May 2014 16:00:00 -0400

Absent real reform, the future of the civil service is bleak. The workforce is aging and the government is not the first choice of employers for many recent graduates. Pay was frozen for three years and no one can agree on whether federal pay is too high, too low or just right. Federal workers have endured shutdowns and being used as a political football by their enemies and friends alike. Some politicians have no problem calling federal law enforcement officers “thugs” and Transportation Security Officers “molesters.” It is enough to make the term “bureaucrat” sound like a compliment. Add to that an antiquated General Schedule pay system designed when Harry Truman was president and hiring processes that seem designed to see how desperately someone wants a job, and there is little wonder the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey shows morale has been dropping in most agencies for the past three years. Maybe “bleak” is the optimistic view of the future.

We have heard a lot in recent weeks from members of Congress and the Partnership for Public Service about the future of the civil service and possible reform. House Republicans called for a 10 percent reduction in the workforce, while the Partnership published reform ideas it hoped would “get the debate started.” Federal unions were quick to join the debate, arguing that the proposals are flawed, unnecessary and dangerous. The unions oppose workforce reductions and believe any attempt at civil service reform will repeat the mistakes of the Defense Department’s National Security Personnel System—a pay-for-performance system that weakened collective bargaining so much that a U.S. district judge said it “eviscerated” bargaining. A similar Homeland Security Department program called Max-HR died before it started.

Our history on civil service reform is anything but encouraging. If civil service reform was too hard in the past, imagine how it will work today when political polarization has pushed us to the point where it is almost impossible to get agreement on even the most uncontroversial issues.

Many people I talk with tell me civil service reform is just too hard to do and we should give up on the idea until the political situation improves. When I hear that I think of President Kennedy’s call to go to the moon. He said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” In our political climate, civil service reform might as well be a trip to the moon. But let’s not forget that less than seven years after Kennedy’s challenge, Neil Armstrong (a federal employee) walked on the moon.

We are still a great nation that is capable of doing hard things. The President’s 2015 Budget included proposals to strengthen the federal workforce and recommended the creation of a congressionally chartered Commission on Federal Public Service Reform. Democrats and Republicans alike rejected the president’s proposal. With such obvious need for civil service reform, is there any way we can avoid the political rancor? Is it safe to contemplate reforms in our broken political environment?

The answer to both questions is yes. Even the most anti-government crusaders agree that government must do some things and do them well. The 730,000-person Defense civilian workforce is critical to our national defense. No reasonable person wants to eliminate the 60,000 Customs and Border Protection employees, 35,000 at the FBI, 62,000 at the Social Security Administration, or countless others. In fact, although there is widespread support for cutting government, there is little agreement on what to cut—elimination or substantial reduction of any specific federal agency always draws howls of protest.

Even the most conservative vision of government would require more than a million employees to carry out the work that is critical to national security and our economic well-being. We clearly need a civil service system that allows government to recruit and retain the talent to carry out those essential tasks. That means reform is necessary.

Any hope of successful reform will rely on minimizing the political posturing and gamesmanship that accompanies discussions of the civil service. Some optimists believe reform is possible through the regular order in Congress. They believe Democrats and Republicans can put aside their differences and come together to make significant civil service reform a reality. Really? Democrats and Republicans can barely come together to pass legislation that both parties support. How can we expect them to agree on the details on civil service reform when their views are poles apart? Our recent experience with a deficit-cutting committee that had the gun of sequester pointed at its head resulted in the trigger being pulled, even though virtually everyone agreed it was bad for the country.

The only alternative is to remove reform from the normal legislative process. One model we should consider was created for military base closures. The Base Closure and Realignment Act created a presidentially appointed commission to review and make recommendations for closures and realignments. The commission was designed to take the fingerprints of Congress off the process and allow such a toxic subject to be addressed. The BRAC Commission made recommendations that the president could not change without their approval. Once the president gave his comments to the commission, it gave him a final list of closures and realignments. The president could approve or reject the entire list. Congress could not modify the list and it was implemented unless they passed a joint resolution to stop it. The requirement for a joint resolution to stop the process made filibusters irrelevant.

The BRAC process was not flawless and had its detractors, but it provided a less political, more thoughtful and deliberate approach to an issue Congress was unable to address through the regular order. We should use a similar approach for recommendations for civil service reform, including replacement of the General Schedule. Congress should pass and the president should sign legislation creating a commission on the public service. Members should include representatives from government, academia, the private sector and organized labor, and should have a professional staff that includes experts in human resources, labor economics, industrial/organizational psychology and other necessary disciplines.

Rather than the open-ended scope proposed in the president’s budget, the commission should focus on job classification, performance, pay and hiring processes. Collective bargaining, the issue that brought down NSPS and Max-HR, should be off the table. The commission should begin its work at the beginning of the next administration, and the chairperson should be a recognized and respected authority on government management from the political party that is not in the White House. The commission should have ample time—two years or more—to conduct its research, obtain feedback from the public and stakeholders, and make recommendations.

We are not in a crisis today, but if we fail to modernize the civil service, we are likely to find the government unable to recruit and retain the caliber of talent it needs to protect our national security, borders and economic well-being. That would constitute a crisis and an outcome that should be unacceptable to anyone who cares about the future of America.

Jeffrey Neal, former chief human capital officer for the Homeland Security Department, is a senior vice president for ICF International and writes the blog ChiefHRO.com.

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An 'A' for Austerity

Jeffrey Neal — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

In 2010, the U.S. government’s outlays decreased for the first time since 1960, ending the luxury of ever-increasing budgets enjoyed by presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. The recession that began in 2007 has ushered in a new era of austerity that will require a substantial rethinking of priorities by congressional leaders and the administration.

While political leaders struggle with top-line budgets, federal managers from first-level supervisors to career senior executives and political appointees must find ways to operate in a budget landscape most have never experienced. Managers
who have too much on their plates are finding the plates are getting smaller too.

This austerity demands innovative steps to rejuvenate programs, motivate teams and achieve levels of performance that many think aren’t possible. While that may seem like a fantasy to some, ambitious leaders have proved time and time again that it can be done.

The Defense Logistics Agency, the Pentagon’s combat support agency, is a great example. Ten years ago, DLA was in the midst of a transformation that would challenge virtually every aspect of its operations. Costs were 24.7 percent of its revenue, and DLA was using antiquated technology that had to be replaced. The business systems modernization project would require significant training, job reclassification, labor negotiations, organizational redesign and change management. Yet the human resources operation struggled to meet basic personnel management needs. Average time to fill jobs was 111 days, customer satisfaction among hiring managers was abysmal and costs were excessive. DLA had to face both the internal and external challenges and transform itself into an enterprise that could meet the needs of warfighters in a far more cost-effective manner.

While the agency’s logisticians and information technology professionals led the effort to replace the business systems, as DLA’s chief human resources officer I was responsible for finding better ways to manage the workforce. Working with the agency’s most experienced field HR director, we designed a new construct for human resources. We promised to deliver the transformation in a year, dramatically improving performance and reducing costs by 25 percent. Skeptics were plentiful and vocal. Using the favorite tools of bureaucrats—fear, delays and studies—they argued DLA should fix its problems without drastic changes. They pushed to delay the implementation until there was less going on in the agency and, of course, to study the matter more. Naysayers said a major overhaul was too risky, given DLA’s complex business systems modernization program, as well as the post-Sept. 11 demands of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In short, they were using the very issues that drove transformation as reasons why the agency
should not reinvent itself.

Delay, unnecessary studies and an aversion to risk-taking are all too common. Fixing large-scale problems requires significant action. Clearly, it was in everyone’s interest to keep moving and make the seismic shifts necessary to deliver the HR services DLA needed. The agency director agreed and gave the green light over the objections of several generals, admirals and senior executives.

Eleven months later the HR transformation was done. Seven offices were consolidated into two. DLA eliminated dysfunctional organizational constructs, reengineered processes and provided employees with customer service training. The agency saved $4 million in the same year reforms were implemented and reduced ongoing costs by 28 percent. The average time to fill vacancies shrank from 111 days to 62. DLA eliminated 117 positions, with only three involuntary separations. Customer satisfaction rose to record levels, an average of 4.7 on a five-point scale. The HR operation was so successful the Defense Department designated it a high-performing organization and exempted it from public-private competition. That led other Defense agencies to seek out DLA as an HR service provider. The number of employees it serves more than doubled, to more than 50,000.

This success was based on several key factors. The director gave his team top-level support. DLA took the risk of walking away from the service-delivery model around which its personnel system was built. The agency addressed the needs of employees who would be adversely affected and provided placement assistance. Most important, leaders did not let bureaucratic
inertia get in their way.

You may be asking, “What happened to DLA’s overall transformation effort?” The agency reduced costs from 24.7 percent to 15 percent by 2005 and to less than 14 percent today. Sales and services grew by 70 percent and the workforce shrank to its lowest level since 1963. DLA fielded a superior enterprise business system and retired several legacy systems. With 2011 annual sales of more than $46 billion, DLA would rank 52^nd on the Fortune 500 list of top businesses if it were a private company. By every measure, the transformation was a resounding success.

DLA is not the only agency with creative and determined leaders. Innovators are abundant in government, but so is the stifling effect of bureaucracy. The austerity that government is now facing offers the perfect opportunity to unshackle the entrepreneurial spirit and inspire fundamental changes that can make government more effective and less costly. It won’t be easy. It will require leadership, determination and, most of all, courage.

Jeffrey Neal, former chief human capital officer for Homeland Security, is senior vice president at management consulting firm ICF International (icfi.com).

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An 'A for Austerity

Jeffrey Neal — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:00:00 -0500