Government Executive - Authors - Shawn Zeller

Face-Off Over Fraud

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

A push to expand the False Claims Act stirs up an age-old clash between whistleblowers and contractors.

If you listen to government contractors who have been sued under the False Claims Act, prepare for a lecture on injustice and overreaching. Whistleblowers and their attorneys, of course, sing a different tune. In their view, the False Claims Act is the most effective deterrent ever invented to prevent contractors from defrauding the government.

Whatever the case, the legislation should be of keen interest to government contractors and agency personnel overseeing deals with companies. The number of cases filed under the law jumped from 60 in 1988 to more than 400 last year. Awards rose from less than $1 million in 1988 to more than $1 billion in 2003, with some cases now yielding judgments in the hundreds of millions. Health care cases, typically involving Medicare or Medicaid payments, and Defense contracting cases predominate.

"It's very difficult for auditors in the government to really grasp fraud," says James Moorman, president of Taxpayers Against Fraud, a group that supports the False Claims Act and is funded by plaintiffs' attorneys. "Without the whistleblowers, the government is dead in the water."

The False Claims Act was passed during the Civil War at the request of the Lincoln administration, which wanted to punish military contractors that cheated the government. In 1986, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, spearheaded a successful effort to toughen the legislation. Under the new provisions, whistleblowers (who usually are company employees) can file cases against government contractor for fraud.

Under the act, nearly any violation of federal law can result in a false claim. The Justice Department investigates the cases and can decide to work with the whistleblowers' attorneys. If Justice declines a case, the whistleblower can move forward on his own. If a court finds that false claims were made or if the contractor settles, the government splits the award with the whistleblower, who can receive as much as 30 percent of the judgment, depending on his level of involvement. For some, it has meant multimillion-dollar payouts. Companies found to have violated the False Claims Act pay back treble damages to the government, in addition to fines for each false claim.

The biggest judgment came in 2000, when Columbia HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States, agreed to pay more than $840 million, partly for making false claims.

According to Taxpayers Against Fraud, Columbia HCA billed the government for lab tests that were not medically necessary, exaggerated medical conditions to get higher reimbursements, and billed the government for advertising that it called community education.

This year, Grassley wants to extend the rules to the one major area where they do not now go: tax cases. He is pushing legislation that would require the IRS to reward corporate whistleblowers who expose tax violations with up to 30 percent of the take in any government recovery. The provision would not allow whistleblowers to move forward with cases that the government declines, however.

The Treasury Department, which now can pay whistleblowers at its discretion, has opposed the provision, according to Moorman. Treasury officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Opponents of the law say that expanding it would make companies more reluctant to make deals with the government. They say it already is having an impact on the willingness of small businesses to seek government contracts. "I've seen smaller companies literally run out of any kind of government contracting simply because it doesn't make sense," says Glenn V. Whitaker, a partner at the Columbus, Ohio-based law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease.

That's a sentiment shared by Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president of the Arlington, Va.-based Professional Services Council, a trade group representing contractors. "The consequences fall disproportionately on the small companies," he says.

Whitaker recently represented a small printing company that worked with the Government Printing Office. Its contract did not allow subcontracting, but the company overlooked the provision. The firm was sued and ultimately hit with $850,000 in penalties. The printer now is out of the government contracting business. Whitaker declined to name his client, but remains angry about the fines. "The government couldn't show a single dollar of damage," he says.

More recently, Whitaker successfully defended Allison Engine Co., a Navy contractor and subsidiary of Rolls-Royce, in a case that originated in the mid-1990s. The company was accused by two former employees of overbilling the military and providing faulty generators for Navy ships. The company says the generators were fixed before installation.

The Justice Department declined to take the case, but it has dragged on for years as the two employees, with the help of Cincinnati attorney James B. Helmer Jr., have carried on. It has cost defendants millions in legal fees. A federal district court judge in Ohio found in the company's favor in March, determining that Helmer had not demonstrated that false claims were submitted to the government. The whistleblowers have appealed to the Federal Circuit Court.

Whitaker argues that the case, and all False Claims Act cases, should not go forward without Justice Department involvement. He also says the government should have to demonstrate damages to win large fines. Cases where laws are violated inadvertently, but no damages are incurred, should receive lesser penalties, Whitaker says.

The American Hospital Association and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America, the industry trade group for drug makers, also seek reform. Still, industry has found it difficult to make headway, according to the Professional Services Council's Chvotkin. "Many of us in industry have made efforts to modify the False Claims Act. . . . But frankly, the politics are such that there is greater fear of opening up the law for change because we might get something worse than we have today," he says.

Nonetheless, last year, then-PhRMA President Alan F. Holmer wrote to Grassley arguing that the law provides disincentives for company employees to alert management to inadvertent billing problems, and forces companies to settle cases for fear of losing the ability to compete for government contracts, one of the law's possible penalties.

Grassley rejected Holmer's claim. In a return letter, he wrote, "The deck is in fact stacked against U.S. taxpayers, investigators and prosecutors, not corporate America. The lasting legacy of the [False Claims Act] is its ability to discourage fraud."

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Deadly Sins

Shawn Zeller — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

So why are employee unions upset that the Homeland Security Department and the Pentagon plan to create lists of offenses for which the only possible punishment is firing?

The answer, in part, is union officials don't trust Defense and Homeland Security management to limit mandatory firings to these most obvious examples. It's also about appearances, says American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage. "It is really going to cause a problem for employees who take their jobs seriously and are committed to service," he says. "It looks like they are bad guys, and can't be trusted." Managers are more supportive. Karen Heiser, a spokeswoman for the Federal Managers Association, told a congressional committee earlier this year that the mandatory removal offenses are "a good way to aid in creating a culture that adheres to the sensitive nature of [national security] work."

The debate over mandatory removal offenses, known as deadly sins, is just one part of the larger fight between unions and management as DHS and Defense move forward with plans to implement new personnel systems later this year. Congress granted them that right in 2002 and 2003.

According to the final rules issued by Homeland Security in January, and the preliminary ones (still subject to change) by Defense in February, both departments will establish lists of mandatory removal offenses. Homeland Security has pledged to publish its final list in the Federal Register. Defense says simply that it will make employees aware of the offenses. At both departments, employees accused of committing the offenses will have the right to appeal. At Defense, appeals will go to the Merit Systems Protection Board, the independent agency that adjudicates appeals of agency disciplinary actions. The MSPB will not have authority to reduce the penalty, but can overturn the agency's decision. DHS will set up a three-member internal board to review mandatory removals. The DHS secretary will appoint board members, but unions can contribute to a list of candidates. It will be difficult to remove board members, who will serve overlapping three-year terms. Employees can appeal the board's decisions to MSPB, but the administrative judges will not have the right to review the facts of the case.

Much of the controversy over deadly sins stems from DHS and Defense being less than forthcoming about which offenses meet the criteria. Defense says it prefers not to describe offenses so the secretary would have more flexibility to set and change the list as circumstances require. At the IRS, where a 1998 law created a list of mandatory firing offenses, a lack of flexibility has proved problematic, the Defense rules say.

DHS, by contrast, provided a fuller list in its final rules after employees complained about its refusal to provide details. The list includes no-brainers such as aiding terrorists, but some are subject to interpretation. One, for example, says an employee cannot divulge sensitive law enforcement or confidential information. DHS already has a history of trying to fire employees who have complained publicly about security breaches and border control weaknesses. Unions say the rule aims to silence whistleblowers.

Another vague rule says an employee will be fired for "intentionally or willfully engaging in activities that compromise, or could compromise, the information, economic or financial infrastructure of the federal government." That rule worries unions since the gravity of such offenses could vary considerably, and the agency's in-house review panel will not have the right to mitigate penalties when it believes the employee is guilty.

Even if the in-house board overturns a decision, DHS retains the right to bring another adverse action under disciplinary procedures used for nonmandatory removals. In comments submitted to a House subcommittee in March, MSPB Chairman Neil A.G. McPhie said, "The possibility that an employee would be subject to multiple actions based on the same underlying conduct raises a substantial question of fundamental fairness."

Defense didn't claim a right to multiple actions, but the Pentagon laid out in stark terms how dimly it viewed MSPB's authority to reduce penalties that it finds too severe. "These regulations are intended to ensure that when a penalty is mitigated, the maximum justifiable penalty must be applied," its rules state.

That sentence set off Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in April. "That's unfair. It's harsh. It's extreme on its face," he said. "The message that provision sends is that the department is concerned only about discipline and [has] no interest in fairness. Even convicted criminals are not always subjected to the maximum permissible penalty." Levin said the rules are not what Congress intended when it gave Defense authority to create a new personnel system in 2003.

Government Accountability Office official Derek Stewart, who oversees civilian personnel issues at Defense, said at the hearing that the department would be wise to learn from the Internal Revenue Service's example.

IRS' list of offenses, which included harassment of taxpayers, proved to be too vague, according to Stewart. "IRS employees feared that they would be falsely accused by taxpayers and investigated, and had little confidence that they would not be disciplined for making an honest mistake," he said.

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Workforce Whisperer

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Ronald Sanders pushes open the door to a new civil service.

If the Defense and Homeland Security departments are successful in rolling out new personnel systems later this year, then no one will deserve more credit-or blame-than Ronald Sanders.

Sanders, 54, isn't a household name or a major public figure, but in government human resources circles he's a legend, and his legacy is only getting larger. As the Office of Personnel Management's associate director for strategic human resources policy, Sanders collaborated with the Pentagon and DHS at nearly every stage of their design processes. He spent the past two years hashing out details, writing regulations, meeting with union leaders and briefing reporters. The systems he helped create will pay employees based on performance evaluations, reduce union power and allow stricter discipline. They are the most significant changes to civil service rules in at least a generation.

"I wanted the absolute best," says Kay Coles James, the former OPM director who brought Sanders on board. "And my charge to Ron was, 'Let's get the maximum amount of flexibility for the managers that we can.' Whenever we reached an impasse, Ron was creative enough to come up with solutions." James is now senior executive vice president for national security transformation at MZM Inc., a Washington-based consulting firm.

At a minimum, the rules Sanders helped draft will affect 750,000 civilian employees. But many expect, and Sanders hopes, that his design will lay the groundwork for a complete civil service overhaul that will boost performance, help agencies meet mission goals and attract talented people to federal service.

The current rules often do the opposite, according to Sanders. "The system can discourage people and eventually just beat people down so that they don't perform," he says.

Sanders wasn't one of those people. He remembers how he was told that it would be impossible to make the Senior Executive Service before age 40, but he managed to do it at 39. Before coming to OPM in 2002, Sanders developed one of government's first pay-for-performance systems at the Internal Revenue Service. During the 1990s, he managed the post-Cold War drawdown of civilian staff at Defense, reducing the workforce by 230,000 people, mostly through attrition and buyouts. And just as he finishes remaking the civil service comes news that he will soon begin his next big challenge: hiring staff for John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence. He will be Negroponte's chief human capital officer.

A serious and intense man whose daily lunch consists of a Diet Coke and two Excedrin Extra Strength tablets, Sanders might know more about federal personnel systems than anyone on the planet. Just as important, the amateur weight lifter has a very thick skin.

He has needed it to battle federal employee unions, which have blasted his efforts at Defense and Homeland Security, arguing that his design will give too much power to managers. He's also had to grapple with Defense Department leaders who initially were reluctant to allow OPM a hand in its new system. Sanders worked closely with George Nesterczuk, a senior adviser at OPM. James hired Nesterczuk, former staff director at the House Government Reform Civil Service Subcommittee, to lean on Defense management.

Mary Lacey, the program executive officer for Defense, says Sanders has been "the perfect guy for this job. He's incredibly creative, very high energy. And he also has broad governmentwide experience and knowledge, which has been invaluable."

If the design of the Defense and DHS systems is inhumane, as union leaders allege, it wasn't intentional. Sanders is careful not to denigrate his union critics. He simply disagrees on some fundamental principles.

In Sanders' view, pay for performance will help agencies keep top workers and recruit new ones. Unions see it as a way managers can reward their friends. Strict discipline and limited collective bargaining are necessary to ensure that the departments are nimble in performing their security missions, he says. The unions see the changes as part of a broader strategy to lower salaries and contract out more jobs.

Sanders says he has spent a career trying to improve opportunities for government employees. After college, his first job was as an investigator at the National Labor Relations Board in Memphis, Tenn. He "saw some of the most unbelievable working conditions you can imagine," he says. He became frustrated, unable to put an end to the things he saw. Then he went to work at the Defense Department, negotiating Air Force labor agreements. There, he had a direct impact on workers' quality of life.

Civil service-which has rewarded employees for longevity more than performance-is something Sanders has wanted to change for decades. "One of those things that's always bothered me is the notion that if you are a public employee, you aren't a top performer. Part of that stereotype is brought on by the system," he says. "It was always frustrating for me as a young person entering government to be told, 'Wait your turn.' "

The overhaul he's helped plan is radical. DHS and Homeland Security can "literally replace laws with regulations," he says. No longer will they have to justify their actions on pay, discipline or labor relations to Congress or to OPM.

And Sanders is keenly aware of the impact such authority could have on the rest of government. As OPM's advocate in the negotiating room, he's kept the governmentwide interest in the back of his mind. He and Nesterczuk led the charge last year when Defense officials tried to begin writing regulations without OPM involvement.

James whipped off a tough letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Then, Sanders says, "DoD did a 180. . . . They heard from OPM. They heard from the Hill. They had a fairly disastrous meeting with the unions. . . . And to their credit, the senior leadership of the department took a deep breath and said, 'Wait a minute, we may be going down the wrong path here.' "

But that doesn't mean he agrees with those who want a governmentwide overhaul rather than a piecemeal approach. Experience tells him that's an impossible task. "I was involved in earlier stages of my life in no less than three attempts to modernize the civil service in one big bang, and they all failed," Sanders says.

Instead, he would like to see Congress grant all agencies the ability to design their own systems, while maintaining certain core principles: merit-based hiring and promotion, veterans preference, and whistleblower and discrimination protections. He hopes the designs of the Defense and DHS systems will provide other agencies with some good ideas to incorporate or modify for their own use.

"This is not a unitary government," he says. "The cultures and missions are all over the place. What's good for one department may not be good for another."

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Deadly Sins

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Defense and Homeland Security are creating a list of mandatory firing offenses, and unions are worried.

It probably will come as no surprise to federal employees that aiding terrorists will get you fired. The same is true for those who purchase, use, sell or transport weapons of mass destruction, allow terrorists into the country or take bribes. In fact, federal workers who commit such crimes are likely to face far more serious consequences, including prison.

So why are employee unions upset that the Homeland Security Department and the Pentagon plan to create lists of offenses for which the only possible punishment is firing?

Managers are more supportive. Karen Heiser, a spokeswoman for the Federal Managers Association, told a congressional committee earlier this year that the mandatory removal offenses are "a good way to aid in creating a culture that adheres to the sensitive nature of [national security] work."

At both departments, employees accused of committing the offenses will have the right to appeal. At Defense, appeals will go to the Merit Systems Protection Board, the independent agency that adjudicates appeals of agency disciplinary actions. The MSPB will not have authority to reduce the penalty, but can overturn the agency's decision. DHS will set up a three-member internal board to review mandatory removals. The DHS secretary will appoint board members, but unions can contribute to a list of candidates. It will be difficult to remove board members, who will serve overlapping three-year terms. Employees can appeal the board's decisions to MSPB, but the administrative judges will not have the right to review the facts of the case.

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The Perfect Candidate

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Image, not reality, is too often the basis of hiring decisions.

The government has a hiring problem. Agencies have favored the wrong candidates, particularly older ones over younger workers. They've allowed others to game the system and get away with it. The results have been bad hiring decisions and dampened enthusiasm among top candidates. More troublesome, federal hiring systems might be discriminatory. Unless agencies adopt new assessment methods and think more creatively about how to bring on experienced private sector workers, more trouble lies ahead.

In a 2004 report, the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington nonprofit that works to boost interest in public careers, determined that federal hiring methods are "outmoded and inefficient." The government relies too heavily on measurements of training and experience when selecting job candidates. Too little attention is given to actual skills or the quality of applicants' training, experience and education.

"The challenge here is that, by and large, the best people aren't getting a fair shake," says Max Stier, the partnership's president. The costs of poor assessment are tangible, too-higher turnover, lost productivity and greater absenteeism, adding up to millions of dollars every year. But the ultimate cost is,"We aren't getting the government we ought to have," Stier adds.

Poor Predictors

Consider an agency that is hiring a new economist. After collecting applications-either through an automated hiring system or a paper-based résumé with a form listing knowledge, skills and abilities-an agency human resources staffer determines whether the candidates meet Office of Personnel Management-prescribed minimum qualifications for education and job experience. After eliminating those who don't make the cut, the HR specialist awards points to the remaining candidates based on their education and work experience. Then, typically, the top three scorers are referred to the hiring manager.

In government, a candidate with many years of experience is deemed better than one with fewer, even if the younger candidate is a hard-charging go-getter and the older one has been unmotivated for years. At the same time, it doesn't matter whether a candidate earned his economics degree at Harvard or the University of the District of Columbia. Both are considered equal.

Agencies prefer to hire based on training and experience because they appear to be objective measures and are easy and inexpensive to gauge. But training and experience turn out to be among the least successful predictors of future job performance, just above graphology-handwriting analysis in an evaluation by psychologists Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter published in the September 1998 Psychological Bulletin. Under the training-and-experience method of hiring, "There is usually no attempt to evaluate past achievements, accomplishments or job performance," they explain.

And because information about education and work experience is self-reported, honest candidates are more likely to be eliminated in the first or second round, when little or no reference- or fact-checking is done and, when automated systems are used, before a human being even sees the submissions. James Tsugawa, a senior research analyst with the Merit Systems Protection Board, studies civil service issues. He says there is some evidence-none conclusive-that relying on self-reporting may adversely affect Asian-Americans, who tend to downplay their accomplishments.

Others aren't so modest. In a 1998 study, the Society for Human Resource Management found that 53 percent of HR professionals had at least sometimes discovered embellished employment histories in résumés, while 29 percent said they'd seen bogus academic degrees. Yet, says one government HR director, who asked to remain anonymous, "We are pretty much taking [candidates] at their word." Responsible hiring managers do check references, conduct interviews and fact-check résumés, but even with all the rules governing federal hiring, nothing requires them to do so.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Automated systems were supposed to be the HR cure-all. Agency personnel staff would be freed to become consultants, thinking ahead about closing skills gaps, succession planning, recruitment and other lofty objectives. The systems collect online résumés and use keyword searches or questions posed to applicants to narrow the field automatically. Without the right key words, or the right answers, a candidate is eliminated. The others are ranked and sent on to the HR office. At some agencies, it has worked. At others, it has flopped.

It's "garbage in and garbage out," says Kathy Burgers, assistant HR director at the National Forest Service. "If we don't work with managers to make sure the questions [asked of candidates] meet their needs upfront, then they won't be happy with the people" who are certified as top candidates.

For too many agencies, it's just "paving the cow path," says Steve Nelson, director of the Office of Policy and Evaluation at the Merit Systems Protection Board. Last year, MSPB issued a report on automated hiring systems. It's unfortunate, Nelson says, that many agencies aren't using the shift to automated hiring systems as an opportunity to reengineer assessment methods. They are simply moving their old training-and-experience-based assessments to the Web.

And rather than transition HR staff into consulting and planning roles, agencies have downsized personnel offices. HR staffing has fallen 20 percent, from about 50,000 in 1994 to 40,000 last year.

Downsizing and the perennial budget squeeze facing HR offices cause the lack of creativity afflicting the hiring process. Unable or unwilling to develop new assessment methods, agencies have relied heavily on something called Outstanding Scholar hiring to fill more than a third of entry-level positions, according to a 2000 study by the Merit Systems Protection Board. Outstanding Scholar allows agencies to dispense with competitive hiring procedures and tap entry-level candidates who had 3.5 grade-point averages in college.

Thankfully, most agencies have dispensed with the Administrative Careers With America exam, which they began to use to fill entry-level jobs after the federal government settled a discrimination lawsuit in 1981. OPM then developed the ACWA tool, a 156-part questionnaire that asks job candidates multiple-choice questions about experience and accomplishments.

The questionnaire and the Outstanding Scholar hiring authority were intended to be temporary fixes that would be used only until agencies developed individual assessment tools, but a lack of funding and fear of discrimination litigation have held agencies back. Ironically, Outstanding Scholar authority has hurt Hispanic candidates and provided no benefit to black applicants, according to the 2000 MSPB report.

The lack of creativity in federal hiring has been detrimental not only to young workers who don't have the experience to qualify for even the entry level but also to mid-level private sector workers wanting to make the jump to government. It's an almost impossible feat unless the worker is willing to start at entry level. The Partnership for Public Service found that government agencies in 2003 filled 15.3 percent of positions from GS-12 to GS-15 with outside hires. The percentage has risen from 10.5 percent in 2000, but that might be short-lived. During the same time period, the proportion of jobs open to outside applicants declined from 49 percent to 43 percent.

That's going to have to change if government is to meet its program needs in the future, says Claudia Cross, chief human capital officer at the Energy Department. Because of tight budgets, Cross says, agencies "just are not going to be in the position to have bench strength anymore."

Managers looking for the return of the golden days, when agencies hired young people and trained them to fill positions of more responsibility during 30-year careers, are deluding themselves, she says. Cross envisions a new world in which agencies will hire far fewer entry-level staff and will rely increasingly on mid-career hires from the private sector and on contractors. "You have to learn how to make a quilt," she says. "You have to have pieces of a lot of different solutions."

A lack of will to face this new world is holding agencies back. Hobbling hiring managers, for example, is the rule of three, which limits the number of candidates a manager can consider. Most agencies continue to use it despite a 2002 law that allows HR offices to use category rating and consider a larger number of qualified applicants. Agencies lobbied for the flexibility to expand the hiring pool, but as of last summer, 87 percent of large agencies had filled fewer than six positions using category rating, according to an OPM report.

The rule of three also is partly to blame for government's overreliance on educational credentials. Candidates with higher-level degrees tend to land at the top of agency hiring lists even when such education is not necessary for the job. An example is the Government Accountability Office, which for years has favored candidates with master's degrees in hiring analysts. As a result, 90 percent of the agency's analysts have such degrees.

GAO, which announced a new pay structure for its analysts last December, will pay entry-level analysts at least $45,000 starting in 2006, but only if the employee has a master's degree. The few who are hired without master's degrees will fall in a less generous salary range even if they have years of experience in government or private sector auditing.

In this, government is behind the private sector. As BusinessWeek reported in April, prestigious consulting firms and investment banks are looking to promote from within rather than recruit people with master's degrees in business administration. At New York bank Goldman Sachs, for example, MBAs make up just one-quarter of new hires, a complete reversal of the company's hiring pattern five years ago when MBAs were about 75 percent of new employees. "Now we try to figure out how many analysts we can promote, and we fill in with MBAs," says Aaron Marcus, head of campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs.

One reason for Goldman's decision is the belief among top executives that much of what is taught in business schools these days can be learned on the job. At the same time, because of the rapidly rising cost of higher education and stagnant entry-level salaries, schools are struggling to maintain enrollments. More high quality candidates are choosing to continue working rather than give up two or more years of salary to earn a degree. Other top candidates simply can't afford one.

Nelson says agencies should evaluate candidates' competencies rather than require academic credentials as a substitute. "If a bachelor's or master's degree gives you competencies, then you ought to assess on those competencies, not the credential. There are some people with a master's degree who can't tie their shoe," he says.

More troublesome, the diversity of American graduate schools trails that of the population, so a disproportionate number of minority candidates do not qualify for jobs requiring advanced degrees. In 2000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, 68 percent of graduate students in the United States were white, with 8.5 percent black and 5.2 percent Asian and Hispanic. In professional schools, whites made up 72 percent of the total, compared with 12 percent for Asians, 7.7 percent for blacks and 5 percent for Hispanics.

New Ways, and People, to Hire

The good news is that it's never too late for agencies to revamp their assessment methods and there is abundant research available on which methods predict future job success. Among them are work sample tests, structured interviews (where candidates all are asked the same questions and their answers are compared to those of top agency performers), and tests of personality and mental ability.

Many agencies have taken steps to use better methods. At the Homeland Security Department, the Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau asks some applicants to take a logical reasoning test and fill out a questionnaire about life experience. Some also are asked to go through structured interviews. At the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists take a written test that gauges logical and quantitative reasoning. Customs and Border Protection, another DHS bureau, gives its candidates tests on logical reasoning, quantitative reasoning and integrity. Candidates then go through a workplace simulation.

Improving hiring will require Congress to fund the development of better assessment tools. It also will take willingness on the part of managers to be more flexible and creative. At Energy, for example, Cross says that when managers come to her saying they need funds to hire scientists, she looks at them quizzically. "When was the last time you did any scientific research?" she asks. The managers, typically, can't think of the last time. Energy has largely ceded that ground to grantees and contractors. What the department needs are project managers and contract overseers.

When thinking about solutions to staffing problems, Cross says, "If you assume what worked last time will work this time, you're probably assuming wrong."

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Personnel reform changing the labor-management model

Shawn Zeller — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"To meet the threats, I must be able - and future presidents must be able - to move people and resources where they're needed, and to do it quickly, without being forced to comply with a thick book of rules," he said.

Fearful of standing in the way of homeland security legislation, Democrats backed down. They insisted that union voices be heard in the design of a new personnel system, but they let the department have the final say. For the unions, it was a fateful moment. Soon, the Defense Department asked Congress for, and received, similar authority. And now both departments are on the verge of rolling out their systems.

Under the new systems, nearly half of all civil servants will lose the ability to rely on unions to look after their interests in the assigning of work, the deploying of personnel and the use of technology. Most issues once governed by bargaining agreements now will fall under the broad rubric of management rights. That includes everything from overtime, shift rotations and deployment away from regular work sites, to health and safety concerns about new technologies. Federal unions have never had the right to bargain over pay or benefits, as their private sector counterparts do, or to strike.

As personnel reform sweeps across the government, the traditional labor relations model is being turned on its head -- what does that mean for the civil service? Shawn Zeller explores this issue and more in the July 1 issue of Government Executive. Read the full story here.

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Hard Labor

Shawn Zeller — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The traditional federal labor relations system is being crushed under the weight of personnel reform.

In June 2002, the White House unveiled proposed legislation to create the Homeland Security Department. The proposal asked for presidential authority to waive collective bargaining when necessary for national security and also called for the creation of a personnel system that would restrict collective bargaining. Federal labor unions protested. Democrats on Capitol Hill balked. But President Bush threatened to veto the legislation if his limits on the unions were removed.

"To meet the threats, I must be able-and future presidents must be able-to move people and resources where they're needed, and to do it quickly, without being forced to comply with a thick book of rules," he said.

Pentagon officials stress that, unlike DHS, they have not yet finalized their rules and may change them. Still, both departments are informing union leaders that deals they arranged on "permissive" issues in the past-areas where management had no obligation to bargain but did so in the interest of good will-now are void. And the departments will no longer bargain over the impact and implementation of changes that are within management's rights.

The changes at Defense and Homeland Security turn back the clock on labor-management relations, circumscribing the rights first offered in an executive order by President Kennedy in 1962, expanded by Richard Nixon and finally codified in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

"The area [where the unions have] veto power has been significantly decreased," says Robert M. Tobias, director of the Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation at American University and former president of the National Treasury Employees Union. Tobias hopes Pentagon and DHS managers will involve unions in making decisions, even where they no longer are required to do so. But he admits: "My fear is they won't."

Of course, whether that would be a good or bad thing depends on one's point of view. Many Bush administration officials, and some federal managers, dislike unions because of their complaints about working conditions, funding and pay rates. At times, government managers also have accused employees and union members of threatening national security by exposing vulnerabilities in U.S. defenses. Union advocates say their efforts to improve working conditions attract talented people to government. They also say the freedom to speak out, which union representation provides, allows for better oversight by Congress and the public.

Employees at DHS are represented by three unions: NTEU, the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Association of Agriculture Employees. Defense workers are represented by more than 35 unions, but AFGE is the biggest.

Led by AFGE, unions filed lawsuits earlier this year against both the Homeland Security and Defense departments in an effort to stop implementation of their new systems. The unions accuse Homeland Security of ignoring congressional intent in scaling back collective bargaining, and the Pentagon of violating Congress' terms by refusing to allow the unions to negotiate over the content of its preliminary labor relations rules, released in February. The unions say they might file another suit against Defense on the substance of its rules when they are finalized.

New Limits

Defense and Homeland Security officials deny they violated Congress' intentions and say they plan to vigorously defend themselves in federal court. In their view, the limits on bargaining and increased management rights are key elements of personnel reform. Without them, they say, neither department would have the ability to move quickly when national security is threatened. And even in less severe cases, they say that managers' time is better spent protecting the country than hashing out agreements with unions.

For political reasons, DHS and the Pentagon have not openly attacked the unions, which have powerful allies on Capitol Hill. As a result, the departments' reasons for limiting bargaining never have been fully detailed. The closest either agency has come to articulating its reasoning came during congressional hearings leading up to the creation of Defense's National Security Personnel System. Pentagon officials argued that bargaining with about 1,500 union locals sometimes takes too long. As a result, the Pentagon asked for, and received, permission to conduct bargaining at the national level when it desired. The unions agree that national bargaining is sometimes more efficient.

It's clear, though, that Defense and Homeland Security leaders have more serious concerns about the unions and at times have found the actions of their union counterparts irresponsible. After the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, two Michigan Border Patrol agents were nearly suspended for criticizing security along the Canadian border on a television news show. The agency backed down under pressure from Congress.

Problems in federal labor-management relations extend beyond the two departments currently overhauling their personnel systems. Former officials at the Federal Labor Relations Authority say the agency, which adjudicates disputes over collective bargaining, has seen increasingly bitter recriminations in recent years. Even when the top government leaders have tried to broker peace, they've faced tough sledding.

Former FLRA member Donald Wasserman, who provided a sympathetic ear to union leaders during the Clinton administration, points to the demise of labor-management partnership councils, which President Clinton established in an effort to reduce the adversarial nature of bargaining and give unions a voice in the creation and implementation of management initiatives. Few on either side complained when the Bush administration scrapped the councils, saying they had not achieved their goal.

In the wake of the councils' demise, and especially since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has succeeded in circumscribing union rights. The administration took them away from some employees of the Justice Department and blocked collective bargaining at the Transportation Security Administration.

When Defense signaled in 2004 that it would seek far-reaching limits on collective bargaining, even Kay Coles James, the Bush-appointed director of the Office of Personnel Management at the time, had reservations. She wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, warning: "We strongly support the objective of assuring DoD's discretion to act without being burdened by collective bargaining obligations. . . . However, we believe the proposal may be contrary to law, insofar as it attempts to replace collective bargaining with 'consultation' and eliminate collective bargaining agreements altogether."

Bargaining's Backers

The unions strongly defend the current bargaining system. They note that while the administration has cited national security as one of the primary reasons for limiting union rights at Homeland Security and Defense, President Bush proposed in January to extend those limits to the rest of government, including many agencies that have no role in defending the nation.

Likewise, the unions cite the example of the Michigan Border Patrol agents in saying they fear whistleblower protections will be scaled back under the new rules. "If you speak out, forget about ever receiving another raise," says AFGE President John Gage.

T.J. Bonner, a Border Patrol agent for 27 years and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, recalls instances where bargaining has led to improved work conditions and good will. Under the existing rules, for example, the Border Patrol has a right to transfer employees from one region to another. But it must negotiate the "impact and implementation" of redeployments.

So, for example, if the agency needs to transfer agents from San Diego to Douglas, Ariz., it would bargain with the union over how those employees would be selected. Volunteers might go first, followed by the most junior employees. A pregnant employee, or an employee experiencing difficulties getting child care, might be exempt from a temporary assignment. Those were the types of deals that established trust between management and employees, says Bonner.

In other instances, bargaining saved agency managers from making bad decisions. Bonner cites an effort by managers at the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was subsumed by DHS in 2003, to bar Border Patrol agents from asking a suspected illegal immigrant to remove any outer garment, such as a hat or coat, without first receiving permission from a supervisor. The rule would have made it difficult for agents to detect concealed weapons, Bonner says.

Another management directive, in 1998, would have required all agents to wear body armor while on duty. That would have posed health risks for agents working in the hot temperatures of the desert Southwest, Bonner says. Eventually, the union reached an agreement that allowed agents in most cases to take off body armor at their discretion.

More recently, INS management required that its inspectors undergo training in the use of pepper spray, which involved exposing employees to the inflammatory agent. The union reached an agreement that allowed current employees to skip the training and set guidelines to minimize the discomfort of the new inspectors who had to undergo it. But now DHS has reversed itself and is again requiring all agents who carry the spray to undergo the training, according to Charles Showalter, president of the National Homeland Security Council, which represents inspectors.

Under the revised DHS and Defense personnel systems, cases like the ones listed by Bonner and Showalter will fall under newly defined management rights over work assignments, deployments and the use of technology. If disputes arise over the definitions of those terms, then union officials will have to turn to internal boards that will replace most of the functions of the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

Both Defense's National Security Labor Relations Board and DHS' Homeland Security Labor Relations Board will have at least three members, who will serve overlapping three-year terms. At Defense, the secretary will have sole discretion on all appointments to the board except one, which will come from a list provided by the director of OPM. The DHS secretary will consider union recommendations for two of the slots on its board, but need not choose candidates from the union list.

Unions can appeal decisions of the internal boards to the FLRA, but the authority will have to accept the boards' findings of fact and can overturn the boards only if the ruling was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, caused by harmful error or unsupported by substantial evidence. After that appeal, the unions could bring a case to federal court.

Bargaining will be required in only a few areas. The Defense rules state that the agency will bargain over changes if they are foreseeable, substantial and significant in impact and duration. When the department decides to lay off, suspend, remove or reduce the pay of an employee, it will bargain over procedures and impact. Homeland Security has similar plans.

For federal employees, the difference between the current system and the Defense and DHS systems is "like night and day," says former FLRA General Counsel Joseph Swerdzewski. Under the new approach, Defense and DHS undoubtedly will be "much more efficient," he says. But, he cautions, "Management could be too successful. . . . Employees [don't like] it if they don't feel they have a voice in the workplace." Turnover could rise, and work quality decline, he warns.

Into the Unknown

Union leaders, never shy in talking to the media, are even more amenable than usual these days. They say the American people care about their plight, even though it's not clear that they do.

The unions trust that by launching an aggressive public relations campaign they can convince Congress to undo the new labor rules. Beyond the courts, congressional action is the unions' only hope for forestalling the Defense and DHS systems.

At an April hearing on the National Security Personnel System, union leaders were encouraged when a skeptical Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, questioned Navy Secretary Gordon England and OPM Acting Director Dan G. Blair.

But the unions face an uphill battle. Republicans in charge of both the House and Senate aren't fond of them, because the unions almost always favor their Democratic opponents come election time. Nor is it likely that many Republicans will risk antagonizing the Bush administration.

The unions are using the Transportation Security Administration as their model in designing a game plan. When TSA was created after Sept. 11 to screen passengers traveling out of U.S. airports, Bush convinced Congress that collective bargaining should be barred at the agency in the interest of national security.

Since then, the American Federation of Government Employees has sought to overturn the rule and has launched an organizing campaign among agency employees. Of 45,000 workers, though, only 800 have signed up. Even so, says AFGE spokeswoman Adele Stan, the union has won victories by using the press to try to build public support.

For example, in March, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an article quoting TSA workers who said they had been forced to sign documents indicating that they had received the required three hours per week of training, even though the agency provided much less. TSA changed course after the article ran, Stan says.

In December 2003, more than 200 screeners at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport sent a letter to TSA headquarters alleging that managers had allowed inconsistent security procedures, that one manager had accepted bribes in exchange for help with promotions, and that required overtime and poor management training was causing high turnover. The Seattle Times followed up with a three-part series detailing employee complaints about managers who rebuked them for wearing blue socks instead of black, slouching on the job or using green ink on forms instead of blue. In April, the top four security officials at the Seattle airport were removed.

Stan calls the employees' efforts a model for what federal unions must do in the future. "It's not what we want," she says, but "TSA is our lab for how to be a union without collective bargaining. We represent our members in the courts of law and public opinion."

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Defense ends conversations with unions over personnel system

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The "meet-and-confer" discussions with union leaders were mandated by Congress and began April 18. They were extended in late May for an additional two days in June.

Mary Lacey, program executive officer for the new Defense personnel system, said in a statement, "The door is still open for additional communications and proposal submissions," and added union leaders will now have an opportunity to meet with senior leadership at Defense and the Office of Personnel Management. Lacey, her staff, and George Nesterczuk and Ronald Sanders of OPM, had led meet-and-confer sessions, but Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and the new OPM director will make the final decisions regarding the personnel system.

Lacey said the meet-and-confer discussions were productive. "DoD and OPM gained a great deal from the process and will make several recommended changes to the proposed regulations as a result of union input," she said, without specifying what those changes might be.

Union leaders, however, said the meetings had accomplished little. "I never participated in a greater exercise in futility," said American Federation of Government Employees General Counsel Mark Roth.

AFGE was the largest member of the United Defense Workers Coalition, a 35-union group that met with Defense and Office of Personnel Management leaders. Congress mandated the discussions in 2003 legislation that allowed Defense to create the new personnel system.

In preliminary regulations, released in February, Defense indicated that it planned to dispense with the decades-old General Schedule pay system in favor of one that set pay raises based on managerial evaluations of employee performance. The preliminary rules also specified that Defense would restrict collective bargaining and tighten disciplinary rules.

Unions have blasted most aspects of the plan, saying it will lead to cronyism, silence whistleblowers and hurt morale. Six unions walked out of the meet-and-confer talks late last month, protesting what they said was Defense's unwillingness to compromise.

Now that the discussions are over, Defense leaders will work with OPM to hammer out final regulations, which should be announced later this year. Then Defense will begin to implement the system unless union leaders can convince Congress to intervene.

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Agency contact centers win praise

Shawn Zeller — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The centers, which respond to inquiries from the public by phone, mail and e-mail, are an "overlooked success story," according to the study, which was released Wednesday.

Pearson, which operates call centers on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Homeland Security Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as well as other agencies, offers advice for agencies launching contact centers and discusses the changing customer service expectations of the public.

"The federal government is in the midst of enacting significant changes to a wide variety of government programs affecting virtually every U.S. household, and so government agency executives need successful strategies for interacting directly with the public," said Mac Curtis, Pearson's president, in a statement.

The report stated that customer service officials for agencies should focus on a few key issues, including the diversity of their constituencies, staff training and their relationship with agency leaders and contractors.

Because of the diversity of the populations served by government programs, agencies must consider different modes of communication in reaching out to citizens, the report stated. Older citizens still prefer to talk on the phone. Younger ones find e-mail and Web chats more accessible. At the same time, agencies must hire customer service representatives sensitive to diverse constituents and willing to undergo regular training.

Finally, contact centers cannot succeed without the assistance of subject matter experts outside the contact center, according to the report. So top agency leaders must invest in good customer service, and ensure that employees are willing to assist customer service representatives with difficult questions.

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Managing Calls

Shawn Zeller — Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Any government call center manager has a sense of what good customer service is. Callers can't be put on hold for too long. The answers they receive should be accurate and complete.

But how many know how they stack up against their peers, both in government and beyond?

This year, James Vaughn and Teresa Nasif intend to make sure they do. The two General Services Administration employees work in the agency's USA Services division, which oversees a governmentwide call center, and recently started the Citizen Service Level Inter-agency Committee. The group of 50 agency contact center managers is working to set standards for government centers. They will make their recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget by October. OMB will decide whether agencies will be required to meet the standards, or use them as guideposts.

Vaughn, a deputy program manager at GSA, credits the President's Management Agenda with bringing customer service standards to the forefront. "It's a great goal, but how do you measure it?" he asks. "With this [standardization], we'll be able to go back and measure."

Nasif has firsthand experience with customer service. As director of the GSA Federal Citizen Information Center, she oversees a new call center that answers general inquiries about the government and serves as a clearinghouse for inquiries that other agencies receive but cannot answer. Last year, it received about 5 million phone calls in addition to e-mails.

The managers they've assembled have held several meetings and are narrowing a list of areas where they believe standards should be set. The list is long and includes everything from hours of operation to privacy. Among the other areas:

First contact resolution. How many calls should be resolved on the first call?
Queue position information. Should callers be told they have a few minutes to wait, or that they are the fifth person in line?
Time to call back. How long should a customer wait to receive a callback on an unresolved query?
Call recording. Should all agencies record calls and review them for quality assurance?
Languages. In how many should a call center be able to answer an inquiry?

Fortunately, Vaughn and Nasif are planning to provide daunted managers with some tips. GSA has hired the Mitre Corp., a not-for-profit research and development organization with headquarters in Massa-chusetts and Virginia, to research these questions: "How do citizens want to contact the government and what do they expect when they do so?" Then, they'll look for examples of successful call centers in the private sector and government that meet those standards. "We are going to demonstrate that it can be done," says Vaughn.

Many technologies are available to help agencies provide better call center service. Nasif is impressed with the FAQ system from Bozeman, Mont.-based RightNow Technologies, a customer relationship management firm. It allows citizens to receive quick self-service online by entering a question and receiving a menu of possible answers. If the question is new, then the system captures it and prompts a manager to add an answer.

Nasif and Vaughn are happy to make recommendations, but technology moves too fast, they point out, to set requirements. "Small agencies will say they don't have the resources" for some of the technologies, Vaughn adds. "Large ones will say that specific requirements don't make sense."

The ultimate goal, says Nasif, is to boost citizen trust in government: "We want them to know that they will get the right answer."

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Unions call for repeal of law authorizing new Defense personnel system

Shawn Zeller — Tue, 17 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"We're calling on every member of Congress and every senator to do the right thing," said Richard N. Brown, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. "And that right thing is to reverse NSPS. It will do more harm than good."

Six unions-NFFE, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the National Association of Government Employees, the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, and the National Association of Independent Labor-walked out of congressionally mandated meet-and-confer sessions between Defense management and union leaders on Monday. The six unions represent about 100,000 Defense workers.

Five of the unions are members of the 36-member United Defense Workers Coalition, which is lobbying against Defense's proposed rules, and continues to meet with Defense leaders. The National Association of Independent Labor is not a member of the coalition, but was participating in the meet-and-confer sessions.

Defense's rules, announced in February, have yet to be finalized, but they would restrict union bargaining rights, create stricter disciplinary rules and eliminate the General Schedule in favor of a pay-for-performance system.

Mark Gibson, a negotiator with the American Federation of Government Employees, said union members have indicated that they want to continue meeting with Defense management. The meet-and-confer sessions are scheduled to end Thursday. But Gibson said he respected his colleagues' decision and felt as disheartened as they about the details of the new system. "Congress is accountable. It's their bad law. They need to fix it," he said.

Ronald Ault, president of the Metal Trades department of the AFL-CIO, said Congress has a long history of making bad law, some far more severe than NSPS. "Slavery was once the law of the land," he said. "At one time, women didn't have the right to vote. If you look at the shameful history of our Congress heaping injustices on the American people, NSPS is just the latest bad law."

The preliminary rules indicated that Defense would declare issues related to the assignment of work, deployments and use of new technology to be management rights that are not subject to collective bargaining. But the rules provided few details of how Defense would define those areas.

During the meet-and-confer process, the unions objected strongly to indications from Defense leaders that the final rules will allow the Defense secretary to issue directives that would overrule collective bargaining agreements.

The union leaders offered different assessments of what future role unions would have at the Defense Department. Ault said the rules so restrict unions' role that he would have trouble recruiting members. "I wouldn't pay for something that doesn't have any value," he said. But Gibson indicated that the unions plan to fight on, lobbying Congress and organizing at the local level to overturn the new system.

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Unions walk out of Pentagon personnel system meetings

Shawn Zeller — Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

In a statement, National Federation of Federal Employees President Richard N. Brown called the "meet-and-confer" process, which started in April, "a sham." He added that Defense management has not considered union recommendations. "This process has been nothing but an attack on the rights of federal workers," he said.

In total, the five unions--NFFE, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the National Association of Government Employees, and the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO--represent more than 100,000 Defense workers. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the bulk of Defense workers, continues to attend the meetings, though it too has criticized Defense management over the way it has handled the sessions.

The 30-day meet-and-confer period was mandated by Congress in the 2003 Defense Authorization Act, legislation that authorized the Pentagon to create a new personnel system for its 650,000 civil servants.

Since then, Defense employee unions have complained that Defense management has not negotiated with them over the details of the new system. Defense managers insist that the legislation does not require them to negotiate. However, Pentagon leaders said they would share details during the meet-and-confer stage, and would consider union recommendations before final regulations are issued.

Leaders from more than 35 unions formed the United Defense Workers Coalition to lobby against the new system. The coalition objects to preliminary rules issued in February, criticizing Defense's move to limit union bargaining rights, create stricter disciplinary rules, and replace the General Schedule with a pay-for-performance system. And union officials say that Defense has not budged during the meet-and-confer sessions.

Byron W. Charlton, a legislative representative with the AFL-CIO, who is leading the coalition during the meet-and-confer process, said he would push ahead despite the walk-out. But he said that the other coalition members understood the decision not to participate. "Each union is guided by the dictates of its membership. They decide what they are going to do," he said. "It does send a strong message that we are tired and frustrated with the lack of sincerity and progress."

Charlton said that union leaders are particularly frustrated with Defense's insistence that the new system allow the Defense secretary to implement "issuances" that could override collective bargaining agreements.

Union leaders won support from some members of Congress last month at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., for one, said he was "deeply troubled by a number of aspects of the draft regulation which appear to send the message to department employees that the leadership of the Department of Defense isn't interested in ensuring that they're treated with the fairness and equity that they deserve."

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Drawing Fire

Shawn Zeller — Sun, 15 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Tempers heat up during the comment period for Defense's draft personnel rules.

"This is the worst piece of legislation I have ever read," one commenter wrote. "Cronyism is back," declared a second. "Pay decided by a kiss-up supervisor that uses his position to screw around, no more cost-of-living increases, taught to shut up, say 'Yes, sir,' or ship out. . . . I don't like this plan," complained a third.

More than 90 percent of the 60,000 comments that arrived at the Pentagon in March and April expanded on those themes, condemning draft rules issued in February for the Defense Department's new personnel system.

And though they stated their critiques more artfully, that was the message senators of both parties gave Navy Secretary Gordon England last month, as he took a beating during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the draft regulations.

In the next few weeks, the Defense Department will issue final regulations detailing the National Security Personnel System it plans to launch in July. Given pressure from employees and lawmakers, the question is: Will the final rules be much different from the draft?

After meeting Senate Armed Services Committee members in mid-April, and then with unions, England heard from both sides. Most worrisome for him was the harsh assessment from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. As chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, she was a key player in drafting legislation that gave the Pentagon authority to create the system. Without her blessing, opponents could argue that the plan fails to meet Congress' intent.

Unions already have filed one lawsuit against Defense, saying Pentagon leaders failed to negotiate with them in the run-up to the draft rules. More could be on the way when Defense finalizes its rules. The Homeland Security Department, which won congressional authority to rewrite personnel rules in 2002 and finalized a new system earlier this year, is facing a union lawsuit charging that it violated congressional intent by scaling back collective bargaining.

Labor negotiations are a major sticking point at Defense as well. Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, pressed England, saying the draft rules eviscerate bargaining rights. They indicate that Defense no longer plans to bargain over work assignments, deployments or the use of technology. Akaka called the limits "particularly egregious."

Comments, mostly from anonymous Defense employees, also raised concerns about pay for performance, arguing that managers might use it to reward and punish workers. "This is a means to bolster the good-old-boys clubs of America," one wrote.

Collins focused on two issues: limiting the authority of the Merit Systems Protection Board, the federal agency that adjudicates employee appeals of disciplinary actions, and creating the National Security Labor Relations Board to take over functions now controlled by the Federal Labor Relations Authority, arbiter of unfair labor practices. She said Defense went too far in prohibiting the MSPB from reducing agency disciplinary penalties, except when they are "wholly without justification."

Collins questioned the new labor board's credi-bility with workers because its members could be appointed by the Defense secretary without their input. FLRA, by contrast, is independent. "That's a really bad approach because it heightens this feeling that it's management versus labor, which we're trying to get away from," she said.

England dodged many questions at the hearing, saying that much was left to be resolved. Ultimately, he was conciliatory. Whether the final rules will win over skeptics, though, seems doubtful. If they don't, then Congress will have a tough choice: Stop Defense in its tracks, seek a middle ground, or allow the department to move ahead.

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May I Help You?

Shawn Zeller — Sun, 15 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

GSA wants to set the bar for customer service standards.

Any government call center manager has a sense of what good customer service is. Callers can't be put on hold for too long. The answers they receive should be accurate and complete.

But how many know how they stack up against their peers, both in government and beyond?

First contact resolution. How many calls should be resolved on the first call?
Queue position information. Should callers be told they have a few minutes to wait, or that they are the fifth person in line?
Time to call back. How long should a customer wait to receive a callback on an unresolved query?
Call recording. Should all agencies record calls and review them for quality assurance?
Languages. In how many should a call center be able to answer an inquiry?

The ultimate goal, says Nasif, is to boost citizen trust in government: "We want them to know that they will get the right answer."

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Good Calls

Shawn Zeller — Sun, 15 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Telephone help centers are winning good will for agencies.

The words "government" and "customer service" don't often find their way into the same sentence. Most Americans would probably say they expect the worst when they call about their taxes or their Social Security, Medicare, or veterans benefits. By contrast, they'd say the private sector does a much better job. But according to research conducted at Purdue University's

Center for Customer-Driven Quality, they'd be wrong. In a 2002 survey and subsequent follow-ups, government call centers bested their private sector counterparts in such indicators as overall customer satisfaction and answer accuracy.

"That was the big surprise to all the researchers on the project," says Jon Anton, who conducted the study. But that's not to say government call centers are perfect. In fact, some have had serious problems, as evidenced in recent reports by the Government Accountability Office and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. And beating the private sector isn't as impressive as one might imagine. In overall customer satisfaction, for example, Anton found that only 45 percent of consumers were satisfied with private sector call center service. Government topped that, with a 55 percent satisfaction rating: better, but not great.

The good news is 10 federal agencies are working with Anton to receive his "center of excellence" designation. The General Services Administration's USA Services Division has been conducting weekly conference calls with government call center managers. The goal is to eventually set customer service and technology standards that all government call centers would meet.

Some agencies, such as the Education and Veterans Affairs departments, have led the way in providing better customer service and won awards for their efforts. They did it through a combination of training, top-of-the-line technology and good management. But there is no magic formula for success. Anton says committed agency leadership is most important, both to reward employees who serve customers well and to hold accountable those who don't. Other agencies, such as the Health and Human Services Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Homeland Security Department's Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau have tried to boost customer service by contracting with private firms, only to find that they provided poor service.

Listening Post

Daryl Covey's day job is at the National Weather Service NEXRAD Radar Operations Center in Norman, Okla., where he is a hotline manager. He and his team help about 7,500 government employees at the Commerce, Transportation and Defense departments navigate and operate the Doppler radar weather system. But for the past four years, he also has organized the Government Customer Support Conference, which gives awards each year to the top government call centers, internal help desks and Web portals. Among this year's nominees are call centers at the Internal Revenue Service, Labor Department, NASA, Navy and the Social Security Administration.

Their efforts indicate how far government has come in a short time, says Covey. When he first got involved in call center work in 1989, he says, there was "little or no government awareness" of best practices. But now, government leads the way in some cases. Last year's big winner for overall excellence-the Veterans Affairs Insurance Call Center-processed almost all its customers' requests faster than industry standards. For example, the life insurance industry processes death claims in 6.3 days on average, while the VA processes them in 1.7, according to LOMA, an Atlanta-based financial services and insurance trade association. LOMA also reports that the industry processes requests for disbursements in 5.7 days on average, while VA accomplishes that in 1.8. And the American Customer Satisfaction Index-an ongoing study of industry and government conducted by the University of Michigan in partnership with the American Society for Quality and the CFI Group-found the VA center's approval ratings were higher than those of any other comparable government service.

Based in Philadelphia, the center has 92 employees who handle more than 55,000 calls a month from veterans who bought government life insurance policies during World War II and the Korean War. Prudential Financial Inc. of Newark, N.J., began offering policies to military personnel during the Vietnam War, but veterans with service-connected disabilities still can buy government-sponsored insurance. The policyholders, who average 76 years old, call with questions about premiums, dividends and benefits. And their beneficiaries call to report deaths.

The system works because of its emphasis on these special constituents, says Stephen Wurtz, deputy assistant director for insurance at the Veterans Benefits Administration. "We're proud of them, and we're constantly reminding ourselves that this is a deserving bunch of folks," Wurtz says. Employees receive special training in how to work with the elderly and the bereaved.

Wurtz is particularly pleased with the center's user surveys. Eighty callers are surveyed every month. More than 60 percent return the surveys, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. At the same time, top Veterans Affairs insurance managers hold "listening post" sessions with call-takers every other week to get a sense of their work and their needs. Call-takers are evaluated regularly and rated on a scale of one to five. Top performers are eligible for annual awards that range as high as $800. If the entire center meets its goals, employees receive more. Evaluations focus on timeliness, accuracy and courtesy. Periodic smaller awards, including days off and restaurant coupons, are handed out to those who go beyond the call of duty.

A Step Ahead

The Education Department's Washington call center, winner of the 2004 award for teamwork from the Government Customer Support Conference, has set up a "beat system," through which employees continually expand their knowledge of education issues. Experts from across the agency take time from their regular duties to brief employees on topics such as the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, special education, and resources for teaching and improving children's learning. Education's Sharon Stevens, who runs the call center, has a small staff, only eight people. They face a daunting task: responding to about 20,000 calls and e-mails a month on anything and everything about education. "We have to be on top of our game and keep each other informed to answer a whole range of questions," she says.

A job with the call center starts with three to four weeks of training on the issues as well as phone techniques, such as how to deal with angry callers. Employees then are given a topic or beat to master. They share their knowledge with other call center employees. Any call-taker who gets stumped on a question can refer to a database of answers or consult the resident beat expert.

During the past year, Education and Veterans Affairs have focused on improving their ability to offer online and e-mail services. VA has expanded its Web self-service center, allowing insurance policyholders to request loans online. Education has set up an electronic service center using software purchased from RightNow Technologies, a Bozeman, Mont.-based company. The center offers a Web-based database of frequently asked questions and allows Stevens to track the subjects of incoming e-mails. It also allows her to see how long it takes to respond to e-mail inquiries, something her team has down to less than two days.

Education and VA are a step ahead, Covey says, but each year his conference judges hear about more high-quality nominees. What stands out, he says, is the culture that top call centers have created in which customer service, teamwork, a sense of owner- ship and professional growth are core values.

Technology Helps

To be the best, it helps to invest in the best available technology. At the VA center, for example, any manager can tell at any time who is handling a call, who's available, how much time callers are spending on hold and how long calls are taking. The data changes color when customer service representatives are moving too slowly, allowing managers to keep tabs on their best and worst performers.

VA built its system in-house. But other agencies are relying on companies that provide software and hardware to do the job. Many agencies rely on phone systems from Avaya or Rockwell Automation to track and answer calls. Oracle Corp., SAP and Siebel Systems Inc. are among the leaders in customer relationship management software, which agents use on their PCs to respond to queries. At the same time, agencies are using technology to store records. VA's Veterans Benefits Administration, for example, has created a "Virtual VA" with software developed by Costa Mesa, Calif.-based FileNet Corp. so customer service agents nationwide have access to electronic data about veterans receiving disability pensions.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is using quality assurance technology created by Witness Systems of Roswell, Ga. The system not only records calls, which can be reviewed and used for training, but also captures the keystrokes that a customer service representative types.

The Education Department recently switched to a new Cisco system that steers calls over a secure computer network rather than telephone wires and costs less. Other agencies are using systems, such as those provided by Richardson, Texas-based AnswerSoft, that allow agents to search for key words in caller questions. "This area has gone from almost no innovative tech in the last 15 years to all these technologies now popping up," says Anton.

With time, agencies expect more citizens will find the information they need on Web sites, via e-mail inquiries or Web chats. Stevens' colleagues at the Office of Federal Student Aid are among the first to offer Web chat, where people can write in and receive responses online. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services might offer chats soon.

Other agencies are using innovative human resources tactics. The IRS, for example, which relies on a huge cadre of seasonal workers to process tax returns, has sought out workers with disabilities interested in working from home. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has contracted with Glendale, Calif.-based Tele-Interpreters, a firm that provides translators who speak 150 languages, to help respond to citizens who say they have been victims of discrimination.

More controversial are decisions by agencies such as the EEOC, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and the Homeland Security Department's Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau to outsource call center operations. The General Services Administration has tried to facilitate the use of private sector companies by making it easier for agencies to sign deals. In July, GSA started FirstContact, a program that allows agencies to contract with five firms-Aspen Systems Corp., Datatrac Information Services Inc., ICT Group Inc., Pearson Government Solutions and TeleTech Government Solutions-without going through standard agency procurement processes. But only GSA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have taken advantage of the program.

That might be due, at least in part, to the outcry that has followed the EEOC, CMS and CIS as they've moved to outsourced call centers. The EEOC opened its National Contact Center in March under a contract with Arlington, Va.-based Pearson. The move came in spite of stiff opposition from the agency's employee union, a local of the American Federation of Government Employees, which argued that it is leading to a reduction in EEOC staffing, and potentially, to reduced service to citizens. The union's attempt to convince Congress to block the center failed, but many Democrats on Capitol Hill wrote letters protesting the move.

EEOC Director of Field Management Programs Cynthia Pierre points out that an agency working group found that it would cost nearly four times as much as the $4.9 million charged by Pearson to staff an in-house call center for two years and to procure the technology necessary to run it. In the past, she says, EEOC employees, such as receptionists, attorneys, investigators and even administrative judges, took calls in addition to performing their regular duties. The EEOC had no staff dedicated solely to taking calls and as a result, "there were a lot of calls that weren't getting answered," Pierre says. "People would wait for days for messages to be returned. The technology was pretty obsolete or inadequate. . . . It was taking away from time we need to spend investigating and litigating" discrimination cases.

Growing Pains

It's too early to evaluate how well the EEOC's center is doing, but unfortunately, the CMS and CIS centers didn't fare well in reports evaluating the quality of their customer service representatives' responses to callers. Both call centers are run primarily by Pearson employees.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes applications for immigration benefits such as naturalization and permanent residence, launched its nationwide call center in the late 1990s. In 2003, the agency stopped taking calls at its local service centers, hoping to ease the burden on district offices plagued by huge processing backlogs. But a recent American Immigration Lawyers Association survey of immigration attorneys and members of the public who had called the center found that nearly 80 percent rated the service unsatisfactory. Many reported receiving incorrect answers to their inquiries. Others said the call center employees provided slower service than CIS' local offices had previously.

Mike Aytes, director of CIS' information and customer service division, has reached out to the lawyers association to determine which calls should be directed to civil servant call-takers. As a result, CIS now routes some calls to its own service centers based on a customer's responses to automated prompts. But Aytes acknowledges that Pearson has not lived up to expectations. "They don't have enough butts in the seats," he says. "The average speed of answer is far [slower] than we require, and the abandonment rate [when callers hang up out of frustration] is far higher than we require." CIS plans to recompete the contract and revamp customer service representative training, he says. David Hakensen, vice president of public relations at Pearson, says that complex scripts for answering CIS calls and regular changes in them made it difficult to retain employees, but the company is working with CIS to improve retention and customer service.

Hard-to-use scripts, which customer service representatives rely on to answer questions, also were blamed for the problems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whose Pearson-operated call centers took a hit in a Government Accountability Office report in December 2004 (GAO-05-130). GAO found that the contractor employees answered completely and accurately only 61 percent of calls about Medicare recipient concerns in a July 2004 test. GAO said the scripts used by customer service representatives were not always clear, and that some had received inadequate training in using them.

Part of the problem stemmed from an unexpectedly large increase in call volume after Congress passed legislation adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, Hakensen says. Mary Agnes Laureno, director of beneficiary information services for CMS, says the agency has boosted training and quality oversight since the report came out. She says the agency is pleased with Pearson's work, and that its own quality tests show much better results than GAO found.

Agency officials say problems so far amount to growing pains. With more time to work out the kinks and better training, private sector call-takers will perform just as well as, and more cost-effectively than, public sector workers, they believe. Anton says outsourcing in and of itself is neither good nor bad. What matters, he says, is that agency leaders dedicate themselves and their resources to the task of improving customer service. Leadership is paramount, he stresses, but it's also not a job that can be done on the cheap. "Those that do it well have spent the money on people, processes and technology," he says.

Numbers

	Public (federal government)	Private (business to consumer)
Average talk time	10.8 minutes	6.5 minutes
Average pickup time for most calls	34.4 seconds	35.7 seconds
Calls handled on the first try	68.1 percent	62.6 percent
Average time on hold	33 seconds	33 seconds
Caller satisfaction *	54.5 percent	44.7 percent

* % of perfect scores given in survey

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Bill would tighten border security, increase information sharing

Shawn Zeller — Thu, 12 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

To carry out the mandates, the Homeland Security, Labor, and State departments and the Social Security Administration would take on significant new responsibilities.

The bill, the 2005 Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, would allow illegal immigrants who pay fines and fees of at least $2,000, take English and civics courses, and undergo medical and background checks, to apply for green cards and eventually citizenship.

The bill would establish a new type of work visa, the H-5A, which would allow low-skilled foreign workers who have lined up jobs in the United States to come for three years. The visa could be renewed once for an additional three years. Illegal workers now in the United States would apply for H-5B visas that would be valid for six years. After the visa terms expire, immigrants could either return home or apply for permanent residence, and ultimately, citizenship.

This "is not amnesty; this is earned adjustment," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who co-sponsored the bill along with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

McCain stressed that he and Kennedy had followed the principles for immigration reform previously laid out by President Bush, and that he expected the president would support the bill. The president's initial proposal, however, did not include the clear path to citizenship outlined by Kennedy and McCain, and the Sept. 11 attacks have since clouded the debate over increased immigration.

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., plan to introduce competing legislation later this year that will be more attractive to immigration skeptics in the Republican Party. A Cornyn spokesman told the Associated Press last month that the Kennedy-McCain bill was a "work and stay" program. By contrast, Cornyn "prefers a work and return program, as does the president," the spokesman said.

Nonetheless, the Kennedy-McCain legislation is expected to have significant support among Democrats and business-minded Republicans. A range of interest groups immediately expressed support, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business group; National Council of La Raza, which represents Hispanics; and the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group.

The bill would require the Homeland Security Department to develop new approaches to tighten border control. The bill anticipates increased use of technology, and greater information sharing and cooperation among federal, state, and local authorities as well as the Mexican government. Local authorities would be paid for costs they incur for holding illegal immigrants, or prosecuting those charged with crimes. Foreign countries, such as Mexico, would have to enter into migration agreements with the United States aimed at helping control the flow of their citizens to this country.

The State and Homeland Security departments would work together processing the visas. Immigrants applying for the H-5A would have to demonstrate that they have a job waiting in the United States, and pay a $500 processing fee. The initial cap on H-5As would be 400,000, in line with the number of illegal immigrants thought to enter the United States each year.

DHS's Citizenship and Immigration Services division would fund civics and English language instruction, which would be required of visa holders seeking permanent residence.

The Labor Department would take on a new role, enforcing employer sanctions against the hiring of illegal workers. That is currently the province of the Homeland Security Department, which enforces employer sanctions rarely because of opposition from businesses and some in Congress. The Social Security Administration would develop a system that would allow U.S. employers to determine if foreign workers were eligible to work in the United States.

McCain stressed that the bill was not only about security and business, but also aimed at a humanitarian problem: Over 300 immigrants died trying to cross the Arizona desert last year. "It's long past time to put the underground economy above ground and recognize the reality of immigrants in our workforce," Kennedy said.

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Perks, Pride and Preparation

Shawn Zeller — Wed, 04 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"They are going to pull the rug out from under us," she says.

And France knows how desirable Defense-trained technology workers are. In the past year, she's received two unsolicited overtures from companies that work with the department. France has been joined in her campaign against ending the special rates by the Chief Information Officers Council, NASA and the State Department. As a result, OPM has agreed to study the issue further and to hold off acting until 2006. The good news is France's concerns are more the exception than the rule.

Across government, attrition remains low and steady, at a rate of 5.6 percent per year. The private sector average is more than 20 percent. Government's low rate has given credence to those who dismiss concerns about retention. They argue that government always will be an attractive employer because it offers competitive salaries, above-average retirement and health benefits, and relative job security.

The bad news is attrition is rising in some pockets of government. Among France's technology workers, the rate is actually below the government average, but it has more than doubled from about 2 percent to 4.2 percent in recent years. And there is some evidence that younger workers, especially those with highly sought skills, such as computer science majors, are especially difficult to retain. For example, more than half of those chosen for the now-defunct Presidential Management Intern Program in the mid-1990s left government within five years, according to a report by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

The Office of Personnel Management is revamping the old Presidential Management Intern Program, renaming it the Presidential Management Fellowship Program, in part to give it a more elite feel.

One factor contributing to rising attrition in pockets of the workforce is the growth in the number of employees covered by the more portable of the two federal retirement programs. The percentage of government workers in the Federal Employees Retirement System, instituted for almost all workers hired after 1983, is growing compared with the Civil Service Retirement System. CSRS employees now make up less than 32 percent of government workers. In 1993, they were 54 percent of the total. While CSRS discourages attrition by requiring long service in exchange for a generous pension, FERS' benefits are not as closely linked to tenure.

Another factor, according to human resources experts, is a profound shift in attitudes about careers among younger people. For older workers, loyalty and stability are key cultural attributes. The implied contract says that to get to the top, you pay your dues and wait your turn; if you do so, then your employer will take care of you. Many younger workers, perhaps because of the downsizing and outsourcing that have swept both the private and public sectors in the past two decades, view their jobs more cynically.

"In my era, it was considered very important to stay at a job and not to change jobs precipitously," he says. "Today, there is no opprobrium to moving frequently early in a career, sometimes for just a little more money."

It's why ambitious college graduates fall all over themselves for jobs at investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and consulting firms like McKinsey & Co. Both are known for attracting top-tier talent.

"Weeding out mediocrity is very important," says Moravec.

Some dismiss the claim that attitudes about work have changed radically. John Marshall, until recently the assistant administrator for management at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says AID has been overrun with applicants for Foreign Service positions. Many, he says, are glad to take pay cuts in order to take a job they think they will love. "People don't go into this business to make a fortune," he says. Rather, they are drawn to government because it can offer young people greater responsibility more quickly than in the private sector, as well as some pride in public service, he says.

The bottom line is no one knows whether the federal government will have an attrition problem in the future. What is certain is budgets in most agencies are tight, and hiring freezes long have been one of the first steps agencies take to close funding gaps. So if an employee leaves, it might be impossible to replace him. In an effort to keep their best talent, agencies are starting to use a variety of benefits approved by Congress: signing, relocation and retention bonuses; special pay rates for highly sought professionals; student loan repayment; and telework. Thanks to the 2004 Federal Workforce Flexibility Act, this year agencies can offer extra vacation to more experienced hires and for time spent traveling for work. And agencies are starting to respond to the perceived needs of younger workers by training managers to devote more time and energy to their employees' career development and by spelling out for new workers the great possibilities that could await them in government.

Camaraderie and Purpose

The Social Security Administration tries to give employees a sense of camaraderie with their peers and a connection to the agency's mission: providing income to elderly and disabled Americans. Between 1998 and 2000, in SSA's Kansas City, Mo., region, attrition among new hires was more than one in four. Like most government agencies, SSA hadn't done significant hiring in years, and its older workers were rapidly approaching retirement. For an agency that processes thousands of claims annually and issues millions of checks to elderly and disabled Americans, the situation was troubling. Those new hires who left said they just "didn't understand this agency," says Connie Witmer, an SSA recruitment and retention coordinator for the region. "There was a disconnect."

Witmer traced one problem to the agency's decision to scale back group training sessions for new employees in favor of interactive video training, where employees learn the ropes using educational software on their computers. The training, while effective and a surefire cost-saver, stripped new employees of a chance to bond with other novices and to get a sense of SSA's mission and history. Witmer says that 28 years after her own initial training, she still keeps in touch with some of those who went through it with her.

Sensing that new employees were thirsting for that kind of connection, SSA launched the New Employee Orientation and Networking Program three years ago. It brings together new employees from all SSA locations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska for three days of seminars and networking sessions in Kansas City. Meeting in groups of 15 to 30, they are introduced to the history of SSA and receive advice on tips for success and career development aid. Witmer estimates that it takes two to three years for a new claims representative at SSA to get fully up to speed, and without group training, many were becoming discouraged during that time. They didn't realize that their peers were going through the same transition.

A central element of the program is a dialogue about SSA's public service mission, a distinct advantage the agency-and all government agencies-have over their private sector counterparts. Studies confirm that young workers seek employment that will allow them to do good for others. Ramona Schuenemeyer, the acting regional commissioner for SSA in Kansas City, often meets with the classes. Her first line: "My name is Ramona and I'm a public servant." The new employees "are just awed by that," says Witmer. And Witmer attributes the bonding-and sense of public service that comes out of the sessions-to reducing attrition. Since the program was instituted, attrition has fallen to 8 percent, though SSA officials say that other factors in addition to the orientation program have helped. Managers, initially skeptical of the program, also have come around. They criticized orientation as "just sending [new workers] off for three days of fun at our expense," recalls Witmer. But the results have turned attitudes around. "Now, it's gotten to be where someone is hired and the manager calls to ask, 'When can we get them to [new employee orientation]?'" she says.

Looking to the Future

Surveys show that employees most often leave jobs because of poor relationships with their immediate supervisors. But usually the root cause is an employee's sense that the manager isn't looking out for his professional development and that he's stuck in a dead-end job. Good employees crave training, both because it allows them to do their jobs better and to advance, but also because it increases their employability in general.

Three years ago, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology hired Herbert Barber, a professor with the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., to create a leadership development program. Armed with a Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology and more than 20 years' experience training managers, Barber developed the New Leader Program, designed to teach employees who grew up on NIST's technical side to lead.

It provides training sessions spread out over one year.

New managers take off for Gettysburg, Pa., where they walk the battlefield. Touring the site of the best-known Civil War fight helps implant Lesson 1 in Barber's "situational leadership" curriculum: A leader must be adaptable. Barber explains that there is no one best leadership style; rather, a leader must learn to relate to every employee. Barber regales the group with tales of Civil War leadership and how an inability to adjust plans-a failure of situational leadership-contributed to the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg.

Another point of the excursion, Barber says, is to provide a chance for socializing among the executives, to get them away from the day-to-day pressures of the office and to kick off the program on a fun note. After a weeklong introduction, employees are assigned to groups of 10. They meet monthly, select topics and listen to speakers arranged by Barber. Recent subjects have included motivating others, dealing with difficult employees, being assertive and understanding the political environment. The second half of each meeting is a discussion of the new managers' efforts to put theory into practice. These discussions, like those at the SSA training sessions, provide employees with a sense of companionship as they adjust to the trials of management.

Finally, each new manager is assigned a peer coach to help sort through options when quandaries arise. Barber recently launched another program for aspiring leaders. Managers nominate participants, who go through a battery of leadership assessments and lessons. Then they can sign up for a mentor, attend a leadership seminar series, go on a developmental assignment and participate in special study groups, which evaluate employee concerns at NIST and report back to management. "Because of the uncertainty people feel about their employment these days, they need to have a feeling that they are learning and growing and developing," Barber says.

More than a decade ago, the Agriculture Department's National Agriculture Statistics Service hired Linda Raudenbush, a former AT&T human resources professional, to bulk up the agency's training for executives. She brought to USDA a management concept called "action learning," a problem-solving method that reinforces the art of questioning and listening. When a management problem arises in the workplace, Raudenbush has found, "the answer is almost always that you have a communication problem."

Under Raudenbush's tutelage, new managers in the program meet once a month. Each is asked to present a management problem during the course of the training. After the problem is introduced, the others can ask questions but cannot make statements. The goal, says Raudenbush, is to create an environment that's conducive to "reflection, questioning, working on problems and building a team." The seminars try to inculcate in managers the notion that their first priority is to encourage employees to give their all.

"People leave jobs because they don't get along with the blockhead who is their boss," she says.

Beating the Odds

Despite a serious nursing shortage-72 percent of hospitals didn't have enough nurses in 2004, according to the American College of Healthcare Executives-Veterans Affairs Department hospitals added 5,000 nurses to their staffs last year. A combination of competitive pay, familyfriendly working conditions and an appealing mission helped the VA compete successfully in a tight labor market, says Thomas J. Hogan, deputy assistant secretary for human resource management and labor relations at Veterans Affairs.

The VA's strategy has been to dispel misperceptions about the quality of its facilities and care by reaching out to medical and nursing schools. More than 100 VA facilities are affiliated with one or more schools, and last year, the department trained 87,000 health care professionals, including future doctors and nurses, physical therapists, social workers and others. Trainees are barraged with marketing about VA's mission. Posters featuring the motto, "Heroes taking care of heroes," adorn most facilities. At the same time, trainees are shown that VA has invested heavily in first-class equipment.

VA's electronic system for tracking medical records, for example, is considered the best in the industry. The department also stresses that it can help new employees with student loans and scholarship money in addition to offering pay rates that are competitive with the private sector. Through 2009, VA expects to pay about $61 million in student loans and scholarships. More than 3,400 employees receive assistance. "The private sector doesn't have the same support systems for nurses," says Hogan.

The efforts have paid off. A survey of nursing trainees found that before their training, 30 percent said they would consider VA employment. After the training, nearly 70 percent said they might join the VA. Those are tangible results of which Hogan is proud. He and the other HR experts say that initiatives like the ones they have launched will help managers across government hold on to and attract talent whether attrition waxes or wanes.

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Winning the Talent War

Shawn Zeller — Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Be a mentor, not a dictator, if you want to keep your best people .

J is for jerk. Don't be one.

That's the tip Beverly Kaye likes to tout most-and laugh about-when discussing the book she wrote with Sharon Jordan-Evans, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005).

The book, the third edition of which was released in March, provides 26 alphabetized "engagement strategies for busy managers," of which J-is-for-jerk is number 10. For federal managers concerned about relating to the next generation of civil servants, it's a welcome guide.

It's routinely reported that government employees are aging. Many soon will be eligible for retirement. But even during an era of outsourcing, tight budgets and hiring freezes, government still needs top-quality program managers to make sure taxpayers are getting their money's worth.

If managers don't learn how to relate to their younger Gen-X and Gen-Y employees now, Kaye says, then they are in for trouble. "Managers who take talent for granted are going to be hit by the perfect storm," she says, an exodus of potentially valuable workers caused by "a healthier economy, unhappy employees and changing demographics."

Staving off the storm isn't rocket science, but at the same time, there aren't any easy-to-follow formulas either. Every employee is different. What it boils down to, says Kaye, is managers must view themselves more as motivators and mentors and less as dictators.

Kaye knows the average 50-something government manager might revolt at what she's saying. "Whatever happened to paying your dues? Showing loyalty? Waiting your turn?" he might ask. To which Kaye responds: "We aren't saying treat them as prima donnas, but as human beings, with wants and needs and likes."

It's about challenging your employees and stopping to ask, "What is it you really love doing?" Kaye says. The best talent always will have opportunities in the private sector. In many cases, companies will offer better pay and benefits. The only way government can compete is to offer these top performers a job that they truly love.

Kaye recalls a plane trip when she sat next to a well-educated, 24-year-old woman who worked for an intelligence agency. The young woman felt stifled sitting at a computer for 10 hours a day, since her best skills, she said, were working with people. She was ready to quit. Her rationale, she told Kaye: "If I'm unhappy in my government job, why not leave for the private sector, where I might also be unhappy, but I'll earn twice as much."

The third edition of Kaye's book also might provide insights for government managers seeking to get more from older workers. It combines tips from the first edition, which focused on holding on to staff in a tight labor market, and the second, which offered tips on reviving older workers who've fallen into workplace ruts.

Kaye says managers need to start with total frankness. They should ask employees: What can I do to keep you, or what can I do to help you love this job again? Then, Kaye says, they must listen to each employee's answer and see what they can do to fulfill it. "Too many managers say they don't have time for [this], but you have to," says Kaye. "Without talent, you ain't got nothing."

The ABCs of Staying Power

Ask What keeps you here? Do you know what they want?
Buck It stops here. Who's in charge of keeping them?
Careers Support growth. Are you building their future, or are you in the way?
Dignity Show respect. Do they know that you respect them?
Enrich Energize the job. Do your people have to leave to find growth and challenge?

Source: Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans

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Perks, Pride and Preparation

Shawn Zeller — Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Managers use special benefits, the aura of public service, career grooming and other techniques to hang on to top talent.

Joyce France looks at the want ads in the newspaper on Sunday mornings and worries. She thinks of the more than 19,000 information technology workers at the Pentagon, where she is director of policy, planning and integration for the deputy chief information officer. A few years ago, in the midst of the high-tech boom, the Office of Personnel Management gave the Defense Department and other government agencies the ability to offer special pay rates for technology workers. But now, OPM is considering instituting regular pay rates again.

"They are going to pull the rug out from under us," she says. And France knows how desirable Defense-trained technology workers are. In the past year, she's received two unsolicited overtures from companies that work with the department. France has been joined in her campaign against ending the special rates by the Chief Information Officers Council, NASA and the State Department. As a result, OPM has agreed to study the issue further and to hold off acting until 2006.

The good news is France's concerns are more the exception than the rule. Across government, attrition remains low and steady, at a rate of 5.6 percent per year. The private sector average is more than 20 percent. Government's low rate has given credence to those who dismiss concerns about retention. They argue that government always will be an attractive employer because it offers competitive salaries, above-average retirement and health benefits, and relative job security.

Joseph Moravec, commissioner of the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service, says he's learned a lot about younger workers' attitudes by watching his daughter-a recent college graduate-and her friends find their first jobs. "In my era, it was considered very important to stay at a job and not to change jobs precipitously," he says. "Today, there is no opprobrium to moving frequently early in a career, sometimes for just a little more money."

That's one reason Moravec is a believer in civil service reform, which he says will enable government to compete for top talent by offering first-rate employees higher salaries and more rapid promotions. Top performers want to be surrounded by other high fliers, he adds, which means that not all attrition is a bad thing. Moravec calls it "pride of association." It's why ambitious college graduates fall all over themselves for jobs at investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and consulting firms like McKinsey & Co. Both are known for attracting top-tier talent. "Weeding out mediocrity is very important," says Moravec.

In an effort to keep their best talent, agencies are starting to use a variety of benefits approved by Congress: signing, relocation and retention bonuses; special pay rates for highly sought professionals; student loan repayment; and telework. Thanks to the 2004 Federal Workforce Flexibility Act, this year agencies can offer extra vacation to more experienced hires and for time spent traveling for work. And agencies are starting to respond to the perceived needs of younger workers by training managers to devote more time and energy to their employees' career development and by spelling out for new workers the great possibilities that could await them in government.

Camaraderie and Purpose

Those new hires who left said they just "didn't understand this agency," says Connie Witmer, an SSA recruitment and retention coordinator for the region. "There was a disconnect." Witmer traced one problem to the agency's decision to scale back group training sessions for new employees in favor of interactive video training, where employees learn the ropes using educational software on their computers. The training, while effective and a sure-fire cost-saver, stripped new employees of a chance to bond with other novices and to get a sense of SSA's mission and history.

Witmer says that 28 years after her own initial training, she still keeps in touch with some of those who went through it with her. Sensing that new employees were thirsting for that kind of connection, SSA launched the New Employee Orientation and Networking Program three years ago. It brings together new employees from all SSA locations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska for three days of seminars and networking sessions in Kansas City. Meeting in groups of 15 to 30, they are introduced to the history of SSA and receive advice on tips for success and career development aid. Witmer estimates that it takes two to three years for a new claims representative at SSA to get fully up to speed, and without group training, many were becoming discouraged during that time. They didn't realize that their peers were going through the same transition.

Managers, initially skeptical of the program, also have come around. They criticized orientation as "just sending [new workers] off for three days of fun at our expense," recalls Witmer. But the results have turned attitudes around. "Now, it's gotten to be where someone is hired and the manager calls to ask, 'When can we get them to [new employee orientation]?' " she says.

Looking to the Future

After a weeklong introduction, employees are assigned to groups of 10. They meet monthly, select topics and listen to speakers arranged by Barber. Recent subjects have included motivating others, dealing with difficult employees, being assertive and understanding the political environment. The second half of each meeting is a discussion of the new managers' efforts to put theory into practice. These discussions, like those at the SSA training sessions, provide employees with a sense of companionship as they adjust to the trials of management. Finally, each new manager is assigned a peer coach to help sort through options when quandaries arise.

Barber recently launched another program for aspiring leaders. Managers nominate participants, who go through a battery of leadership assessments and lessons. Then they can sign up for a mentor, attend a leadership seminar series, go on a developmental assignment and participate in special study groups, which evaluate employee concerns at NIST and report back to management. "Because of the uncertainty people feel about their employment these days, they need to have a feeling that they are learning and growing and developing," Barber says.

Beating the Odds

Despite a serious nursing shortage-72 percent of hospitals didn't have enough nurses in 2004, according to the American College of Healthcare Executives-Veterans Affairs Department hospitals added 5,000 nurses to their staffs last year. A combination of competitive pay, family-friendly working conditions and an appealing mission helped the VA compete successfully in a tight labor market, says Thomas J. Hogan, deputy assistant secretary for human resource management and labor relations at Veterans Affairs.

The department also stresses that it can help new employees with student loans and scholarship money in addition to offering pay rates that are competitive with the private sector. Through 2009, VA expects to pay about $61 million in student loans and scholarships. More than 3,400 employees receive assistance. "The private sector doesn't have the same support systems for nurses," says Hogan.

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GAO critical of foreign aid process

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The MCC, established by Congress in 2004, is a federal agency that distributes foreign aid to poor countries that demonstrate a commitment to ruling justly, investing in people and economic freedom.

In April, Madagascar--an island nation off the coast of Africa--signed the first compact to receive MCC assistance. It will receive $110 million over four years to advance land titling, financial sector reforms and agricultural production. Four other countries are in the middle of compact negotiations with the agency.

Countries are evaluated using criteria set by nongovernmental organizations. For example, in the "investing in people" category, countries' immunization rates are assessed by the World Health Organization. For "ruling justly," the World Bank Institute evaluates anti-corruption efforts. For "economic freedom," the Heritage Foundation rates trade policies. In each of these categories, MCC monitors at least four indicators and sets quantitative criteria to judge countries. Countries must have scores higher than the median on at least half the indicators, as well as a score above the median in fighting corruption to be eligible for aid.

Still, the MCC's authorizing legislation does not require strict adherence to the criteria and allows it to use judgment in determining country eligibility. In 2004 and 2005, the agency determined that 17 countries are eligible: Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Vanuatu. However, three of those countries, Bolivia, Georgia and Mozambique, did not meet the quantitative criteria.

At the same time, 13 other countries met the criteria but were ruled ineligible. They were Bhutan, Burkina Faso, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Guyana, Kiribati, Mauritania, Nepal, Philippines, Swaziland, Tonga and Vietnam.

The MCC did not provide Congress with justifications for why the countries were not selected for aid. It appeared from the GAO analysis that agency officials had placed extra weight on criteria examining whether applicant countries were working to further civil liberties and political freedom.

In addition, the watchdog agency found that some of the data used to determine whether countries met the quantitative criteria was not readily accessible to the public. In other cases, problems with data meant that the scores of 17 countries "may have been misclassified as above or below the median."

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Black-tie affair honors government's distinguished executives

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The awards, given each year, reward senior professionals and senior executives for "exceptional long-term accomplishments." Winners receive a bonus of 35 percent of their base pay.

In announcing the winners, association president Carol Bonosaro said that the recipients had saved the government $311 billion through efforts to improve government management.

She highlighted a sampling of their accomplishments, noting that one winner had discovered "a unique bacterium in plants which revolutionized thinking about bacterial structures and which was later implicated in mad cow disease and in human diseases such as the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jacob brain disease." Another, she said, had restored "his general counsel operations within a week after American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon just two floors beneath his office." A third had found "an alternative power supply for southern Manhattan after 9/11, enabling the resumption of function of the U.S. stock markets and the Federal Reserve Bank within three days."

Joanne Simpson, a retired senior professional at NASA, received a standing ovation for her six-decade career. She was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology; her research in that area continues to impact weather forecasting today.

Energy Secretary Samual Bodman delivered the keynote address, discussing the history of the civil service.

The winners were:
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Robert E. Davis
W. Ron DeHaven
Patrick C. McCaskey
Kevin Shea

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Thomas L. Mesenbourg Jr.
Mary C. Pleffner
Barbara A. Retzlaff
James. L. Taylor
David J. Wineland
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Office of the Secretary of Defense
Howard G. Becker
Linda J. Furiga
Sara V. Groeber
Glenn F. Lamartin
Margaret E. Myers

National Security Agency
John H. Doody
John C. Inglis
Vito T. Potenza
Linda B. Shields

Department of the Air Force
John M. Gilligan
Susan A. O'Neal

Department of the Army
James E. Heath

Department of the Navy
Peter M. Murphy
Pasquale M. Tamburrino Jr.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Mark R. Carney
John F. McGrath

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Robert K. Dixon
Paul Michael Golan
James S. Hirahara
Michael A. Kilpatrick
John R. Sullivan

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Thomas A. Gustafson
Richard J. Jackson

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Joseph J. Angelo
J. Richard Berman
Douglas M. Browning
Kay Frances Dolan
Gregory L. Giddens

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
W. Hord Tipton III

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
John C. Keeney

Drug Enforcement Administration
Michele M. Leonhart

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Maureen A. Baginski
Pasquale J. D'Amuro

DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Vincent J. Chaverini

DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY
Evelyn A. Petschek
Mary Beth Shaw

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
Lawrence A. Biro
Kenneth J. Clark

AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
John M. Streufert

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Geoffrey H. Grubbs
Margo T. Oge

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
Anthony E. Costa

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Orlando Figueroa
Jon C. Harpold
James W. Kennedy
David A. King
Joanne Simpson

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Thomas N. Cooley

NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
Ronald S. Battocchi

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Paul E. Bird
William D. Travers

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Keith J. Fontenot

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Stephen C. Benowitz

PENSION BENEFIT GUARANTY CORPORATION
William G. Beyer
Joseph H. Grant

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Thomas A. Dumaresq
Francisco A. Marrero

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
Felicita Sola-Carter
Dale W. Sopper

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Discrimination claims down, but investigations still drag, report finds

Shawn Zeller — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

But EEOC Chairwoman Cari M. Dominguez said the numbers were still too high. She added, "Despite some agencies' better efforts to process discrimination complaints, they are constrained by a system that is costly, cumbersome and inefficient."

In total, 19,024 complaints were filed. Employees complained most often that they were victims of reprisal after filing a discrimination claim. More than 7,750 claims were filed for reprisal. The other common complaints involved age bias (5,449), discrimination against black employees (5,021), and discrimination against women (4,613). The list is more or less in line with previous years and marks a continuation of a trend toward high levels of age-related claims.

When government employees file a discrimination claim, they can go through up to seven steps before a final decision is made on the claim's validity. Employees might first go to precomplaint counseling, then to a precomplaint alternative dispute resolution process. If the dispute is not resolved, the accused agency investigates. That can lead to another alternative dispute resolution process before the agency issues its decision. If employees are not satisfied, then they can appeal to an EEOC administrative judge. The final appeal would be to the EEOC's Office of Federal Operations.

The report indicated that only 43 percent of agency investigations were completed within the mandated 180-day time frame. On average, agencies were well off the required pace, processing 11,876 investigations in an average of 280 days. That was worse than 2003's 267-day average. Agencies improved their timeliness in issuing final decisions, though the process remained slow, taking 469 days on average, down from 541 in 2003.

The EEOC also made strides in reducing the time it takes to hear cases and issue decisions. Initial decisions were handed out in an average of 355 days, down from 421. Appellate processing time dropped from 285 days to 207.

Overall, the federal workplace was diverse in 2004. Whites made up 70 percent of the total workforce, blacks 18 percent, Hispanics (some of whom identified themselves as white) 8 percent, Asian and Pacific Islanders 6 percent, and Native Americans 2 percent. But the representation of Hispanics and white women continued to lag the private sector.

In senior pay level positions, such as the Senior Executive Service and Senior Foreign Service, white men continued to hold most of the jobs. Men held 74 percent of those jobs, while whites made up 86 percent of the total. Black representation dropped from 7 percent in 2003 to 6.5 percent last year, while the number of Asian and Pacific Islanders in top jobs rose to 3.2 percent from 2.5 percent. Hispanics continued to hold 3.4 percent of the jobs.

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Agencies stepping up use of personnel flexibilities, officials say

Shawn Zeller — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee, representatives from the Office of Personnel Management, Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Health and Human Services and Commerce indicated that the troubles agencies reported a year ago are a thing of the past.

"I think we've made a great deal of progress," said Marta Brito Perez, OPM associate director for human capital leadership and merit system accountability. Agencies, she said, have made the greatest strides in using early retirement and buyout authorities to reshape their workforces and smooth out impending retirement waves.

But agency officials also stressed their efforts to better evaluate performance and improve hiring. Jeffrey K. Nulf, deputy assistant secretary for administration at Commerce, said that since the agency instituted a new performance rating system for its senior executives, the percentage receiving "outstanding" ratings dropped from 81 percent in 2003 to 49 percent in 2004.

Vicki A. Novak, NASA's assistant administrator for human capital management, said the agency has taken advantage of new authorities granted in the 2004 NASA Workforce Flexibility Act. It gave the agency the ability to offer higher starting salaries, scholarships to students who agree to work for the agency, relocation reimbursement, and more vacation time. She said the authorities would help the agency pursue President Bush's goal of expanding manned space exploration.

In the area of hiring, where agencies have been granted numerous flexibilities in recent years, Perez said that 73 percent now are making an offer to a job applicant within 45 days of the time a vacancy announcement closes.

She said agencies also are beginning to use category rating, which allows managers to consider a broader range of qualified candidates; direct hire authority, which allows officials to waive competitive hiring rules for hard-to-fill positions; and student loan repayment.

A year ago, OPM was criticized by agencies for failing to provide guidance on the use of these flexibilities, which Congress granted over the last few years. At the time, the Government Accountability Office found that few agencies were using the new authorities and Perez criticized agencies for their slowness. Talking then about the possibility that agencies should be granted even more flexibility, she said it "begs the question: What else do you need if what you have, you're not using?"

Since then, OPM has launched a major training initiative, Perez said Thursday, and has worked with some agencies on a one-on-one basis to help them improve hiring procedures. Still, she said that neither agencies nor OPM necessarily should be condemned for not using authorities. "Agencies are using flexibilities as they see they are appropriate," she said.

And at the hearing, Perez endorsed the idea of moving forward with governmentwide personnel reforms akin to those now being implemented at the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense. Those departments plan to scrap the General Schedule pay and classification system for a pay-for-performance model, while also tightening disciplinary rules, and limiting union bargaining.

Regardless of whether those authorities are granted to all agencies, starting in May, thanks to the 2004 Workforce Flexibility Act, agencies will have expanded authority to increase the number of employees eligible for bonuses, offer retention bonuses to employees who plan to transfer agencies, and give hiring bonuses equivalent to 100 percent of a new employee's starting salary.

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An Unlikely Critic

Shawn Zeller — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

McPhie surprised the subcommittee members when he criticized new rules imposed by Homeland Security that will require MSPB to hear DHS cases using more management-friendly rules. McPhie also expressed concern about new timelines that will force the agency to speed through DHS cases before most cases from other agencies.

MSPB is an independent federal entity that adjudicates employee appeals of agency disciplinary decisions. In creating Homeland Security in 2002, Congress allowed the department to rewrite rules governing employee discipline. The Defense Department got similar authority in 2003. Both departments plan to require MSPB to set shorter timetables for hearing their cases, and to follow rules that will make it more difficult for employees to win their cases.

For example, the new rules will eliminate employees' right to a hearing if, after reviewing initial pleadings, an MSPB judge believes they do not merit consideration. They also will make it much harder for the board to reduce agency penalties. And they will allow DHS to discipline more than once employees whom the agency charges with serious but yet-to-be-determined "mandatory-removal offenses." If MSPB doesn't uphold the agency's firing decision, then DHS can impose a lesser penalty.

In his most telling comment to the Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization, McPhie said, "The possibility that an employee would be subject to multiple actions based on the same underlying conduct raises a substantial question of fundamental fairness." Aides to McPhie have since said he meant to explain to the subcommittee what would happen under the DHS rules, not to express an opinion.

Already, the DHS and Defense changes are forcing other agencies-whose employees file the majority of cases-to wait longer for hearings on their appeals to the full MSPB in Washington. The board's Office of Appeals Counsel has implemented procedures that put appeals from DHS employees ahead of most others. So far, the agency has not begun to fast-track procedures for Defense cases. In 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 22 percent of cases that came before MSPB judges were from DHS or Defense.

When the DHS rules take hold later this year, MSPB judges will have to move DHS cases in 90 days, as opposed to the usual 120. The three-member board in Washington also will have to reach decisions on cases that are appealed to it within 90 days, while cases stemming from mandatory removal offenses will require board action within 30 days. In 2004, the average appeal to the board took 141 days. "We are required to stop what [we're] doing and shift all [our] resources" to these cases, said McPhie. We are "between a rock and a hard place," he said, adding that the board will need more resources to maintain service levels.

MSPB's budget rose 5.8 percent in 2005, to $37 million, not enough to hire more lawyers or judges. And President Bush's 2006 budget request for MSPB provides no increase. In 2004, the agency bought out some employees and closed its Boston and Seattle field offices to save money. At the time, there was widespread speculation that DHS and Defense would use their authority to reduce or eliminate MSPB's role in processing their cases.

MSPB officials fought to retain the cases-and succeeded. Now McPhie hopes that a combination of increased funding and changes in MSPB procedures will allow the agency again to treat cases from all agencies equally.

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Software glitches force shutdown of agency hiring Web sites

Shawn Zeller — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Monster's QuickHire product, one of several commercial automated hiring systems available to government agencies, is supposed to reduce the time agencies spend processing job applications by asking applicants to submit answers to questions, as well as resumes, online. The system then ranks candidates based on their inputs. Only the top candidates are reviewed by agency human resources personnel.

In the wake of the QuickHire shutdown, HHS has returned to manually processing applications, creating headaches for personnel offices no longer staffed to deal with large numbers of applications. DHS has opted to contract with the Office of Personnel Management to process job applications at a cost of about $1,800 per job.

Monster General Manager Chris McCarrick said the problem stemmed from a high number of applications received by the systems, overwhelming the capabilities of Monster's software. He said the company is "doing everything possible to restore confidence" and said he did not believe other customers would be affected.

But other agencies have reported less severe problems. The Bureau of Land Management experienced a server outage for a few hours earlier this year. Commerce Department officials have been forced to manually review some applications out of concern that QuickHire is not ranking them correctly.

Officials at Commerce "have made it clear to Monster that these are major problems," said Allison Hopkins, director of employment advisory services at Commerce's International Trade Administration. "We need expeditious resolutions, and we are going to hold them accountable for that, or look at other options."

In February, McCarrick wrote to government clients to apologize for the problems. In the past year, he wrote, "our development organization was not able to keep pace [with client needs] and numerous software, performance and support issues have surfaced as a result. This is not, under any circumstances, what you should expect from [Monster] and we are taking immediate actions to ensure this never happens again."

Among the actions McCarrick noted were the hiring of more than 12 employees and the purchase of computer hardware for the firm's data center. The company, he said, is also working to "optimize" its software.

The system shutdown at DHS has affected the application process at the bureaus of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency said hundreds of applications were lost, forcing DHS to contact applicants by e-mail and ask them to resend their materials. McCarrick denied that any applications were lost. DHS is now paying OPM to process applications through its USAStaffing system and training HR staff in how to use the OPM system. Agency spokeswoman Christianna Halsey said the shift had delayed the posting of 750 job announcements. No decision has been made on whether to return to the QuickHire system if Monster fixes it. At HHS, Robert Hosenfeld, the agency's deputy assistant secretary for human resources, estimates the cost to the agency of manually processing applications is running between $300,000 and $1 million per month, much of that going to contractors. Monster has promised to rewrite software code in an effort to speed processing and expects to have the HHS system back up and running by June. Denise Kersten contributed to this report.

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