Laying Down the Law

In the name of the human capital crisis, Congress last November gave federal agencies some new personnel powers. Lawmakers also told agencies to add a layer to the bureaucracy and to create more paperwork each year. The 2002 Homeland Security Act, in addition to ordering the largest reorganization of the federal government in a half century, included the 2002 Chief Human Capital Officers Act, a direct response to the federal human capital crisis.

Passed in November, the law creates so-called "personnel flexibilities," or exceptions to the rigid rules in standard civil service law. Under the act, agencies will be able to hire people on the spot in some cases, rather than going through rigid job competition procedures. The law provides an alternative method of assessing job applicants that would let federal managers consider more finalists than current rules allow. Special buyout authority, new executive performance evaluation systems, college degree subsidies and transit subsidies for student volunteers are included in the bill.

The law orders every agency to appoint a chief human capital officer. The human capital chiefs are to be in charge of getting the right people in the right place at the right time. Their duties include writing workforce development strategies, analyzing workforce needs, aligning human resources policies with agencies' missions and goals, advocating continuous learning, identifying best practices in human resources, measuring intellectual capital, and advising agency heads on hiring, developing, training and managing.

The personnel chiefs will be members of a new Chief Human Capital Officers Council, headed by the director of OPM. The council will coordinate agencies' efforts to modernize human resources systems and seek legislation on human resources matters.

Observers in the human resources field view creation of the new position as a positive development. For the most part, they say, federal human resources directors must spend their time managing payrolls and benefits, classifying jobs, processing job applications and maintaining employee records. They don't have time to take a more strategic view to ensure sure that all of those processes are churning out a workforce that can best achieve an agency's goals. They also don't have enough clout to make sure workforce issues get top-level attention.

Human resources management at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency offers a model for the new human capital officers. Mary Vander Linden, head of DARPA's Human Resources Directorate, reports directly to the agency director. Working with other senior leaders, Vander Linden and her small staff figure out what type of employees the agency needs. Then they serve as the liaisons with specialists steeped in HR processes to get the right employees. Vander Linden doesn't view herself or her immediate staff as HR people, and part of their job is to make sure HR processes don't get in the way of the agency's workforce goals. "We view ourselves as personnel strategists," says Vander Linden. "People in [HR] should always have to report to someone outside the personnel field for a reality check."

Despite their strategic role, government's new personnel chiefs still will be responsible for a good amount of paperwork. They'll have to develop annual performance plans that explain how training, human resource strategies, employee skill sets and other factors will help agencies achieve their goals. They'll have to report every year on how well their human capital strategies worked.

The Office of Personnel Management will evaluate the officers. OPM has to develop standards for measuring how well agencies align human capital strategies with their missions, integrate those strategies into their budgets, close skill gaps in key occupations, develop leaders, create high-performance cultures, develop knowledge management strategies, and hold managers and HR officers accountable.

Ronald Sanders, OPM associate director for human resources program development and merit systems accountability, and Marta Perez, associate director for human resources programs, will oversee and assist human capital officers. OPM officials are putting together guidance for agencies on the new positions and preparing regulations for personnel flexibilities included in the 2002 law. Sanders says the regulations will require human capital officers to present business cases for stepping outside normal personnel procedures to do things such as directly hire employees without full competitions. OPM plans to hold agencies more closely accountable for human capital results, officials say.