Nonprofit group to focus on federal recruitment, retention

A new nonprofit group promoting public service wants to help human resources managers recruit and retain federal employees. The Partnership for Public Service, created to address the looming personnel crisis in the government, will be officially launched in mid-September, Max Stier, the designated president and CEO of the organization said in an interview Monday. Unlike other think tanks and good-government groups trying to bring awareness to problems in government, the Partnership for Public Service will seek its own niche as an organization dedicated solely to improving the government's recruitment and retention record. Stier, who served during the Clinton administration at the Housing and Urban Development Department, and his colleagues have extensive experience working in all three branches of government. "We plan on setting an ambitious agenda, and will pick three or four specific projects to focus on," he said. The projects are still under consideration, but will focus on ways the government can more effectively attract and keep a skilled workforce. The Partnership for Public Service is the brainchild of Samuel J. Heyman, an investor and former assistant United States attorney in Connecticut, who also is the organization's main financial backer. Initial funding for the group is $25 million over the next five years. Stier said the group's feedback from federal human resources managers has so far been positive. He said the HR managers he spoke with at a recent conference organized by the National Academy for Public Administration were "uniformly interested in doing their jobs better." The government's current personnel problems are largely a result of downsizing during the 1990s. The federal government shrank from 2.3 million non-postal civilian employees in 1990 to 1.9 million in 1999. By 2005, 34 percent of those employees will be eligible for regular retirement and 20 percent more will be eligible for early retirement, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

Although Stier and his colleagues said they would seek some legislative solutions to the government's hiring woes, they emphasized the importance of existing tools to recruit and retain people and the need for the government to promote itself more effectively.

"People in and out of federal government don't know what opportunities are there, or how to go about getting them," said Joan Timoney, who will be vice president of programs at the Partnership for Public Service. "There are ways to make the process more user-friendly." Timoney said every organization, including the government, needs to "creatively frame what it does" to attract a talented and enthusiastic workforce.

Stier said the group wants to harness the support and efforts of leaders in government, academia and the non-profit world to resolve the federal workforce crisis and "bring measurable results" to the table.

"The effort to develop relationships has been a missing piece in pulling this [effort to tackle the human capital crisis] together; that's where we can add value," Stier said. Stier said the group has already met with several lawmakers, administration officials, and agency heads to discuss ways to make public service more attractive to people.