Federal Manager's Daily Report

Several departments have said that they are taking care to involve employees in the writing their agency reform plans as required by an April OMB memo–first drafts are due to OMB at month’s end–in order to gain needed buy-in for those plans.

A Commerce official, for example, said that department is “focusing first on effective delivery of mission and mission support, using evidence and engaging employees and stakeholders to identify the issues, and then strategically implementing solutions … In addition to employee engagement conducted within individual bureaus and offices, the department engaged its existing departmental-level labor-management forum.”

Similarly, a DHS official said that department “is leveraging all of the resources it has to understand the issues and garner reform concepts, recognizing that sometimes the most innovative ideas come from our employees.” He said the department has been collecting ideas from employees through steps including a listening tour and a questionnaire on the department’s intranet.

However, the NTEU union has said that employees “are not being adequately consulted in the ongoing reorganization. We fear that such reform efforts without employee involvement will fail, adversely impacting the morale of the federal workforce as well as the services we provide to the American people.”

It said that at one subcomponent where it has representation rights, the draft plan would result in a manager to employee ratio of more than double what the administration has set out to achieve, and that when it raised that issue to management and offered a solution but did not receive a response.