Federal Manager's Daily Report

The Federal Aviation Administration “did not have the

institutional framework in place that could have helped

to maximize” the personnel flexibilities it gained in

1995 that are serving as the precursors to similar changes

under way at the Department of Homeland Security, the

General Accounting Office has said.


GAO made its comments in a letter to Sen. Daniel Akaka,

D-Hawaii, who submitted questions after a recent hearing

on DHS personnel reforms. Akaka, the ranking Democrat on

the Senate’s civil service subcommittee, noted that for

example FAA was given certain flexibilities that later

were rescinded by Congress–Akaka did not specify which,

but FAA’s in-house appeals system was later amended to

give employees the choice of using that system or going

to the outside Merit Systems Protection Board. Akaka asked

what lessons had been learned from such experiences.


GAO noted that the FAA legislation granted the agency

broad exemptions from federal personnel management rules

in response to FAA’s argument that the inflexibility of

the civil service system hampered its ability to carry

out its mission–the same argument that DHS, and later

the Defense Department, used to gain flexibilities of

their own, and the same argument that other agencies are

expected to make in the future.


GAO said FAA “had not fully incorporated elements that

are important to effective human capital management into

its overall reform effort.” It identified elements such

as data collection and analysis, performance goals and

measures, and linkage of reform goals to program goals.

“FAA human resource management officials said that the

agency should have spent more time to develop baseline

data and performance measures before implementing the

broad range of reforms, but that establishing these

elements was a complex and difficult task,” GAO wrote

in its response.