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were rescinded by Congress–Akaka did not specify which,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.