Challenges facing the central management agencies—OPM, GSA and OMB—make leading those agencies some of the toughest management jobs in government, according to the “Prune List” compiled by the National Academy of Public Administration.
The list is a twist on the “Plum List” of the roughly 4,000 political positions that an administration gets to fill, the latest version of which is to be published soon by OPM.
Among the big challenges ahead for the next OPM director, it says, are improving the USAJOBS site following the “overwhelmingly negative response from the experience of job applicants”; continued fallout of the personnel files and background investigation files data breaches; and ensuring that as aging employees retire their replacements are “up to the tasks that will be required of them . . . the future of the federal workforce will depend on hiring and maintaining a technologically literate workforce, something the OPM director must commit to achieving.”
At OMB, challenges include constructing the yearly budget, making consolidated financial statements across the government meet standards, and tying budget decisions to agency goals. Challenges at GSA include security risks in federal buildings and dealing with real estate, acquisition and other services.
Also included in the 40 prune jobs are the deputy directors of many Cabinet departments—commonly, the person most responsible for translating policy into practice—and senior officials managing national and homeland security, natural resources, infrastructure, and health, education and income security programs.
