While the order does not specify the exact makeup of those committees, the positions it does identify—deputy agency head and the chief of staff—would in almost all cases be political appointees rather than senior career employees. Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffPresident Trump’s executive order requiring agencies to submit annual staffing plans to OPM and OMB on their workforce needs and to create hiring committees to review and approve all hiring will bring more accountability to hiring and align the federal workforce more closely with the administration’s priorities, OPM director Scott Kupor has said.
“The goal of this exercise is not for OPM nor OMB to question the judgment of our very capable agency heads . . . Rather, the goal is to provide a level of pan-government visibility across resourcing in furtherance of the key initiatives that the president has laid out,” he wrote in a posting.
Those plans are to cover “how do their personnel resources map to their objectives; what critical hiring needs do they have in order to meet these objectives; what opportunities do they have to reduce spending in areas of “non-objectives”; what is the optimal mix of full-time employees vs contractors; how are they enforcing accountability and performance management within their teams,” he wrote.
“For example, if we learn that collectively across agencies we are looking to hire 10,000 engineers this year, then OPM can help design an x-government process to facilitate more centralized hiring. Of, if we see that there are core personnel resources that are being duplicated across agencies that could be more effectively done via specialization and centralization, OPM can help drive that as well,” he wrote.
He asserted that such a process also will help reduce duplicative efforts, citing the more than 100 HR systems, “none of which integrate with one another nor provide any broader view of overall government talent. And we have decided in our infinite wisdom that we should have nearly 300,000 hiring managers who are basically unmanaged in their ability to bring in new employees, while at the same time lacking any accountability on hiring and performance management standards,” he wrote.
The planning and review committees, consisting of senior agency officials, are to “ensure the successful operation” of those plans, he added. While the order does not specify the exact makeup of those committees, the positions it does identify—deputy agency head and the chief of staff—would in almost all cases be political appointees rather than senior career employees.
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