Acting Office of Personnel Management director Dan Blair
said at a briefing that it will be “hard to overestimate
the interest these new rules will generate for not only
DoD’s employees and from other stakeholders, but from
groups interested in the health and welfare of the
nation’s civil service. With this proposed system,
we’ve reached a tipping point. Combining with the
Department of Homeland Security and a myriad of other
agencies whom Congress has granted personnel
flexibilities in the past, more federal workers will
be covered by reformed and modernized systems than the
current general schedule. These changes haven’t come
easily.” He repeated the administration’s desire for
government-wide personnel reforms, and while he offered
no details, he said that “I think you can certainly gain
insights on what we’re looking at from the efforts that
we’ve done with DHS and DoD.” A government-wide proposal
will face resistance from employee organizations and some
in Congress who at the least want to see the DoD and DHS
systems in operation for a while before applying them
more broadly.
