Fedweek

Image: Lux Blue/Shutterstock.com

The Trump administration expects to begin carrying out in the fall the portions of its recently released agency reorganization plan that can be accomplished without a change in law, OMB has said. (Other parts likely are more of a long term project.)

Deputy director for management Margaret Weichert said that “ten or twelve” of the 32 major topics in the reorganization plan are within existing executive branch authority and could be carried out through executive order or other administrative actions. She added that a review will continue through the summer regarding exactly what would need to be done but that preparations are underway through channels such as interagency working groups.

Asked repeatedly by members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to provide a full list of which plans the administration believes would not require the involvement in Congress, she named only two: improving the public’s customer experience with federal agencies and creating a central pool of federal employees with cyber skills who could be reassigned as needed. Both of those initiatives were included in the previously issued President’s Management Agenda, as well.

She further identified those two as of high priority, along with reforming the security clearance process and creating a public-private cooperative to foster innovation and solve management problems in government. She also indicated that not all initiatives within the executive branch’s sole powers would be tackled at once, with the first stages possibly a mix of shorter- and longer-term projects.

Aspects of several are already underway, she added. An inventory of the cyber-related positions and skills shortages has been in process since enactment of laws several years ago, and last year’s defense budget ordered shifting responsibility for conducting background checks on DoD employees from OPM to DoD—the reform plan would take that a step farther and have DoD assume that responsibility for all federal employees.

One issue likely to arise is the impact of language written in the government-wide budget measure for the current fiscal year, which continues through September, restricting agencies from carrying out substantial changes in their operations without explicit permission from Congress. Similar language has been added to a number of the spending bills being considered for the fiscal year that starts October 1.

Weichert also indicated that among the proposals that would require legislation—such as privatizing the USPS and merging the Education and Labor departments—some may be in the next budget proposal while others may be proposed separately. And she repeated the administration’s often-stated position that job-cutting is not a goal of the reorganization overall although some jobs could be lost or moved.