Lawmaker seeks to fix "outdated & old" federal hiring process once and for all

For Jeffrey Zients, the chief performance officer at the Office of Management and Budget and long-time D.C. entrepreneur and businessman, his first job in the Federal Government offers an opportunity to cast this judgement on the process by which almost all civilian employees of the government are hired:

"In my experience, the best talent doesn't loiter for five months," he told the Enterprise Risk Management conference in Arlington on Wednesday. "It finds another home."

Zeints says the need, some would call it the desperate need, to fix the seriously broken federal government hiring process is the reason he is working closely with John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management. It's a subject that Berry addresses at almost every public speaking opportunity, as he did this past July at the Excellence in Government Conference.

Now is the time we must hire and recruit the best. Expect the best. Respect their successes and honor their service. To achieve this, we are going to fix hiring and recruitment so that it is fair, simple, fast, and based on merit.

That's the 30,000 foot view of the goal set by Berry, Zients, and indeed, President Obama, who has said publicly that he seeks to make Federal Service "cool" again.

But permanent change may have to come from Capitol Hill, where a long-time advocate for federal workers has his own ideas about why the federal hiring process is broken.

The reason I would tell you is that they are still using structures of World War Two. Which means it is outdated and old.

Senator Daniel Akaka (D.-Hawaii), is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia.

"Unfortunately for the Federal Government," he told Federal News Radio in an exclusive interview, "whatever is there, they continue to use it, until somebody comes along and revises it and changes it. I feel strongly as chairman of the Federal Workforce subcommittee, and with my dear friend Senator George Voinovich (R.-Ohio) that we are committed to change it, to improve it, to slim the process of hiring."

Both Akaka and Voinovich, the ranking Republican on the Federal Workforce subcommittee, are long-time advocates on behalf of federal workers.

Speaking in his office in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, Senator Akaka was asked to talk about Senate Bill S-736, the "Akaka-Voinovich Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act".

The act will eliminate some of these requirements that end up taking time. Our bill will try to slim that back to about 80 days, or two and a half months. That will be a huge difference, but my hope is that we can reduce that more than 80 days.

Akaka explains that in testimony before his subcommittee over almost the last decade, officials have said that the government is at a disadvantage in competing for talent.

"We've heard that while they're waiting in line for a federal job, they get an offer and get hired by the private sector. Senator Voinovich and I really want to make the Federal Government the 'employer of choice'. Part of this is the hiring process."

Chairman Akaka says the first hurdle for his bill has been met: it has been approved by the full Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and is awaiting a date for debate and a vote by the full Senate.

Akaka says he and Voinovich are hopeful that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) will schedule S.376 for consideration before the end of the session in December.

------
On the Web:

Senate - Subcommittee on the Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia

Federal News Radio: