Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry earlier this week had this to say about the progress agencies are making on speeding up the hiring process: The broader deadline is the one that everybody’s referred to, the 80 days. That’s the marker the president’s put out there [on how long an agency should take to hire somebody]. I admit, we’re not there yet on everywhere but we have hit some bright spots. We’re getting close to it at OPM. That’s a little vague. “Close” could mean 81 days. Could mean 100 days. Could mean 120 days. I wanted to follow…
Browsing: hiring reform
OPM’s centralized hiring registers, which were unveiled earlier this year as one aspect of the overall push to reform the government’s hiring process, are falling flat so far. Their performance is so underwhelming — only 71 hires made so far out of 106,000 candidates — that there apparently has been some discussion in the administration about possibly canceling the program. OPM Director John Berry called me earlier today to say that he’s not giving up on the registers, but acknowledged that they’re not living up to his expectations and need to be improved. But aside from a growing consensus within…
The Office of Personnel Management tends to look askance at agencies’ requests for direct hire authority to fill critical needs. OPM asks for reams of information and has some quite specific guidelines for agencies that want to sidestep the normal federal hiring process. The Homeland Security Department, looking to hire federal employees to fill jobs currently done by contractors as part of the government “insourcing” initiative, is trying to tweak the system a bit in order to fill critical needs, DHS chief human capital officer Jeffrey Neal said yesterday at a congressional hearing. DHS is asking OPM for something it…
The Office of Personnel Management really pulled out all the stops at today’s event announcing President Obama’s reforms to the federal hiring process. Held in an auditorium at OPM’s E Street offices, it had the feel of a campaign event, with U2’s “Beautiful Day” playing on loudspeakers before the event as media, special guests and OPM employees took their seats. Marvin Carraway, one of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency officers credited with stopping a gunman at the Pentagon subway station March 4, was on hand as one example of an exemplary federal employee. He got a standing ovation. OPM director…