May 7, 2008 

 

A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.

1. Federal Diary: Hiring After the Baby-Boom Brain Drain
2. OPM Ads Pitch Public Service to Viewers in College Towns
3. Transition Could Create Leadership Void, Report Says
4. F.B.I. Raids Office of Special Counsel
   
5. News From Public Agenda

Hiring After the Baby-Boom Brain Drain

The Washington Post
By Stephen Barr

The Federal Aviation Administration. The Social Security Administration. The National Science Foundation. The Treasury Department.

All could lose as much as a quarter of their employees by 2012, mostly because of retirements. They are not alone.

Across the government, about a third of full-time employees will retire in the next five years, according to estimates prepared by the Office of Personnel Management. The turnover could be even higher in the ranks of federal executives and supervisors.

From the start of the Bush administration, agencies have been preparing for the churning that will be caused by the baby boom retirement wave. But there are growing concerns that the government may be at a disadvantage in competing for talent, especially among young people, because of its slow and cumbersome hiring practices.

The topic was part of a discussion at a breakfast yesterday organized by the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government as part of Public Service Recognition Week activities. It also will be discussed at a hearing Thursday scheduled by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on government management, chaired by Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii).

One of the witnesses, Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, worries that the government has already lost too many key employees. "Most people talk about the retirement loss as a problem for the future, and I would argue it is a problem of today. We are already seeing that exodus of talent," he said.

The partnership calculates that from fiscal 2002 to 2006, the number of full-time federal employees who filed for retirement increased sharply, from about 30,000 annually to more than 45,000. The OPM has projected that the peak retirement years will be 2008 through 2010, when up to 60,000 employees are projected to leave each year.

By the partnership's reckoning, federal agencies will lose nearly 530,000 employees, many in leadership positions, by 2012. That's a rather alarming number.

The OPM has launched a series of efforts to ramp up federal recruitment efforts. They include television advertisements, upgrades to USAJobs.gov and the development of a 45-day hiring model for most federal jobs.

Congress also has made changes to civil service hiring law, allowing agencies to make hiring offers more quickly and to increase the number of qualified applicants whom managers can consider for a job.

In addition, Congress has authorized agencies to offer student loan reimbursements to top-notch college graduates in hopes of making the government a more attractive employer. Agencies also have been given more leeway in using bonuses to recruit and retain employees. Many of the changes have been championed on a bipartisan basis by Akaka, Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Washington area House members.

Many job applicants complain that federal hiring procedures are difficult to understand and that online applications take too much time, requiring answers to too many questions. Congress, for its part, is concerned that agencies are not doing enough to reduce the time it takes to make a hiring decision and to improve feedback to job applicants.

Stier said there has not been an intense enough effort by the government in this area. "As a nation, we recognize, in terms of public support and investment by the government, that we need the right talent in the military," he said. But when it comes to federal employees who protect the borders, inspect food and protect the environment, "we as a nation have not made a similar investment."

 

OPM Ads Pitch Public Service to Viewers in College Towns

Federal Times
By Gregg Carlstrom

The latest recruiting initiative from the Office of Personnel Management may seem a small effort: A one-camera television commercial, shot on the piers of the Washington Navy Yard, helicopters buzzing overhead on a cloudy afternoon.

"You never want war," Anh Duong, a science adviser at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, intones as she looks into the camera, "but you have to be prepared for it."

But Duong and Jerry Porter, the OPM staffer shooting the commercials, hope this latest recruiting push will help boost interest in public service.

Duong's commercial is one of six that OPM will shoot in the coming weeks. Each one profiles a different federal employee. There is Duong, who develops anti-terrorism technology for the Pentagon; Frazier Lockhart, an Energy Department employee who led the cleanup at a former nuclear weapons facility; and four others.

The goal, according to OPM, is presenting a different perspective on public service, something other than stodgy bureaucrats in faceless office buildings.

"I don't know if everyone thinks of a career in government as the No. 1 choice," Porter said. "So seeing more interesting jobs, people doing good things, maybe that will bump that up on the list."

All of the feds profiled in the ads received Service to America medals from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that encourages government employment.

Duong emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in the mid-1970s.

In an interview during her shoot, she spoke passionately about her government work, describing it as a way to repay her adoptive country.

"I feel very strongly about working for America," Duong said, "and that it's my responsibility to get the message out to Americans who maybe take things for granted."

OPM says the ads are intended to change public perceptions of government work, not advertise specific federal careers. The latest campaign will be targeted at younger Americans. Previous ad campaigns, which also profiled federal employees, brought a modest increase in visitors to USAJobs.gov, OPM's governmentwide job database, Porter said.

Still, the effectiveness of the ads is hard to measure because they aim to change public perceptions. But these latest ads are being produced on a shoestring budget, so OPM expects to get a good return for a relatively small investment.

"We're aiming for college towns, medium-sized markets pretty much all over the country," Porter said, pointing out that those markets typically have modest advertising costs. "And our shooting budget is pretty much nil: We already own the cameras, and the other equipment."

Duong said she was optimistic about the ad campaign's impact.

"Younger people want to help, they want to do good things," Duong said. "So I'd like to inform them, to present to them so that they consider public service." 

 

Transition Could Create Leadership Void, Report Says

Government Executive
By Robert Brodsky

Several key federal agencies stand to lose more than 10 percent of their leadership team during the transition to the next administration, according to a new report issued by INPUT, an industry consulting firm.

The study shows that the Education Department would be hit the hardest, losing more than 22 percent of its top personnel, including political appointees, Senior Executive Service members and senior-level managers. The State, Defense and Labor departments would see declines of more than 14 percent while the Homeland Security Department, which has not been through a presidential transition, would experience leadership losses of more than 11 percent.

A new report by the Congressional Research Service indicates that transitions -- particularly the first in the post-Sept. 11 era -- pose a high risk to national security.

These expected vacancies are significantly higher than in previous administrations, according to Deniece Peterson, an INPUT senior analyst and author of the report, which offers broad recommendations on how industry can assist during the transition period.

President Bush named 12 percent more political appointees and 33 percent more Schedule C appointees than President Clinton. Schedule C appointees have noncompetitive positions with policy-determining responsibilities and work directly with agency heads.

Until a new leadership team is in place, agencies will rely on experienced career officials to maintain operations, creating somewhat of a holding pattern, the report said.

"They will not want to make major changes," Peterson said. "They are just keeping the wheels spinning until the new administration teams come in and start making changes to programs, directions and priorities."

Exacerbating the impact of the transition period is the high percentage of baby boomers who have begun to or plan to use the changeover in administrations as an opportunity to retire from public service.

"All agencies are already planning for [the transition]," said Martin Wagner, a senior fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, who spent 31 years in public service. "And I would think they would also be looking at their career cadre to ask how long they will be staying and if they are eligible for retirement."

The Office of Personnel Management estimates retirement rates of 17 percent in the information technology and acquisition sectors during the final four years of the Bush administration. While these rates are slightly less than the overall 18.5 percent retirement rate during that period, the CRS report noted that they were occurring within critical occupations that were already under an increasing amount of strain.

There are roughly 7,800 political positions, half of which are part-time jobs on boards and commissions, according to John Kamensky, another senior fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, who blogs regularly about the upcoming transition. The remaining positions include 1,200 appointments requiring Senate confirmation, 1,400 Schedule C officials, 800 noncareer senior executives and 800 members of the new White House staff.

The revolving door at the White House and at executive branch agencies will present new opportunities for contractors who can provide the next administration with short- and long-term guidance, innovation, and acquisition needs, Peterson suggested.

"There is good news and bad news for contractors," the report said. "Although the face of the next administration is unknown, IT investments will always be a critical enabler for government operations. However, the environment in which IT program decisions are made is certain to change. There are opportunities for industry leaders to position themselves now to be ahead of the game."

Peterson said agency administrators and program managers already are beginning to evaluate programs to highlight achievements, complete ongoing projects and identify the next steps.

Contractors with a forward-looking approach, she said, will be needed to help agencies evaluate and validate their IT investment portfolio, develop a list of possible problems during the transition, and identify alternative program management approaches to account for the different priorities of the next administration.

Those changes could include major procurement reforms. The report finds that the remaining Democratic candidates, particularly Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., have raised concerns about large, multiagency task-order vehicles such as the Homeland Security Department's Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions and the Air Force's Network-Centric Solutions contract.

These indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicles could be targeted because individual task orders are not subject to full and open competition, Peterson said. 

 

F.B.I. Raids Office of Special Counsel

The New York Times

By Philip Shenon

F.B.I. agents on Tuesday raided and temporarily shut down the offices of a small federal watchdog agency that is charged with protecting the rights of government whistle-blowers but has been accused of retaliating against whistle-blowers in its own ranks.

The raid on the downtown Washington headquarters of the agency, the Office of Special Counsel, and another at the home of its director, Scott J. Bloch, followed accusations that Mr. Bloch had destroyed evidence on government computers that might demonstrate wrongdoing.

Mr. Bloch, who has held the post of special counsel since January 2004, has denied intentionally destroying evidence from his agency's computers, though he has acknowledged paying $1,000 of public money to a technology company, Geeks on Call, to scrub his own government computer in 2006. He has said he was trying to rid the computer of software viruses, an assertion challenged by members of Congress and by lawyers representing current and former employees of the office.

The central telephone lines at the Office of Special Counsel, which has about 100 employees, were not answered Tuesday afternoon. But a spokesman for the agency, James P. Mitchell, who was reached at his direct line, said federal agents were in Mr. Bloch's offices "most of the day going through his files, and I believe they took his computer." Mr. Mitchell said the agency was cooperating with the F.B.I.

A lawyer for Mr. Bloch, Roscoe C. Howard Jr., had no comment on the raids.

The F.B.I. confirmed in a statement that its agents, along with investigators for the inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management, had carried out raids based on a "number of court-authorized search warrants." The bureau had no comment on the nature of the investigation or on what was seized.

The counsel's office, which answers to the White House, is charged with protecting federal employees from reprisals for whistle-blowing and with investigating accusations of political interference in their work. It has been in turmoil during much of the four-year tenure of Mr. Bloch, who has repeatedly been accused of using it to promote conservative social causes.

Mr. Bloch has been under investigation since 2005 by the inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management, after a complaint filed by some employees of the counsel's office. He has been accused of failing to protect federal workers from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and of retaliating, through intimidation and involuntary transfers, against employees who complained.

Debra S. Katz, an employment-law specialist who represents several current and former employees of the agency, predicted that the raids Tuesday would step up pressure on the White House to remove Mr. Bloch from his job. As a result of the raids, Ms. Katz said, the F.B.I. has "essentially shut down his office and made it impossible for the office to carry out its function."

Mr. Bloch has also been involved in several highly publicized investigations of other government agencies, including a look into the role of White House officials in the firing of several United States attorneys in 2006 for what appeared to be political reasons.

Last year he called for disciplinary action against the head of the General Services Administration, Lurita A. Doan, over accusations that she had mixed politics with the workings of her agency. Although she denied wrongdoing, Ms. Doan resigned last week under what she acknowledged was White House pressure.

Mr. Mitchell, the spokesman for the counsel's office, said, "It's hard to disconnect the investigations of the administration that we've been doing with events like today."

News From Public Agenda

Public Agenda

Public Agenda's Washington, D.C. Office Director Andrew Yarrow has just released a new book - "Forgive Us Our Debts," available in stores now. In the book, Yarrow brings the discussion of national debt down to earth, explaining why federal debt is rising, what effects it may have on Americans if debt is not brought under control, why our government borrows, and what it will take to pay it all back. Visit www.publicagenda.org for more.

In addition, Public Agenda, together with the Institute for American Values, the New America Foundation, and Demos is hosting a conference on May 13, "Confronting the Debt Culture" at the Washington Marriott. Click here for registration and panel information.