How Do You Staff the Government? The Obama Administration Could Use Some Advice

When Obama was swept into office on waves of hope and change one of the administration's first actions was to reward the unions. In a swift payoff to government unions OPM decreed that agencies should reduce spending on contractors and shift duties to permanent employees.

The hypocrisy was rife when OPM then sought to contract out its human resources positions. They sought an outside contractor to run the Talent Services Group because "because the OPM doesn't have the staff to do the job." The government abandoned this plan once the Washington Post caught wind of it.

OPM is still having troubles. Now the government has decided to get serious. No they're not making Mitt Romney the Government Jobs Czar. They have turned to academia for advice.

The 40 people who met behind closed doors in the Ronald Reagan Building on Wednesday weren't in a position to make any decisions about fixing the federal government's recruitment and hiring process, but their discussion could have a lasting impact on federal policy.

The Harvard Kennedy School, along with the University of Maryland and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), organized the six-hour meeting of administration officials, members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, employee organization heads, private sector leaders, good government types and academics.

It was an invitee-only, off-the-record session that participants described as a candid conversation about the issues facing Uncle Sam as he tries to overhaul a personnel employment process that seems stuck in the mud.

Although meetings like that sometimes reek of elitism and secrecy, participants said there was a valuable exchange of ideas from a broad range of voices that could help Sam get hiring right.

*    *    *

Private-sector participants urged government officials to make greater use of data and metrics to keep track of how they are doing in their recruiting and hiring efforts.

After the session, David Ellwood, dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and co-chairman of the meeting, said the government's ability to deal with a range of issues, including problems as big as pandemics and global warming, depends on the quality of its staff. So, although the federal workforce gets far less attention than those issues, Ellwood said, "it is by definition every bit as important."

See the full article here.