Washington, DC - Congressman Mac Thornberry (TX-13) today
introduced H.R. 5439 to strengthen and reform the federal civil service system.
"The country is fed up with inefficient, ineffective government," said
Congressman Thornberry. "The legislation establishing the federal civil service
is over 100 years old. We will never be able to meet the needs of the 21st
century and give Americans the service they deserve with a personnel system
stuck in the 19th century."
"Now is the time to act," observed
Congressman Thornberry. "Half of all federal civil service employees are
eligible for retirement within the next five years. That gives us an enormous
challenge, but also a significant opportunity. Now is the time to reform the
way we hire, fire, and manage federal employees for the good of the country. My
bill will make it more likely that the 21st century federal government will
attract America's best and brightest into
careers of public service."
Thornberry's bill is unique in that it
creates a commission of experts to assist Congress in crafting a new civil
service system and then propose that new system in a bill that Congress must
vote up or down, in much the same way that the Base Realignment and Closure
Commission (BRAC) has managed the military base reform and closure
process.
Thornberry's bill includes provisions to allow the federal
government to:
- Maintain high standards for employee merit and
fitness
- Develop a fair management system linking pay to
performance
- Have the ability to attract and rapidly hire
highly qualified experts
- Develop a competitive system of
recruitment that emphasizes filling skill gaps
- Focus on
retention of high-quality personnel
- Conduct continuing
education to maintain the quality of the workforce
- Have the
flexibility to terminate inefficient or underperforming workers
"We have
a lot of good people in the federal government who work hard and are very
frustrated. We have some others who are just biding their time," concluded
Congressman Thornberry. "With a payroll of some $107 billion and a civilian
workforce of over 2.7 million employees it is essential for the stability and
prosperity of our country that the federal government attracts and keeps top
quality employees and then is able to manage them
effectively."
(Footnoted copy of background attached in .PDF
format)
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What Others Say About the Need for Civil Service
Reform
"The organization of the federal government and the operation of
public programs are not good enough: Not good enough for the American people,
not good enough to meet the extraordinary challenges of the century just
beginning, and not good enough for the hundreds of thousands of talented federal
workers who hate the constraints that keep them from serving their country with
the full measure of their talents and energy."
"We have grown too
accustomed to government reorganization occurring piecemeal. The government of
the 21st century demands fast action and implementation..."
Former Federal
Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, Chairman of the National Commission on the Public
Service, 2003
"This problem derives from multiple sources-ample private
sector opportunities with good pay and fewer bureaucratic frustrations, rigid
governmental personnel procedures, the absence of a single overarching threat
like the Cold War to entice service, cynicism about the worthiness of government
service, and perceptions of government as a plodding bureaucracy falling behind
in a technological age of speed and accuracy."
Senators Gary Hart and
Warren Rudman, Co-Chairmen, U.S. Commission on National
Security/21st Century, 2001
"Unfortunately, the federal government is
not configured to offer the work young Americans want.... Agencies are struggling
just to hold the talent they already have, let alone imagining a new public
service in which expertise moves freely among the government, private and
nonprofit sectors."
"The federal government is losing the talent war on
two fronts. Its personnel system is slow in hiring, almost useless in firing,
overly permissive in promoting, out of touch with performance and penurious in
training. And it lacks any system at all for managing the government's vast,
hidden workforce of contractors and consultants who work side-by-side with civil
servants."
Paul C. Light, Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings
Institution, The New Public Service
Civil Service Facts and
Background
Brief History
The U.S. Code defines the Federal Civil
Service as "all appointive positions in the executive, judicial, and legislative
branches of the Government of the United States, except positions in
the uniformed services." Today's civil service system was created in 1883 by
the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Prior to this Act, government jobs were
given on the basis of a spoils system. Presidents and political parties hired
government employees based on patronage, and an employee could be fired at any
time. The 1883 Act ended this patronage system and began to award government
jobs based on merit and qualifications. Now only certain senior civil service
positions, such as high-level diplomats and heads of executive agencies, are
filled by political appointees.
In the Classification Acts of 1923 and
1949 developed the General Schedule (GS) pay scale for white collar personnel.
In 1978 the Civil Service Reform Act brought modest reforms to the system, such
as replacing the Commission on Civil Service Reform with the Office of Personnel
Management and creating the Senior Executive Service and the Merit Systems
Protection Board Report.
However, almost 30 years later, much work
remains to be done in updating the cumbersome, burdensome personnel system
created in the 19th century. We must act to address the fundamental problems of
our civil service system so that it operates with the flexibility and speed
needed to meet employment needs within the government and effectively serve the
American people.
General Statistics
Total federal civilian
employees: 2,713,200
1.3% of the nation's workforce
Average age: 46.8 years
Average length of
service: 16.6 years
Bachelor's degree or higher:
42%
Average salary: $61,714
DC metro:
$$79,695
Average GS grade: 9.8
DC metro: 11.7
Executive
Branch employs 96% of all federal civilian employees
GS 1-4:
86,092 employees - below $29,769
GS 5-8: 389,544
employees
GS 9-12: 575,678 employees
GS 13-15:
364,785 employees - $66,951 and up
Annual payroll: $107
billion
Monthly payroll: $9 billion
Half of the federal work force
will be eligible for retirement in the next 5 years
Failures of the
Present System
Slow HR Processes
- President
in 2002 said it can take 5 months to hire a new employee and 18 months to
terminate an poor performer
- Some agencies estimate it can take up
to a year from application to hire
- OPM does not even track how
long it takes to terminate a poor performer
- 3 months to fill a
vacancy
- 6 months to promote from within based on
performance
- 1 year for Top Secret clearance
- 5
months for Secret/Confidential clearance
Poor Job of
Recruitment
- Only 1/4 of 18-30 year olds say they would prefer to
work in the public sector
- 54% of people would not recommend young
people start their careers in government
Difficulty with
Retention
- Low turnover among middle- and
upper-management
- But front-line worker quit rate is
10%
Increased Dependence on Contractors
- 2005: over half of
total government employees were contractors - 7.6 mil jobs
- Past 6
years: over 2.5 million new federal government contractors
- 1995-2005: the number of individual contract actions increased
600%
- More than half of all contract actions are no-bid
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