1. Authorize agencies to establish their own recruitment and examining programs. Abolish central registers and standard application forms.(16) By fall 1994, the director of OPM should forward draft legislation to Congress delegating to federal departments and independent agencies full and complete authority to develop and implement merit systems for employee selection and advancement based on the merit system principles. Legislation should be enacted to allow departments and agencies to conduct examinations for positions that are common to agencies in the federal government, and to redefine the roles of OPM and agencies with respect to the examining process. Within 30 days of enactment by Congress, OPM should develop the broad policies and general principles through which the new legislation would be implemented. Federal departments and independent agencies should establish merit systems for recruiting and evaluating candidates for selection and advancement. These systems should be based on the policies and principles established by OPM in accordance with applicable statutes and reflect the input of the federal human resource management community. Individual federal departments and agencies should be permitted to conduct examinations for positions that have requirements common to agencies in the federal government. OPM should be able to compete with departments and agencies to provide examining services. Department secretaries and agency heads should be responsible for holding managers accountable for the judicious use of these authorities. OPM would be responsible for (1) notifying department secretaries and agency heads if violations are identified, and (2) ensuring that corrective actions are taken, as appropriate. In cases where violations are identified that involve secretaries and agency heads, OPM should be authorized to conduct an investigation and recommend an appropriate course of action to the President. Completely decentralizing the hiring process will result in the establishment of agency-based, market-driven hiring systems, which will, in turn, improve managers' ability to hire, develop, and retain a quality workforce, reflective of our nation's diversity. Streamlined, agency-based systems will permit more timely offers of employment and be more readily understandable to applicants. Access to increased numbers of candidates will facilitate the attainment of workforce diversity goals and objectives. How will accountability be defined in the context of decentralization and substantially increased delegation of authority? Some may believe that increased flexibility will lead to increased incidence of merit system abuse. However, decentralization of responsibility for recruitment and examining is expected to increase managers' participation in and control over the staffing process, thereby reducing their ability to blame the system for unsatisfactory outcomes. Managers will become even more accountable for adherence to merit principles and for preventing prohibited personnel practices as increased flexibility leads to correspondingly increased performance expectations. An April 1993 National Academy of Public Administration report described this shift in the definition of accountability: The means for accountability focuses on the exercise of leadership and judgment within broad guidelines, rather than on detailed rules and procedures and prior controls . . . [deriving from] clear principles of fairness, equity and individual rights. . . . Accountability measures should be mission oriented and results driven. . . . [T]he new framework emphasizes measuring accountability by: measuring accomplishment of mission, goals and objectives; assessing results, e.g., product and service quality and customer satisfaction; assessing public trust (customer satisfaction) and institutional health (e.g., employee morale, attrition rates); and evaluating compliance with civil service laws, regulations and policy.(17) Managers' responsibility for ensuring adherence to merit principles and preventing prohibited personnel practices will increase as they become more closely involved in all phases of recruitment and hiring. Extensive training must be provided to ensure that managers understand how the merit principles are applied in the context of making personnel decisions. The success of managers' efforts will be evaluated using performance-based outcome measures, for example, employee morale and workforce diversity. Experience has shown that greater flexibility permits managers to become more involved in and, therefore, more accountable for program results. The Pennsylvania State University reported that, using the decentralized approach being tested under the USDA demonstration project, "both managers and personnelists reported greater participation in the recruitment process, and viewed manager-personnelist interactions as more important in determining the success of the hiring process."(18) Endnotes 16. Title 5, United States Code, sec. 1104; 1302; 3304; 3305; 3324; and 3325. 17. National Academy of Public Administration, Leading People in Change: Empowerment, Commitment, Accountability (Washington, D.C., April 1993), p. 18. 18. The Pennsylvania State University, p. 22.
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