Abolish Centralized Registers and Standard Forms

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.