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95–654 PDF 2015

S. Hrg. 114–52 

21ST CENTURY IDEAS FOR THE 20TH CENTURY 

FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

REGULATORY AFFAIRS AND FEDERAL 

MANAGEMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 20, 2015 

Available via http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Staff Director 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN, Minority Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Minority Deputy Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY AFFAIRS AND FEDERAL 

MANAGEMENT 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma, Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

JON TESTER, Montana 

CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

JOHN CUADERESS, Staff Director 

ERIC BURSCH, Minority Staff Director 

RACHEL NITSCHE, Chief Clerk 

RACHEL NITSCHE, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Lankford .............................................................................................. 1 

Senator Heitkamp ............................................................................................ 2 

Senator Ernst .................................................................................................... 11 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY MAY 20, 2015 

Yvonne D. Jones, Director, Strategic Issues, U.S. Government Accountability 

Office ..................................................................................................................... 5 

Patricia J. Niehaus, National President, Federal Managers Association ........... 6 

Hon. Dan G. Blair, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Academy 

of Public Administration; Chairman, Postal Regulatory Commission (2006– 

2009); and Deputy Director, Office of Personnel Management (2002–2006) .. 8 

J. David Cox, Sr., National President, American Federation of Government 

Employees, AFL–CIO .......................................................................................... 10 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Blair, Hon. Dan G.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 85 

Cox, J. David: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 96 

Jones, Yvonne D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 29 

Niehaus, Patricia J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 70 

APPENDIX 

Statements submitted for the Record: 

Senior Executives Association ......................................................................... 109 

Professional Managers Association ................................................................. 122 

National Treasury Employees Union .............................................................. 130 

National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association ....................... 137 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record: 

Ms. Jones ........................................................................................................... 141 

Ms. Niehaus ...................................................................................................... 153 

Mr. Blair ............................................................................................................ 161 

Mr. Cox .............................................................................................................. 168 

(1) 

21ST CENTURY IDEAS FOR THE 20TH 

CENTURY FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY,

AFFAIRS AND FEDERAL MANAGEMENT,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in 

room SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. James 

Lankford, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Lankford, Ernst, Heitkamp, Booker, and Peters. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD 

Senator LANKFORD. Good morning. This is the Subcommittee’s 

first hearing on the Federal workforce. Today we are going to explore the policies guiding today’s Federal civil service, and I appreciate our witnesses being here. I will take some time and introduce 

them in just a moment. Let me set some context. 

The State of the Federal workforce is expansive. The Federal 

Government currently employs 2,663,000—and a few additional 

odds and ends coming in and out—in the Executive Branch as civilians. Ensuring that agencies have a process in place to efficiently 

recruit, retain, compensate, train, and, if necessary, dismiss problem Federal employees is a difficult but essential task. And as the 

Subcommittee with oversight on Federal management, this task 

falls to us. 

But before we discuss these matters, I would like to take a moment to thank our Federal employees for their dedicated service. 

We have a tremendous number of very dedicated patriots that 

serve all over the country, and I am honored to be able to serve 

with them. For individuals that step up and say one thing or another about Federal employees, I can tell you, I have met a lot, and 

it is a great group of people. 

I am reminded that 20 years ago in Oklahoma City the Murrah 

Federal Building was bombed, and we lost many Federal employees 

there. The people that went to work that day serving their country 

put their lives on the line. For those of us in Oklahoma and for all 

of us on this dais, we understand, and we understand well, that we 

are very grateful to people who choose to serve their country 

through Federal service. 
2 

It is also true that lately a few bad apples in our Federal workforce have made the news. That is a shame. And for those individuals, we understand well they do not represent what happens in 

the bulk of the Federal workforce. These stories represent the importance of congressional oversight, though, both as to the incidents themselves as well as the management policies that underlie 

them. But as they also tend to cast a shadow over the good work 

that individuals across the Federal Government accomplish each 

day for our Nation, we want to try to correct and do what we can 

to be able to minimize that. 

Senator Heitkamp and I are deeply appreciative of the work of 

Federal employee. We are honored for their dedication. We are 

sponsoring a resolution recognizing the first week of May as Public 

Service Recognition Week, and we are joined by many of our colleagues on this Committee. We would like to extend our thanks 

again today. 

The issues we will discuss, which may be critical of the way the 

Federal workforce operates today, are not indictments on those actually in the Federal workforce. In fact, I would wager that many 

of them share the same concerns as we do as I talk to many Federal employees that feel stuck and that their voice is not being 

heard for ways to be able to improve the system. So we hope to be 

able to provide a voice to many great Federal employees that have 

many great ideas on how to improve the process. 

For example, some Federal employees may be upset that misbehaving employees may be placed on paid administrative leave, 

sometimes for a year or longer, pending a personnel investigation. 

Or some Federal workers may be irritated that because of the way 

in which many Federal agencies compensate employees under the 

General Schedule (GS), they are doing twice the work of a colleague but paid the same amount. 

These are just a few concerns that Federal employees have 

brought to our attention. The stakes are high, and the responsibility of Congress is clear. Because we rely on Federal employees 

to run our government, it is also important that we work together. 

It is time we think critically about many of the policies that currently govern the Federal workforce so we can maintain a talented 

pool of employees in the years and decades ahead. I look forward 

to discussing these issues with our members and with the witnesses today because the future of the Federal workforce depends 

on it. There is a lot of transition happening. We have to navigate 

it well. 

With that, I recognize our Ranking Member for her opening 

statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HEITKAMP 

Senator HEITKAMP. Thank you, Chairman Lankford. Today 

marks the Subcommittee’s first hearing examining the Federal 

workforce issues. I think that this is such a critical topic, and I am 

passionate about making sure that the workforce of tomorrow is 

the Federal workforce that can meet the needs of the constituency 

groups and can also make us proud as we serve in the context of 

public service. 
3 

Since taking office in January 2013, I have been very engaged in 

this issue because North Dakota, as you know, is experiencing an 

energy boom, and that has created a real crisis within our Federal 

workforce. The great irony of all of this is that people, I think, who 

used to say there are too many Federal workers, had a lot of criticism about Federal workers in general, now realize that when 

there are not enough people to do permitting in the Bakken at the 

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and there are not enough 

grassland managers to actually approve plans for those lease holders, not having Federal workers creates a real economic challenge. 

And so as a result, we have been very engaged with the Office 

of Personnel Management (OPM) to try and get salary adjustments 

for workers. As a result of that work, I have become very intimately involved in the salary structure, probably more than any 

other Member, but I am proud to say that working with OPM, we 

have been able to guarantee salary increases for almost 500 Federal employees in North Dakota. 

Perhaps my most pressing concern, however, is why we are not 

retaining Millennials who come to work for the Federal Government. You can see that the average period of time—or the median 

period of time that Millennials serve in the Federal workforce is actually under 4 years. I doubt that if you did a study 20 or 30 years 

ago, when I would have fit in that category, that would have been 

the result. 

And so when you couple statistics like that with the fact that 

nearly 30 percent of the entire Federal workforce will be retirement 

eligible in 2019, you can see we face some serious challenges in 

staffing the important work of the Federal Government. 

So today I want to focus on not only what we can do better to 

recruit young folks, but what we need to do to retain them. As 

someone who used to run a large agency, I spent a lot of time on 

retention because the effort and the dollars in training tell you that 

if you have a good employee, the one thing that you definitely want 

to make sure that you keep is a good employee. 

It is no secret why they are discouraged when you look at sequestration, pay freezes, furloughs, as well as the government shutdown in 2013. That did not exactly add to the morale of the Federal workforce. 

But there are other reasons why young people are leaving and 

perhaps more difficult to get at, which is when you look at OPM’s 

survey of Federal employees’ viewpoints, only one in three 

Millennials believed that creativity and innovation were rewarded 

within their organizations, and only 34 percent of them were satisfied with the opportunities for career advancement. 

So my goal this morning is to find out from you what we can do 

within the Federal workforce to do these retentions better. How 

can we improve the speed of the hiring process? How can we address the inability of the Federal workforce to compete with the 

private sector pay? How do we bridge the gap between human resources (HR) departments of agencies and line managers? And how 

do we improve supervisor training and ultimately employee morale? These are just a few of the areas I would like to explore, and 

I look forward to hearing the witnesses’ testimony and to the reg-
4 

ular dialogue that we have on this Subcommittee thanks to the 

structure that Chairman Lankford has put together. 

But I want to close by just saying this is a critical issue. There 

is not a corporation in America, there is not an organization in 

America, when you say, ‘‘What makes you great?’’ that does not 

say, ‘‘Our people.’’ And so if we are not doing what we need to do 

to retain the best and brightest in public service, then we need to 

know about it, and we need to fix it. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. 

At this time we will proceed with testimony from our witnesses. 

Let me introduce the four witnesses. I will introduce all four of you. 

Then we will swear you in, and then we will begin your testimony. 

Yvonne Jones is the Director in Strategic Issues of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), where she manages teams 

analyzing Federal Government human capital issues. Prior to joining the Strategic Issues team, she was the Director in the GAO Financial Markets and Community Investment team. 

Patricia Niehaus is the national president for the Federal Managers Association (FMA). Ms. Niehaus has been the national president since 2010 and also serves as an active member in the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations. She is an 

active Federal employee with over 30 years of service and is now 

the civilian personnel officer at Travis Air Force Base in California. 

Dan Blair is the President and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) 

of the National Academy of Public Administration. From 2006 to 

2009, he served as the Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC); from 2009 to 2011, he served as a Commissioner. Mr. 

Blair was the Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management from 2002 to 2006, along with multiple other responsibilities. 

Thank you. 

Mr. David Cox is the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). He worked for Veterans Affairs (VA) from 1983 to 2006, when he became the secretary-treasurer for the AFGE. 

I would like to thank all the witnesses appearing before us today, 

and I really appreciate your written testimony that you have already submitted, as well as receiving your oral testimony in just 

a moment. 

It is the custom of the Subcommittee that all witnesses are 

sworn in before you testify, so if you do not mind, I would ask you 

to stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that 

the testimony you are about to give before this Subcommittee is the 

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, 

God? 

Ms. JONES. I do. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. I do. 

Mr. BLAIR. I do. 

Mr. COX. I do. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. You may be seated. Let the 

record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

We will be using a timing system today. I think everyone is familiar with that. There will be a little clock in front of you. That 

will count down to zero. We are giving everyone about 5 minutes, 
5 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Jones appears in the Appendix on page 29. 

if you can be as close to that as possible, and then we will have 

multiple rounds of questioning. It is the tradition of this Committee 

that the first round of questions will go 5 minutes for each person, 

and then we will open up a second round, which will be open colloquy with no timing on it, and that will allow us to interchange 

here on the Committee dais as well as with you. So expect two 

rounds of questions, and the second round will be more informal 

than the first, if that is OK. 

Ms. Jones, you are recognized first. Thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF YVONNE D. JONES,1 DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC 

ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. JONES. Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, 

and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity 

to discuss the State of the 21st Century Federal civil service and 

what can be done to ensure a top-notch Federal workforce. 

Strategic human capital management plays a critical role in 

maximizing the government’s performance and assuring its accountability to the Congress and to the Nation. But strategic 

human capital management has been one of GAO’s high-risk issues 

since 2001. 

Congress, the Office of Personnel Management, and some agencies have addressed human capital challenges. For example, in 

2002, Congress created the Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) 

position in 24 agencies and the Chief Human Capital Officers 

Council (CHCOC). And Congress provided the agencies with various authorities and flexibilities to manage the Federal workforce, 

but more remains to be done. I will describe five concerns about 

Federal workforce management. 

First, the classification system. The General Schedule classification system was designed to uphold the key principle of equal pay 

for work of equal value, but the system is experiencing difficulties. 

Its occupation descriptions are considered too narrow to easily shift 

people between jobs, and its pay rules make it harder for agencies 

to recruit and retain valued employees. GAO concluded that we 

need a more modern and effective classification system which retains merit at its core, but which is more flexible. 

Second, the Federal workforce has many critical skills gaps like 

cybersecurity and contract specialists. The Federal Government 

also needs to better identify future skills gaps. To close these gaps 

and predict future shortages, the Office of Personnel Management 

and agencies will need to collect and analyze data to be used in 

agency and governmentwide workforce planning. 

Third, the Executive Branch agencies are managing their 

workforces in an era of constrained budgets. Therefore, they need 

to rethink how they do their own planning and how they work with 

other agencies. We found that the Federal human capital community is fragmented, with many actors executing personnel policies 

in ways not helpful to governmentwide workforce management. 

Our analysis showed that agencies have many common human capital challenges, but they address them alone. And we found that 

agency talent management tools lack two ingredients: identifying 
6 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Niehaus appears in the Appendix on page 70. 

skills in their current workforces and moving people with needed 

skills to emerging or permanent positions. 

The fourth issue is strengthening assessment of employee and 

senior executive performance. Adequately managing employee performance is a longstanding governmentwide issue. Without effective performance management, agencies risk losing the skills of top 

talent and failing to correct poor performers. But supervisors do 

not always have the skills to help staff address performance issues. 

Evaluating the performance of senior executives is also important. By law, for senior executives to receive higher levels of pay, 

their performance appraisal systems must make meaningful distinctions based on an individual’s performance compared to other 

executives. Recently, we found that 85 percent of senior executive 

service (SES) ratings were bunched in the top two ratings categories, raising questions about whether adequate distinctions are 

being made between executives. 

And, fifth, retaining high-performing employees is critical to Federal Government operation. To retain employees, the Federal Government needs to strengthen worker engagement. Preliminary observations from our ongoing work found that governmentwide average levels of employee engagement declined from 67 percent in 

2011 to 63 percent in 2014. The decline in the governmentwide average occurred because of drops in engagement at three large agencies: Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Veterans Affairs. But the majority of Federal 

agencies sustained or improved their engagement scores. Of 47 

Federal agencies, 31 had steady scores, 3 increased their scores, 

and 13 had declining scores. The large number of agencies that 

sustained or increased engagement scores during challenging times 

suggests that agencies can influence employee engagement levels 

even in difficult circumstances. 

In conclusion, greater progress will require continued collaborative efforts between the Office of Personnel Management, the 

Chief Human Capital Officers Council, individual agencies, and 

continued congressional oversight. 

Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, and Members 

of the Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement, and 

I am pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this 

time. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. Ms. Niehaus 

TESTIMONY OF PATRICIA J. NIEHAUS,1 NATIONAL PRESIDENT, 

FEDERAL MANAGERS ASSOCIATION 

Ms. NIEHAUS. Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, 

and Members of the Subcommittee, I am the national president of 

the Federal Managers Association and chief of civilian personnel at 

Travis Air Force Base in California. Thank you for allowing me to 

present FMA’s views before you today. I am here on my own time 

and of my own volition, and I do not speak for the Air Force. I am 

here representing FMA’s members. 

The Federal civil service no longer reflects the standards today’s 

job seekers expect. FMA supports changes that increase flexibili-
7 

ties, accountability, and performance results. In my written testimony, I address a number of challenges and FMA’s recommendations in these areas. 

After the satisfaction of serving our country, two of the most 

often cited attractions of civil service—retirement benefits and job 

security—are seemingly under endless attack. As FMA’s national 

president, I hear how proud our members are to serve our Nation. 

In Oklahoma, FMA has chapters at both Tinker Air Force Base 

and McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. And in North Dakota, 

thousands of people rely on Social Security checks and the Internal 

Revenue Service (IRS) returns. It is discouraging to be constantly 

maligned and have our benefits attacked. FMA members comment 

on how this affects morale, which negatively impacts productivity, 

employee retention, and the ability to complete congressionally 

mandated missions. FMA urges Congress to avoid legislative efforts 

that would hurt retention and morale. 

FMA believes the General Schedule should be utilized as a stepping stone to a more evolved system that focuses on pay for performance and reflect the needs of the present Federal workforce. 

Departments and agencies must have maximum flexibility and the 

ability to compete with the private sector to attract the best and 

the brightest men and women to answer the call of public service. 

The current system promotes a workforce based on longevity 

rather than performance. The highest-performing employees should 

be rewarded with the highest rates of pay; those employees who 

fall below the curve in terms of overall performance should not be 

rewarded at the same level. Management should be a profession in 

the Federal Government rather than an additional duty. Managers 

must have time to manage instead of being technicians. First level 

supervisors and managers need access to training programs that 

are sufficiently funded. Investments must be made in training in 

areas such as addressing poor-performing employees, enhancing 

mentoring skills, and conducting accurate performance appraisals 

in order to recognize problems early and deal with them at the lowest possible level. 

FMA calls for the introduction of legislation that requires agencies to provide supervisors with interactive, instructor-based training on management topics ranging from mentorship and career development to hostile work environments and poor performers within one year of promotion and ongoing training once every 3 years 

thereafter. In addition, the measure should include an accountability provision to establish competency standards to ensure the 

training is effective. 

Initial and supervisory probationary periods were intended to be 

an extension of the hiring process. It is a time to evaluate the employee or manager and determine whether they are suited not just 

for the current position, but also for Federal service. Some career 

fields are so complex that it takes more than one year to properly 

train an entry-level employee. Extending the probationary period to 

one year after completion of the initial training would benefit the 

government and the employees, allowing supervisors to make decisions based on the employees’ performance as fully trained employees and not just guess at how an employee will perform after the 

training is completed. 
8 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Blair appears in the Appendix on page 85. 

Too often pay comparisons between public and private sectors 

miss the mark because they do not compare positions with like positions. An accurate comparison cannot be made between a registered nurse at a VA hospital and someone performing manual 

labor at a nursing home. It is essential that any comparison and 

study of compensation ensure that skill levels, experience, education, and job duties are truly comparable. 

FMA is grateful to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for unanimously supporting the Wounded Warrior 

Federal Leave Act, which would provide sick leave up front for our 

newly hired disabled veterans. We are proud to have originated 

this initiative, and we look forward to having it passed and signed 

into law. 

The Federal civil service should be the model employer that others emulate. We should be such an attractive employer that young 

people are lining up to compete for positions as their first choice. 

This hearing is an important step toward determining what Congress should do to restore the faith in the men and women who 

make up the Federal workforce and ensure that missions are met 

as efficiently and effectively as possible. 

Thank you for the opportunity to present our views, and I am 

happy to answer any questions you may have. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Blair. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DAN G. BLAIR,1 PRESIDENT AND 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION; CHAIRMAN, POSTAL REGULATORY 

COMMISSION (2006–2009); AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR, OFFICE 

OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT (2002–2006) 

Mr. BLAIR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to introduce three 

burgeoning potential public servants in the audience today who are 

serving as Academy interns this summer. We have Calvin Charles, 

Caroline Mihm—you may recognize the last name because Chris 

Mihm is her father, who is a liaison from GAO to this Subcommittee—and Robin Bleiweis. I would like to welcome them here 

today. 

Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, and Members 

of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify today. 

I serve as the President and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization chartered by Congress. Our organization consists of over 800 

Fellows—including former Cabinet officers, Members of Congress, 

Governors, mayors, and State legislators, as well as distinguished 

scholars, business executives, and public administrators. 

Today’s civil service challenges have roots that stretch back more 

than a quarter century. In 1989, the first Volcker Commission 

highlighted many of those problems. While they have morphed in 

form, the Federal Government’s workforce challenges have been 

identified many times over. Some can be addressed at the administrative level; others will require bolder action, buttressed by legislation. 
9 

First, let us talk about the Federal hiring process. This has long 

exasperated Congress and multiple administrations. Flexibilities 

exist in this area if agencies would just use them. 

I would not recommend that at this point, Congress enact new 

legislation regarding hiring. Time to hire is important, but a shortened timeframe may not yield the quality of hires an agency needs. 

Time to hire is a critical component, though, of the larger component of quality hires. OPM must provide strong leadership, and 

agencies must focus leadership attention. It is important to connect 

program and hiring managers with human resources staff to make 

sure the position description and vacancy announcements suit the 

hiring manager’s needs. 

You asked me to address issues surrounding Federal employee 

accountability. We hear almost weekly about poor-performing Federal employees and the reported inability to hold them accountable. 

I have the greatest respect for civil servants, and these reports are 

certainly not representative of the workforce at large. Yet they poison the atmosphere and lead to cynicism and distrust of the civil 

service and government. 

The current appeals system was put in place as a reaction to attempts to politicize the workforce in the Watergate era, and it was 

premised on the concept of merit. 

To increase accountability, especially at the SES level, the Subcommittee could explore the greater use of term appointments. 

Some agencies like the VA have received special authorities. The 

question now is whether the Department will use them. 

Further, the Subcommittee may want to consider increasing probationary periods for new senior executives and General Schedule 

employees. 

For General Schedule employees, a complex maze of appeals exists. Employees can utilize the Merit Systems Protection Board 

(MSPB), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 

and potentially a union grievance system. Modernizing the appeals 

process consistent with the public interest, constitutional requirements, and Supreme Court case law is a complex task, but one 

worth engaging to restore the public’s trust in the civil service. 

Federal employees themselves view the current system with cynicism. Both a recent Vanderbilt University survey and the 2014 

Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey confirmed these views. A recent MSPB study notes that 77,000 Federal employees were fired 

over a 14-year period. Based on my interpretation of the study, it 

seemed like the agency was promoting the fact that a system is in 

place to remove poor performers and it works. But if you run the 

math, removing 77,000 employees over a 14-year period calculates 

to about 5,500 employees per year. With a Federal civilian workforce of over 2 million people, the percentage of employees relieved 

of their duties is paltry in comparison. 

One reason for such inaction is the need for increased capacity 

from the Federal H.R. workforce to deal with the complex civil 

service procedures. As personnel systems become more decentralized, the need for increased H.R. capacity grows. 

A larger question arises whether the landmark 1978 Civil Service Reform Act is due for an overhaul. My written testimony asks 

a number of questions, such as, do we need the complex number 
10 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Cox appears in the Appendix on page 96. 

of agencies that we have today handling civil service issues? OPM, 

MSPB, Office of Special Counsel (OSC), and the EEOC all have 

roles. Do we need a centralized personnel office? If so, how should 

it be structured? And is OPM that entity? Also, how do we address 

the General Schedule pay structure? And can the OPM White 

Paper on Pay from 2002 serve as a guide? 

I would suggest that any private sector entity operating with a 

nearly 40-year-old personnel system and a nearly 70-year-old pay 

system would likely be out of business today. 

Many of the questions I have raised today lend themselves to a 

thorough and comprehensive process of review. This is an excellent 

issue to tee up for the upcoming transition in 2016 and 2017. Civil 

service reform is one area ripe for discussion. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement, and I 

would be pleased to answer any questions the Subcommittee may 

have. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Cox. 

TESTIMONY OF J. DAVID COX, SR.,1 NATIONAL PRESIDENT, 

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, 

AFL–CIO 

Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, Senator Heitkamp, and Members of the 

Subcommittee, on behalf of the more than 670,000 Federal workers 

AFGE represents, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on 

the modernization issues facing the Federal workforce. 

Any discussion of modernizing the Federal Government must 

begin with an understanding that the Federal workforce is highly 

trained and educated, technologically literate, and ready to meet 

the many challenges we face today. If we are serious about ensuring that the Federal Government can address the problems facing 

society, then, simply put, our elected officials must stop attacking 

the Federal workforce. 

Since 2011, Federal workers have sacrificed $159 billion in cuts 

to their compensation, sometimes in the name of deficit reduction 

and sometimes to pay for other priorities. President Obama froze 

their pay for 3 years, followed by increases to employees’ pension 

contributions by 2.3 percent for those hired in 2013 and 3.6 percent 

for those hired thereafter. 

Chairman Lankford, right now at the Oklahoma City VA Medical 

Center, they are hiring an occupational therapist with a starting 

salary of around $45,000. That newly hired employee will pay over 

$1,600 more per year than someone in the same exact job in the 

same hospital hired prior to 2012 or before. That is two mortgage 

payments and a few weeks of groceries. 

Senator Heitkamp, at Grand Forks Air Force Base, they are hiring a social worker at a starting salary of around $58,000 a year. 

That new employee will pay $2,100 more per year than someone 

in the exact same job hired prior to 2012 or before. These cuts need 

to be repealed and full retirement benefits for all Federal workers 

restored. 

In addition to these retirement cuts, Federal employees have also 

endured sequestration furloughs and a government shutdown in 
11 

2013. I remind you of this sequence of events and the cuts imposed 

on Federal employees not just because they are unfair to them, but 

because they directly affect recruitment and retention. What would 

make a medical researcher working on a cure for cancer at the 

Muskogee VA Hospital or an electrician who repairs complex weapons at Tinker Air Force Base choose public service if their jobs 

were subject to salary cuts, furloughs, and government shutdowns 

year in and year out? 

To its great credit, the General Schedule prevents discrimination 

based on gender, ethnic backgrounds, religion, sexual orientation, 

or disability. Over the last few decades, numerous flexibilities and 

updates have modernized and improved the GS system. The most 

recent example of this is in the Bakken region of North Dakota 

where Federal salaries were far outpaced by private sector pay. We 

commend you, Senator Heitkamp, for your tireless efforts to urge 

OPM and DOD to implement special pay rates and other flexibilities to make Federal wages more competitive with those in the private sector. 

AFGE believes that a modern government must promote due 

processes and constitutional rights. Federal employees are not immune to termination, and the civil service rules exist to promote 

the constitutional principles of due process and to prevent the reestablishment of a Federal patronage system. 

Finally, AFGE believes that a modern government must promote 

employees’ engagement and empowerment. A modern workplace 

must value and implement transparency, fairness, and accountability. The easiest way to achieve all these things is by negotiating 

good and fair contracts to provide a meaningful channel for workers to provide input and for managers to learn from front-line 

workers. This creates a more nimble environment for identifying 

and solving problems and getting the work done. 

This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy 

to respond to any questions. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. Thank you to all of you for your 

written and your oral testimony. The Ranking Member and I will 

defer our time for questions. We are going to do ours at the end, 

and we will recognize Senator Ernst to go first. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ERNST 

Senator ERNST. Thank you very much to our panel. It is great 

to have all of you here. I think this is a much needed conversation 

as we look at our Federal employees and the workforce. Great 

points made, David, on some of those issues. And I often feel our 

military men and women are subject to the same scrutiny. 

Anyway, I would like to start with Ms. Jones. Thank you for 

being here today. I appreciate it very much. You have made reference to a set of eight recommendations that OPM should take to 

ensure a more modern and effective classification system, and I 

would like to touch on this, because for the last few months I have 

been digging into an area in the acquisition world across the Federal Government, specifically program and project management, 

that seems to be struggling. And I think part of that reason is due 

to gaps in the GS system as it relates to the classification of program and project management. And program and project manage-
12 

ment is the only fundamental job component of the acquisition 

process that does not have a distinct job series. And subsequently 

available program and project management positions are funneled 

through the general management positions or classifications where 

the desired skill set and required experience is very different. 

And, in fact, program and project management falls under the series 0340, which is kind of a catch-all general management listing, 

and I think OPM would agree with that assessment. It is not conducive to finding qualified individuals for this very particular role. 

If you were to go to opm.gov and look at the qualifications needed for program management, it actually says, ‘‘There are no individual occupational requirements for this series.’’ 

As I have looked at this and analyzed the struggles we have with 

the large Federal programs being over budget and off schedule, it 

appears that these issues could begin to improve if we had a better 

classification and listing of requirements needed for program and 

project managers. And just one more thing in this area. This lack 

of a credible listing has made it challenging for outsiders to locate 

who and where program and project managers are in the Federal 

Government. 

So can you speak maybe to this issue a little bit? And I realize 

you may not be familiar with this specific case for project management, but I have a sense that it maybe is a broader issue within 

the GS system. If you could just discuss that a little bit, please. 

Ms. JONES. Yes, I can speak to that. Our work has not focused 

on those particular kinds of jobs, but it is, I think, reflective of 

what we found in a more general sense, about trying to fill critical 

skills gaps in the Federal Government—because we did find that 

agencies and OPM sometimes have trouble writing job descriptions 

that are reflective of the work that needs to be done, and also 

changing those job descriptions expeditiously. And so in a situation 

like that, it may very well be hard for agencies to advertise positions or to have job descriptions which allow them to advertise positions so that they get the kind of applicants that they would 

want. 

We do know that OPM and a number of the agencies are working 

together to try to figure out not only how to define position descriptions, but also to write the competencies that underlie those descriptions, and they are trying to figure out how to do it more 

quickly. 

I hope that answers your question. 

Senator ERNST. Yes, that is very helpful, and I do think also with 

USAJobs as a resource site out there, it is very difficult to navigate 

that as well for some of the best and brightest that wish to apply 

for these types of Government positions. It is a true struggle. If you 

could just speak to that, please. 

Ms. JONES. OK. We are aware of issues that have been reported 

about USAJobs. We have not directly examined USAJobs and how 

its operation may affect an applicant’s ability to use it. We have 

begun now a job on hiring in the Federal Government which may 

look at that particular issue, but I cannot give you more specifics 

right now. 

Senator ERNST. OK. Well, I appreciate that. I think that is something that we will look at in the future. Thank you very much. 
13 

Senator LANKFORD. Senator Heitkamp. 

Senator HEITKAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

A number of young people, who I am sure are here on a closeup program or visiting Congress, are in the audience, and I am 

tempted to ask them: How many of you want to be an IRS auditor? 

None of them. 

how many of you in the audience of the young people who are 

here want to be a Federal employee? There are a couple. 

And once you get there, you might not like it, and you might 

leave before 4 years are up. Or you might like it, and that is our 

job here, to try and figure out how we put the best person in the 

job that fits them and will challenge them and will give them the 

job satisfaction. I think the one thing that we miss when we look 

at a lot of economic indicators, whether it is retirement—and, sure, 

that matters—whether it is pay raises and great supervision, but 

we have to do a better job, I think, recruiting, training, and retaining the young people of America, or we are not going to be moving 

forward. We are not going to be the organization or the Government that we need to be in order to address the concerns of the 

citizens. 

And so I want to get at that issue, what you think the primary 

barriers are of attracting and retaining these new Millennials and 

what we should be doing right now in analyzing the ones under 20 

who have entered the Federal system and now are transitioning 

out. And I want to start with you, Mr. Blair. I think you have probably spent a lot of time looking at those schedules into the future 

and saying, ‘‘We have a crisis of retirement without a qualified 

workforce coming behind it.’’ 

What would you do if you were in Senator Lankford’s and my 

role here and the Committee’s role? 

Mr. BLAIR. Well, I would say, ‘‘Do we have meaningful work for 

these Millennials who are coming in?’’ And I think the answer for 

that is absolutely yes. I think that the mission is absolutely critical, and that is what distinguishes the Federal Government from 

other private sector employers. 

Then I think we have to look at the workplace itself. What is the 

course for advancement? How long do you have to stay in grade before you have to stand for promotion? I think those are issues. Am 

I going to be recognized for the work that I do? If I am part of a 

team, if I carry the team, am I going to be recognized or am I going 

to have to be lumped in with everyone else? 

I think those are critical issues, and I do not think our systems 

today match that. In an effort for what was called ‘‘internal equity,’’ we basically treated most people the same, and that is not— 

while it is an admirable goal, I think that in today’s environment 

we need to be able to have tools available for us to recognize outstanding service. And those tools are awkward in the Federal civil 

service today. 

Senator HEITKAMP. Mr. Cox, can you respond to that and maybe 

offer some insight from the perspective of the people you represent? 

Mr. COX. The first thing I would say is I believe it is very important for Congress to get rid of sequestration because that continues 

to loom over the top of everyone who works for the Federal Government or has a future of wanting to work for the Federal Govern-
14 

ment, because as long as that is there, it is just a stumbling block 

for what the future may hold, whether the agencies would be funded. So sequestration I think is the number one problem. 

But also, again, I would agree with my colleague here, meaningful work, but, again, adequate pay, adequate training, having the 

resources of that agency so that the person comes in and feels supported in the agency. I went to work at the VA as a registered 

nurse. Within the first week, all of a sudden I realized I was the 

only registered nurse the first week on the job on the floor working. 

That was not the best orientation or the best environment to be 

had. You need more people there to spend time to mentor, to orient 

folks, and it was not the fact that they did not care. They did not 

have enough resources to hire enough nurses or there were not 

enough nurses available to be hired. So those types of things, having the resources to fund the agencies is very important. 

Senator HEITKAMP. My time has expired. We have a pretty freeflowing discussion period after this, and so we will get out all your 

points. 

Senator LANKFORD. We will. Thank you. 

At the end of this conversation, we will work together to try to 

create a product, whether that is a legislative product or whether 

that is a series of letters to do as followup to try to figure out 

where we are going to followup from here on the ideas, both from 

what you have submitted written and orally. So I do want you to 

continue to think about that, some of the work product at the end 

of this. 

Mr. Blair, let me ask a question that you had brought up as well, 

and that is the issue of the transition. Every time there is a Presidential transition, regardless of party, there is a shift and a relook 

again. So I would be interested in an open conversation about what 

things can we do as a Committee to help the next President prepare for that transition, things that we can put in place and say 

these issues need to be addressed when that transition occurs. 

Mr. BLAIR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think what Senator 

Ernst just raised was very important, this program implementation, because we have seen failures of program implementation 

across government for many years now, and that is one of the focuses of the Academy’s transition work. Last week, we launched 

our Transition 2016 Initiative, and our focus is going to be on program implementation to make sure that the incoming Administration has before it the information it needs to evaluate how programs are being implemented, what is working, what is not working, and so they do not just throw the baby out with the bath water 

by saying the past Administration was bad, we are good, we do not 

have anything to do with it, and we want to start again from 

scratch. 

So I think program implementation is extraordinarily important. 

I think that for the transition, civil service reform, while I do not 

know if there could be broad bipartisan agreement based upon the 

past decade of experience, but I think there can be some tenets to 

look at. And I would not recommend that we go forward with a 

baked cake for a new Administration, but you can certainly tee up 

the issues to make it part of their management agenda to deter-
15 

mine how do we want to step forward with these kinds of reforms. 

This Subcommittee is poised and primed to do that. 

Senator LANKFORD. Right. Well, that is what we are trying to 

gather at this point—ideas. We have our own. We are trying to 

gather other insight from other individuals as well. 

Any other ideas that can come out? Obviously there is some in 

your written testimony as well. Do others want to contribute to 

basic ideas of if we are going to look at serious things to be able 

to transition in a couple years, things that need to be addressed 

when that transition comes? 

Mr. COX. Sir, I would think, trying to go back, the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act that goes back many years that said 

that we would pay Federal employees in comparison to what the 

private sector is being paid. It has never been implemented. Each 

year, the President, Congress, someone preempts the process. But 

I think trying to get Federal employees paid in accordance with the 

private sector with similar work that they are doing would be very 

important. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Other ideas? 

[No response.] 

Let me transition to another thing. Then we will come back to 

it. I want to talk a little bit about what Senator Heitkamp was 

talking about, and that is recruiting. Does anyone know the cost 

of recruiting right now? The private sector can look at it and say 

if they are going to try to recruit someone new to their company, 

they have a basic cost of what that is. Do we have a good guesstimate of a cost of recruiting a new Federal employee? You have 

not seen that? OK. We will do some chasing and see if we can determine that and see not only retention but cost and how that 

works. 

Ms. Jones, you made a comment and through your study, as you 

looked at the Employee Engagement Index that you created, which 

you also referenced in both your written and your oral testimony 

on it, 13 of 47 different agencies had declining Employee Engagement Index scores, 3 of 47 had an increase, 31 of 47 were flat. Now, 

what I am interested in is, Can we get a list of those different 

agencies so we can begin to compare? You had mentioned the big 

3 there in the decline, 3 of the 13 that had a decline: Department 

of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans. Can you determine 

the why on those? Obviously, it is a large number of employees, but 

it also had a significant decline, but some of the 10 other entities. 

Ms. JONES. In terms of the list of the entities, actually what we 

were doing was reporting evidence from OPM’s Employee Engagement Index, so, yes, giving you the names of all the agencies is certainly feasible. 

What we know about what increases in employee engagement 

based on the index is the relationship that the employee has with 

his or her supervisor, the extent to which the employee is getting— 

feels that the work that they are doing is important and they can 

connect it with the mission of the agency, the extent to which they 

feel that they are getting training and developmental opportunities, 

whether they feel they have an adequate work-life balance, whether there is an inclusive environment in the agencies—all of those 

things contribute to an employee feeling engaged. 
16 

I could supply you later with more detail about the three large 

agencies and what the particular factors may have been. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Let me do that. Let us just open this up 

for open conversation. I will go ahead and transition this into our 

second round here, and all of us can participate at any point. But 

let me add to that. Why for Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans, what is your perception? As GAO looks at 

this and the scoring that came in from OPM, is there any single 

factor? You mentioned that, but what is happening there that is 

not happening in other places that Homeland Security, Defense, 

and VA are having issues with supervision, having issues with engagement? What is driving that? 

Ms. JONES. OK. I would have to provide you later more detailed 

information on those particular agencies. The Employee Engagement Index aggregates information across 15 different questions, so 

we would have to look at the disaggregation and provide you with 

that detail, if you do not mind. 

Senator LANKFORD. That would be helpful to us as we get a 

chance to look at the workforce, because obviously we want to look 

at why there is a decline in one area. And for the three that had 

the increase, do you happen to recall the three that had the increase in score, who they were? I did not see it in your report. 

Ms. JONES. The Department of Education was one. Yes, I do not 

recall the other two at the moment. 

Senator LANKFORD. Well, that would be helpful to us, to get, I 

guess, both extremes there. The 13 that had the decline, the 3 that 

had the increase, and try to figure out what is happening in each 

of these agencies that can be information shared. And I understand 

not every agency is the same and their structures are not the same, 

nor are we trying to make them all the same. It would be like trying to make all 50 States the same. They are not. But there are 

some things that we can learn from one and be able to share with 

the other, and that would be helpful to us. 

Ms. JONES. Certainly, we can provide you with that. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. 

Senator HEITKAMP. I want to just for a minute kind of talk about 

morale, because it all begins there, in my opinion. I think that you 

can, of course, look at the economics, but at the end of the day— 

and being a mother of two Millennials, I think that what they are 

looking for is job satisfaction. And, I ask these young people, How 

many of you want to be an IRS agent? They immediately have an 

idea. What does an IRS agent do? And that would be a bad thing. 

People would not like me. Right? 

But if you ask them, How many of you want to help fund cancer 

research in the Federal Government so that we can solve childhood 

cancer problems? Or if we said—I just spent some time yesterday 

with General Welsh, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and he said 

their recruitment policies, they were going in the wrong direction. 

They needed to sell the Air Force. And so, ‘‘I am an American airman.’’ You may have seen those commercials. They are brilliant. 

And so one of the things that we do not do in the workforce is 

we do not connect these jobs and these categories that we all talk 

about. You know, if you are an H.R. specialist, you all talk about 

the classification, but we do not connect them to the larger mission. 
17 

And when people feel connected to the larger mission, they tend to 

want to stay. They tend to want to continue. When we did the Air 

Force base adjustments, OPM was out, and I said, ‘‘OK, of all you 

civilian employees, how many of you are veterans?’’ And over half 

of them stood up, because they are still in the mission. They wanted to continue the mission that they started when they put on a 

uniform. 

And so one of the things that I think we get too bureaucratic in 

a lot of ways in how we look at this, and we do not connect our 

employees to the mission, to the goal of the organization. And so 

I think it takes maybe some enlightened leadership or some different thinking at the top of how you think about the job that you 

are doing, not in terms of just widgets and, counting chits, but you 

think about it in terms of what does that do. 

And I want to just close out by saying I gave a talk to the American psychologists, and they were headed up to the Hill, and behavioral health and mental health has had some real challenges in 

terms of funding and parity, and they were pretty low. And I said, 

‘‘When you go in to see your Senator or your Congressman, why 

don’t you just tell them’’—‘‘Do not tell them you are a Ph.D. psychologist. Tell them you save families for a living.’’ You could visibly see, when I ran into them in the hallways, their step was a little lighter, because all of a sudden they had that image. ‘‘That is 

what we do. We do not counsel,’’ all of the bureaucratic things. ‘‘We 

save families. That is our mission.’’ And when you are connected 

kind of emotionally to a mission, when you are connected spiritually to a mission, you are going to stay with it even through 

some tough times. 

And so one of the things that I would want to put on the table 

is: How do we sell the Federal service? How do we talk about the 

jobs that so many of our great Federal employees do and how that 

connects with the broader or brighter kind of opportunity? And I 

would be curious if any of you see examples of that and where it 

is good and where it is not good. 

Mr. BLAIR. Senator, if I could begin, I think you hit the nail on 

the head on this with leadership. It is up to the department heads 

and agency heads to set the tone from the top down as to the importance of the workforce. And if that is a priority for them, if they 

are being held accountable for it, they can hold their senior executives and managers and supervisors, and it can cascade down 

through the system. So it is leadership, it is accountability. It is 

also a question of promoting the mission. Everyone within a department or agency should know how their jobs feed into the success of the organization. If they can point and say, ‘‘Yes, what I am 

doing is important because it leads to saving families,’’ that gives 

a sense of ownership. 

Senator HEITKAMP. Yes. 

Mr. BLAIR. And so, again, these are issues for agency leadership. 

I look at this as either internal factors such as what can they do— 

what can be done within the agency or department, but then there 

are also the external factors. And I think that more needs to be 

done in promoting the service of the public. And in this regard, I 

think there are several areas to look into. The Presidential Rank 

Awards, we had that several weeks ago. These are senior execu-
18 

tives that are nominated, and it goes through a process at OPM in 

which a select few, I think about 50 this year—I cannot remember 

the exact number—received Presidential Rank Awards. These are 

the highest awards you can get for the Senior Executive Service. 

I hope you have all heard of them, and if you have not, that is 

a problem because that means that we are not publicizing them 

enough. The President met with the award winners for the first 

time in his Administration I think last year, and I think that sends 

a very strong message. If you look at the people who win these 

awards, it will blow your socks off, because they are doing incredible things. 

But it is just more than the SES. I will be participating in a ceremony in a couple weeks at George Washington University for the 

Flemming Awards, which recognize Federal employees who are in 

mid-career, 3 to 15 years of service. Again, outstanding employees. 

The Partnership for Public Service does the Sammies Awards. 

These types of external events bring attention, but we also have to 

recognize that we need to do more to change the tone and tenor of 

how we discuss our civil servants. 

Senator LANKFORD. Let me just throw one thing in there as well. 

You talk about good examples of engagement on this. Mr. Cox had 

mentioned at one point Tinker Air Force Base. The Federal workforce at Tinker Air Force Base, the civilians that are there, have 

this incredible partnership with the men and women in blue. They 

are not aircraft that fly in the Air Force that have not gone 

through Tinker Air Force Base, and they understand the mission, 

where they fit into the mission, but they are also heard. So when 

there is a problem on the floor, when you are doing maintenance, 

there is a method already where they can communicate; and if any 

person on the floor has any issue, they know who to go to, and it 

actually gets heard. And it is very important. So that structure 

that is in place there, it is the same type of thing at the Federal 

Aviation Administration (FAA) in Oklahoma City where there is a 

great relationship where people get heard in the process, and I 

think it is very meaningful. 

I want to mention one other thing, too, and I know we all have 

different questions on this, but several of you mentioned about 

lengthening the probation period. I was interested by that in the 

conversation, and there were multiple different ideas about the 

length of that probation period, how long it should be, when it 

should start. I would be interested in just a conversation about 

that and how we try to amalgamate some ideas here. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. One of the things that FMA has been looking at 

for several years now is the fact that our members are reporting 

to us that when they have to make a decision on whether or not 

to retain a new employee, many of them are still in training. We 

were talking at a government managers coalition meeting with an 

FAA manager who said that they do not even see some of their new 

employees until they have been in training for 10 or 11 months. So 

the supervisor has not even met the employee when they have to 

make that determination whether they are going to keep them or 

not. 
19 

Senator LANKFORD. So your statement is the probation period for 

them, that one year time period starts when they have only really 

seen them for 2 months because it started earlier. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. Yes. It starts on the day they are hired. 

Senator LANKFORD. Right. So I am trying to identify. Your recommendation is the one year probation period starts after training 

begins and they are actually assigned to that spot, where they actually work their way—— 

Ms. NIEHAUS. Yes. After they are trained and the initial training 

is completed, then let them work our their probationary period and 

show that they can do the job rather than have a supervisor guess. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Other ideas and thoughts? 

Mr. COX. I think the probationary period is not going to be a onesize-fits-all. When you have someone who is an SES’er that is responsible for large numbers of people, at a large Federal installation, that is one thing. When you have a housekeeping aide in a 

VA medical center, currently has a one year probationary period, 

if you do not know that that housekeeping aide is performing or 

not performing in one year, then you have a much higher problem 

with the management level, not the housekeeping aide. And registered nurses already have a 2 year probationary period in the VA. 

TSA, the entire agency, is a 2-year probationary period. TSA has 

probably the highest turnover of any government agency. It also 

has a different pay system than the GS pay system. So I do think 

looking at some things about TSA, their pay, their probationary period, high turnover numbers, may be a benefit also to give some insight. But I do not believe it is a one-size-fits-all. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Would your recommendation on the SES 

be that it is a longer or shorter—and I would agree, by the way. 

It does not to be a one-size-fits-all. 

Mr. COX. I think SES’ers would definitely have a longer probationary period. As a registered nurse, I felt like a 2-year period was 

a fair probationary period for me, that one year maybe would have 

been too short of a period. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Any other ideas on that specifically? Ms. 

Jones. 

Ms. JONES. On our work, we also found that some supervisors 

felt that they did not have enough time to review the employees’ 

work, so we felt that the probationary period should be extended 

for at least one full supervisory cycle after the one year probation 

because the supervisors feel they do not have adequate time to assess employees. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Mr. Blair, do you have any other comment? 

Mr. BLAIR. Just one comment. We are talking about the probationary periods because once an employee reaches the conclusion of 

the probationary period, it then becomes so difficult to separate 

them after that. So I do not think you can necessarily consider the 

probationary period outside the context of looking at what the appeals process would be as well. 

Senator LANKFORD. Right. I would agree, and we can have that 

for an additional question in just a moment. At times and in some 

agencies and some instances, it feels like once you move past your 

probation, you just go tenure at the university. 
20 

Mr. BLAIR. Absolutely. 

Senator LANKFORD. And it is tough to be able to shift from there, 

so we will talk about that in a moment. 

Joni, do you have a comment? 

Senator ERNST. Yes. With that issue, something that has been in 

the news so much, the VA, something near and dear to my heart, 

caring for our veterans. Senator Heitkamp had said, really understanding that mission that is out there, and as we talk about recruiting some of those best and brightest to work for us at the VA, 

understanding the challenge right now when you have an agency 

where someone has not been held accountable to our knowledge of 

some of the egregious misbehaviors within the VA, it is hard for 

the VA to say, we help veterans, when there have been a lot of instances where veterans have been let down. 

So there is a challenge there, and I do agree that, as you stated, 

Mr. Blair, that from the top down an agency will take on really the 

leadership or the personality of that leader. In the VA, of course, 

we have seen a change there. But, again, there is a lot of that reputation that has to be built back up again. And we have to see accountability at the highest levels and within that management 

structure. We really have not seen that in this particular agency. 

Any comments on how we can do better? What can we do better 

to make people accountable? 

Mr. BLAIR. I think one of the tools that we do not have to use 

for accountability is pay, because pay—performance management 

systems and pay are—the link is tenuous at best. I think another 

thing that needs to be done is, again, leadership attention, as you 

mentioned earlier. I think the Secretary needs—I would be interested to see how VA is recruiting right now, and I would defer to 

Mr. Cox as a current VA employee—I do not know if you are current or if you are former. 

Mr. COX. I am retired. 

Mr. BLAIR. Retired, being employed, but I would like to hear— 

I am not sure how they could—I would like to know how well they 

can recruit right now given the current environment. I know that 

Congress has addressed this in terms of the senior executives with 

the VA, but I would like to see how the VA is utilizing that system. 

Shortened timeframes and cutting appeal rights in and of itself 

may be helpful, but you also have to balance it against constitutional requirements and case law and the opportunity to be heard. 

Again, this does not help the Subcommittee’s path anyway, 

knowing these are the barriers that are out there. I keep on coming 

back to it is the leadership and setting the leadership tone from the 

top down and trying—and it is also a question of change management. There had been a culture in VA that would have allowed for 

this to happen, and determining how that culture arose, what can 

be done, and how can you change that culture is also terribly important. It cannot be changed overnight, but that should be one of 

the top priorities for the Secretary. Or it would be my recommendation that the Secretary address. 

Senator ERNST. Thank you, and I would agree. this was not just 

one isolated case in one hospital, but it was in many different locations across the United States that this happened. So there had to 
21 

be a higher level of responsibility with some of these actions, and 

it would be interesting to find out. 

Senator HEITKAMP. Actually, Senator Ernst, it was a reward system gone awry, is what it was. So hit this mark, and so let us rig 

the numbers so we hit the mark so we can get the award, as opposed to actually digging down and finding out what is happening. 

And so, I am not excusing anything, but I think there was this system put in place that was a benchmark that may have been impractical to begin with given the resources the VA has, and then 

people took that opportunity to try and say we are the best when 

they absolutely were not. They were the most dishonest. 

Senator ERNST. Right. 

Senator HEITKAMP. And so, that is one of the things that we have 

to be very careful of, that when we set goals and aspirational kind 

of benchmarks, that we do not create fraud in achieving those 

marks. 

I would like to get to an issue that, just as a supervisor—and I 

think that it is one of the toughest things to take a good lawyer 

or to take a good accountant, to take a great nurse, and make them 

a supervisor. We just assume that they are going to have those 

skills to basically supervise people when, being a great nurse does 

not mean you can be a great supervisor or being a very good attorney does not mean you are going to be a good supervisor. 

And I think as a result many times what you do is you have people with an inability to motivate and an inability to actually deal 

with internal problems. And one of the reasons in my experience 

for dissatisfaction is when you have, 40 percent of the employees 

doing 100 percent of the work, and they feel devalued because 

there are a whole lot of people whose jobs they are doing because 

they want to get the job done. 

So how do we deal with that, Mr. Cox? How do we deal with 

those people who really get taken advantage of in the system because they are working hard, but they are working next to someone 

who is not working hard? 

Mr. COX. No. 1, you are right, I think many agencies do not 

spend enough time on supervisory training, working with new supervisors, mentoring, developing them. We need people to do the 

work so quickly that we do not spend the time adequately giving 

them the skills to do the job well. And, again, trying to motivate 

all employees to—do their fair share. There are performance expectations for everyone in the system, and they are expected to do 

that. If they are not performing properly, there are provisions in 

current law to place employees on performance improvement plans, 

and otherwise deal with poor performers. Sometimes it is the fact 

that those employees were not properly trained. 

Senator HEITKAMP. But it takes someone who is willing to sit 

across the table and engage in conflict. And that is not an easy 

thing for a lot of people. I know Ms. Niehaus has a lot to say on 

this, I think. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. And I think that if we have trained supervisors, 

they are able to do that. If you have an untrained supervisor or a 

minimally trained supervisor and they have an employee who is 

not performing, they do not know how to go to that employee. They 
22 

do not know how to inspire that employee to work better or to hold 

them accountable. 

And if you also have a supervisor who is required to still do their 

technical duties, if you have a supervisor that is only giving 30 percent of their time to being a supervisor and to managing their employees, they are not going to be able to put the effort into mentoring and developing their employees to enable them to perform 

at the acceptable level. 

So I think that if we can educate our supervisors and our managers and we can train them to be good supervisors and managers 

instead of just promoting the best technician into a supervisory 

role—and I think we need to have dual career paths for our people. 

We need to have technician career paths, and we need to have 

manager career paths, because a lot of our technicians accept manager and supervisor jobs because it is a higher rate of pay, but they 

do not want to do that type of work. They love their technical jobs. 

Senator LANKFORD. I saw that in your written testimony. That 

is a very interesting point. They feel like they are stuck, they have 

great skills, and we as leaders in the Federal Government, we 

want them to stay in that because they contributed a tremendous 

amount, but they are trapped. It seems that the GS system allows 

them to continue to move up if they supervise more people, and so 

they have to make that jump. And so that to me is one of the areas 

that I saw where we have to ask the question: Is this the right way 

to do this? Are there other ideas you have seen or that others have 

seen for how do we do this dual track, as you referenced it, where 

there is not a compulsion—quite frankly, and twofold, one is that 

someone has to feel like they have to go supervise more people to 

do it, or that if I want to get a raise, I need to find some way for 

my agency to get more people under me so I can supervise more 

people and my pay goes up. So both of them are false incentives. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. I agree; they are. And I think if we have maybe 

a senior technician position where they are a lead technician, 

maybe mentoring people as opposed to trying to manage and supervise, maybe that is the way to go. But I agree that if you have to 

go into the management and supervisory roles to increase your pay, 

whether you feel you are suited for that or whether you really want 

to do that or not, I think it does a disservice to our technicians and 

to our managers. 

Senator LANKFORD. Mr. Blair. 

Mr. BLAIR. Well, I think we have experienced that already, don’t 

we, through the China Lake demonstration projects and the other 

demonstration projects that are out there. The current General 

Schedule is not flexible enough for that. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. No, it is not. 

Mr. BLAIR. And that is not, to indict the General Schedule. It is 

70 years old. And, it represents the best thinking of mid-20th century America. But we are fast approaching mid-21st century America, and I think it is time for some different things. Pay banding 

has long been an ‘‘experiment’’ in the Federal Government that actually has produced results. I think that—— 

Ms. NIEHAUS. For over 30 years. 

Mr. BLAIR. And I think that more—I do not even think it is time 

for demonstration. I think we need—or if there is going to be dem-
23 

onstration, for instance, the demonstration project authority we 

have now is awkward, bulky, and it was set up in 1978. It is limited to 5,000 people, all the notice and comment that has to be involved. There are ways of streamlining it while still giving employees adequate and meaningful input, but also allowing an agency to 

move forward. Modernizing those types of systems I think would go 

a long way. 

Senator LANKFORD. So is your recommendation that an agency as 

a whole would experiment with something new? How do you get a 

demonstration to show—— 

Mr. BLAIR. I think you certainly—— 

Senator LANKFORD [continuing]. Before with TSA, we look back 

at the numbers and such on it, but when you have these dual 

tracks, it gives you the opportunity to be able to see it. Is that a 

whole agency that does that or a whole new group of people? How 

do you do that? 

Mr. BLAIR. I think an agency or a component thereof, but make 

sure that it is larger than a 5,000-person unit in order to get good, 

demonstrable results. And I think that these are easy solutions. 

Implementation is harder, but these are easy solutions that have 

been out there for several years. 

Senator LANKFORD. Ms. Jones, you were trying to get in on this 

conversation. 

Ms. JONES. Thank you, Senator Lankford. A couple of observations. 

It is true that supervisors sometimes do not have adequate training in performance management, but sometimes they also feel that 

they do not have the support of senior leadership, and as many 

panelists have mentioned, the disciplinary process can be very 

cumbersome. So at root, the performance management system 

needs to be based on an understanding between agency leadership 

and all of the stakeholders that the performance management system is going to be applied to. 

Yes, it is true that supervisors need to be trained, but then once 

they are trained, what they need to do is to interact with their staff 

on a continual basis, which means that they can give feedback on 

a day-to-day basis that at midyear and at the end of the performance cycle, they get more formal feedback, but that also supervisors 

be trained to recognize when an underperforming staff member is 

not doing what he or she should do and to understand how to have 

conversations with them. And the performance management system has to be flexible enough so that, for example, if you need to 

have an out-of-cycle performance rating so that a person understands the degree to which they are not performing, that that can 

be done. 

Senator LANKFORD. Can that be done now? Or that cannot be 

done? 

Ms. JONES. It can at certain agencies. We can do that at GAO. 

I think it varies from agency to agency. 

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the senior leader positions already exist. In some agencies, for example, at GAO, our 

chief economist, our chief actuary, they are senior leaders, not SES. 

So, I guess agencies will decide themselves what they need to do 
24 

in terms of distinguishing between senior leaders who are managers and senior leaders who are more technically oriented. 

Senator HEITKAMP. Well, I think the real challenge here is selecting the right supervision. And it has been my experience that you 

want people who can deal with conflict, but you want people who 

do not get drunk with power. And it is an interesting kind of balance. And you want people who can connect the employees to the 

mission. 

I like telling the story, because he is a great friend of mine, but 

I had a guy who worked for me who was the head of sales tax 

when I was tax commissioner. He would come in at 5 o’clock every 

morning when no one else was there, and he would get through his 

paperwork. And then at 8, when the employees came in, he probably supervised about 40 employees. He would walk desk to desk 

and ask people how they were. And when they would tell him, ‘‘I 

was late this morning because the kids were not moving,’’ he would 

say, ‘‘You know how I am? I am terrific.’’ And by the end of the 

day, his whole division was terrific, because he had reached out to 

them every day. And when they did not perform, they did not want 

to disappoint him because he had that relationship. 

And it takes a special person who has many skill sets that we 

do not always find in people who are proficient in their occupation. 

And that is really the challenge: How do you make the workforce 

rewarding and more fun? I am not saying, let us—but someplace 

that is light-hearted, some place where people feel a kinship or a 

friendship. 

And one of the things we know, we are not going to get 

Millennials to stay in the Federal workforce if we are overly bureaucratic. It is the ABC of failure: arrogance, bureaucracy, and 

complacency. And Millennials do not fit in that category. They are 

not bureaucratic in how they look at things. They are not complacent with the way things are. And they tend to be more collaborative and less arrogant. 

And so how do we avoid a system—I think it is Warren Buffett 

who uses the ABCs. But how do we jump-start this? Because we 

have a huge workforce, and moving this big ship to something that 

is more flexible and more attractive to a new workforce is going to 

be extraordinarily difficult. So some ideas on how we can infect this 

whole system with maybe more enthusiasm for what we do every 

day? And I should talk. I complain all the time about what I do 

all day. But, Ms. Niehaus, obviously, you have great experience 

where you work and care a great deal about the job that you do, 

but I think also experience this level of frustration. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. Yes, and I see our workers, and a lot of our workers at Travis Air Force Base are veterans. I mean, the majority of 

our new hires are veterans, so they already understand the importance of our mission. But I think we might be able to do a better 

job with the new employees who are not veterans and who have not 

already been through military service of explaining what their role 

is in the mission. And I think that if our supervisors are trained 

to orient employees that way so that they know, ‘‘OK, you are turning a wrench on this aircraft and that aircraft goes and refuels 

other aircraft to allow them to perform mission in a war zone,’’ I 

think it makes more impression than if somebody is just told, ‘‘OK, 
25 

go change the tire on this airplane.’’ But our supervisors need to 

be trained in how to do that. 

Senator HEITKAMP. I think that is right. Ms. Jones. 

Ms. JONES. I would just like to make one more point about performance management. Our discussions have shown with supervisors across agencies that even when someone is performing poorly, that if it is possible to supervise them appropriately, to explain 

to them why they are not doing their work in a proper way, and 

to bring about an improvement in their work so that they do not 

have to be dismissed, that is actually a better result than dismissing someone. We have talked about the cumbersome nature of 

dismissals, but the agency has spent a lot of money recruiting the 

person, training the person. The person has learned a great deal 

about their work and the agency’s work overall and how the Federal Government operates. So if it is possible to have a more positive outcome rather than a negative outcome, that would be better. 

Senator LANKFORD. Redemption is always better. I will take that 

every time. 

While you are dipping into that, there is one more big issue that 

we have kind of skirted around, and it is the termination process. 

We talked about the probation. We talked about some of the hiring 

things. Everyone has mentioned at some level, either in their written testimony or orally, something about the termination process. 

There are several ideas that were presented out there, but here are 

a couple things that I heard when I read through the materials and 

heard some of the oral testimony. 

One was the administrative leave and the length of that, the 

paid administrative leave and how long that is. 

The other thing was a statement that went around the morale 

issue, that individuals—and I have seen it. When there is an individual that everyone knows is a problem in the middle of the team, 

it hurts morale for the entire team. And everyone gets frustrated 

by that, and everyone knows I am being paid the same as that person is, but they are not doing their work, so it brings down the 

whole team. But everyone also knows in the Federal workforce it 

is incredibly difficult for someone to be released. And so we all put 

up with it. 

So how do we fix that where we can actually protect some worker 

from a supervisor that may be an ogre that just wants to release 

everybody? So we want to give them some kind of due process to 

make sure we do not have a bad supervisor and that is why we 

have a bad environment, but to also deal with the employee that 

is just not cutting it at this point. So let us talk through some of 

the basics of that real quick. Specific ideas would be helpful. Mr. 

Blair. 

Mr. BLAIR. Thank you. In my testimony, I outlined a couple of 

ideas, and I do not have the magic bullet for this, but it does seem 

to me—— 

Senator LANKFORD. We need it. [Laughter.] 

Mr. BLAIR. Well, let us see if we can come up with something. 

It is a maze right now. You have multiple bites at the apple, and 

there are long policy justifications for the current system. But the 

current system adds to the cynicism. So I think we need to look at 
26 

it afresh. This is something that I think the expertise lies in OPM 

and MSPB. 

Senator LANKFORD. Do they have the authorities right now that 

they need to—— 

Mr. BLAIR. I do not think they have the authorities to properly 

demonstrate it. I recommend a demonstration project or demos, 

pilot projects of some kind. Even if that is not feasibly, to come up 

with some recommendations on how—what should be changed in 

legislation in order to make it transparent accountable, but also 

give the public a sense that—along with due process, but give the 

public the sense that employees are being held accountable. 

These are things that you cannot come up with in a day, but you 

are starting this process at a very important time, and these are 

things that as you said earlier, teed up for the transition issue. 

I would like to go back to the Academy. I have folks who span 

the spectrum on different ways of doing these types of things, and 

I would look forward to that opportunity to engage them in some 

way and say, look I have members, a former president of the National Treasury Employees Union is a Fellow. One of my former 

board members was a political action director for Mr. Cox’s union 

as well and was their communications director. I have agency 

heads. We span the spectrum. And a panel of Fellows looking at 

something like that can thread the needle. We have threaded the 

needle before for this Committee. We did work for you all 2 years 

ago on the STOCK Act. Congress looked at our report and adopted 

the recommendations. So I would be interested in seeing how we 

could be engaged to come back and bring together the best collective thinking in the Academy on something like this, and we can 

do that on a timely basis. 

Senator LANKFORD. That would be helpful to us because, again, 

this is an issue that hurts high-performing teams. This is not just 

a matter of the Federal taxpayer paying someone who is not pulling their weight. It is a matter of demoralizing a whole team, a 

whole group of people, and I will be interested to know when we 

read through for Defense, VA, and Homeland Security if they are 

dealing with this or there are other issues that are in the process 

of what is causing this lack of employee engagement on this. But 

other ideas that this group has on dealing with the termination 

process to make sure that it is both fair but that it actually has 

a functioning process rather than someone just saying, ‘‘It is so 

hard to do it, I am just not going to even try. I will just leave him 

there and ignore him.’’ 

Mr. COX. I think part of the process is, again, what the Senator 

said earlier. Many times people do not want to deal with conflict. 

I have represented employees that have done things that were 

wrong. The process went very timely. There was an investigation 

done. The employee had due process. They suffered the consequence, and they paid the price. And many of them left the agency or either received some type of disciplinary action. Frequently, 

managers want to put it off and not deal with it. The provisions 

are there to move in a very timely process. All of AFGE’s contracts 

call for quick action of investigation, tell employees they have done 

something wrong, deal with them. 
27 

Also, with the forum issue, employees must choose to file either 

through a negotiated grievance procedure, EEO, or MSPB. I see 

them try to go in several different directions, and they get kicked 

out and lose out because you just cannot, forum shop. The laws are 

constructed such that you have to be in one avenue and stay in 

that avenue. So there are procedures to deal with that. 

Senator HEITKAMP. One of the complicating factors of these is 

frequently a manager will figure out a way to get rid of that employee and send them to another team. So they can poison more 

than one group of people. I think we have to start with training 

supervisors to deal with conflict, to try and take corrective action, 

to put—do not have low expectations of employees. That is one of 

the challenges you have, is you say it is good enough, it is C work. 

Well, I need A-plus work, so let us try and get A-plus work and 

make them part of the team. And I think most people are redeemable. There are people who are just bad actors and are not interested in putting in a fair amount of work. But I think most people 

with the right kind of supervision and with the right kind of training can be very good employees, but yet they fail because they get 

in this cycle of failure and get so demoralized that they are just filling in space and time. And I think early capture of problems— 

which is why the probationary period is so important. Early capture of these problems I think is also part of—you cannot just look 

at the termination process as just that process of going through the 

steps of terminating employment. You have to look at it as the 

whole supervision possibility from the very beginning, and so I do 

not look at these as two different pieces. I look at this as an overall 

management challenge. 

Senator LANKFORD. And even in your description there, Mr. Cox, 

talking about all the different lanes that they could get in through 

the process, when you deal with Chapter 43 or Chapter 75 of the 

U.S. Code and that process and where they are going to go and understanding this is performance related or this is based on a specific action, and based on that action it gets very complicated in the 

process. And what you were describing as far as a quick process, 

if someone does something that is really dumb, it becomes this 

large-scale action, event, statement, explosion in work, what they 

are going to do with their attitude, it becomes very clear. But if it 

is just low performance and they have been trained, and they have 

been trained, and they have been trained, and they are not coming 

up, it is how do you help them, say OK, this is the wrong fit? To 

go with the good to great philosophy, you are in the wrong seat on 

the bus. We need to move you to a different seat on the bus and 

see if that works better, and if that seat does not work, we may 

need to move you off the bus. That is the difficulty of the process 

on it. 

So any other comments or ideas on this? Because this is one of 

the difficult things we have to deal with. 

Ms. NIEHAUS. Well, I think, as Senator Heitkamp said, not only 

do we have to train our supervisors, we have to give them time to 

supervise. You used an example of someone who came in at 5 in 

the morning, and their employees come in at 8. Not everyone can 

do that. Most of our supervisors have families, and they have lives 

outside of the office or the duty section. So we need to structure 
28 

our supervisory positions so that they have time to actually be supervisors and managers and not just technicians working, with an 

additional duty on top of their technical work. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. Ms. Jones. 

Ms. JONES. I would say that it would be very important in terms 

of the cost to the government of figuring out a way to resolve these 

issues earlier. There are relatively few Federal employees who stay 

on administrative leave for more than 30 days and relatively even 

fewer still who stay on for 6 months or more than a year. 

What we found in our prior work, though, is that this very small 

number of employees, the cost of them staying on administrative 

leave is much higher than their numbers would imply. So figuring 

out a way—and performance-related issues was one of the major 

reasons why they stayed on administrative leave for a long time. 

So figuring out a way to deal with situations earlier and much 

more expeditiously would be helpful. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK. I want this panel to know that we are 

very interested in hearing the specific ideas because we want to 

help in this process. We have some great Federal employees that 

are out there that we like to put good team members around them 

that are working at the same level that they are because it builds 

morale and it, quite frankly, is better value for the taxpayer, and 

it builds that enthusiasm and quality of work. So this is one of 

those complicated issues that we have to resolve in the days ahead, 

and I look forward to that conversation and other ideas, and 

thanks again for your testimony on this. 

I am going to go ahead and close the hearing down. Other members that were not here, they will have 7 additional days to be able 

to put a statement officially for the record, and we will followup 

with questions for the record as well in the days ahead. 

I look forward to the ongoing conversation we will have about 

trying to resolve this. Thanks again. This hearing is closed. 

[Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
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