Evening star., 1949-02-14
Civil Service Overhaul

When II is cOnSlQereQ tnaC Cne Govern
ment's civilian payroll has risen in twenty
years from $4,000 to 2,043,0O0 employees,
the need for moderniZation of civil service
hiring, firing, grading and other personnel
standards and procedures is clearly indi-
Gated. The Hoover Commission has pro-
vided Congress with plans and specifica-
tions for such an overhaul of the civil
service system. The commission does not
contend that its blueprint will cure all of
the existing weaknesses of the system. But
the competence of the task force" which
prepared the report is such as to give great
weight to the recommendations.
That there will be opposition to some of
the proposals is a foregone conclusion
Some people would be hurt, an indeter-
inmate number of employees would be
dropped, lot of time-worn practices would
by the commission were to be adopted. Ac-
tually, however, many of the seemingly
drastic recommendations are not so dras-
tic on closer examination. One of the
major reforms proposed in the report al
ready is in process of being instituted.
Reference is had to the decentralization of
recruiting and examining functions of the
civil service During World War II this
sort of decentralization was found to be
necessary in order to speed the work of
hiring needed workers. The plan proved so
effective and so practicable that it was car
ried over into peacetime. The Civil Serv-
ice Commission today is continuing to de-
centralize it's work by delegating to de-
partments and agencies the job of recruit
ing and examining employees, according to
their respective requirements. The hiring
and firing powers, as always, remain in the
departments.
This arrangement has relieved the Civil
Service Commission of what had been a
mounting burden of responsibilities that
could better be handled by personnel au-
thorities outside the commission. Thus
freed from much personnel selection rou
tine, the commission has been able to
give more time to overall supervision of
general civil service policies and pro-
cedures. Luther Steward, president of the
National Federation of Federal Employees,
has expressed the fear that too much de-
Capitalization of the type suggested by the
and injustices in administration of civil
service rules He said this would pose an
almost superhuman problem" for the
Civil Service Commission chairman, whose
job it would be to police" the decentralized
system. There has been no public evidence
so far of the need for "superhuman" super
vision of the present partially decentralized
system. however One of the StauncheSt
advocates of the change is Arthur s. Flem-
ming, member of the Hoover subcommit-
tee on civil service reform Mr.. Flemming
had much to do with carrying out wartime
and postwartime decentralization and his
Endorsement OF the plan cannot be lightly
ignored.
Other reforms proposed in the report
cover many employment practices. More
vigorous recruiting of technical and pro-
fessional personnel, with higher salaries as
bait; liberalized pay policies generally,
better promotion inducements, more ef-
fective machinery for wedding out incom-
petents, method for retaining valuable
employees faced with dismissal under re-
duction-i n-force orders and numerous
other improvements are advised. All of
these reforms are designed to build up and
to maintain at high efficiency a civilian
career force commensurate to "the times
and needs of the Government" AS Mr..
Flemming so wisely commented the whole
program of executive reorganization will
be of little avail if the basic civil service
system itself remains outmoded.