Federal Hiring: OPM Needs to Improve Management and Oversight of Hiring Authorities
Released: 2016-09-01T00:00:00

Letter

Background

Selecting applicants based on their qualifications instead of patronage has been the foundation of the federal hiring system for more than 130 years. Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883, establishing that federal employment should be based on merit. The nine merit system principles were later codified as part of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The first merit principle requires that agencies recruit qualified individuals from appropriate sources to achieve a work-force from all segments of society. It also requires that selection and advancement should be determined solely on the basis of relative ability, knowledge, and skills after fair and open competition. This assures that all receive equal opportunity.

In this report, “Title 5” refers to the government-wide personnel management laws and related provisions generally applicable to federal employment.

Competitive Examining Has Been the Traditional Method of Hiring

Title 5 outlines the rules agencies must follow to hire employees, such as the competitive examining hiring authority. Competitive examining has been the traditional method for making appointments to competitive service positions. The competitive examining process requires agencies to notify the public that the government will accept applications for a job, screen applications against minimum qualification standards, apply selection priorities such as veterans’ preference, and assess applicants’ relative competencies or knowledge, skills, and abilities against job- related criteria to identify the most qualified applicants. Federal agencies typically assess applicants by rating and ranking them based on their experience, training, and education.

Congress and the President have Created Alternatives to Competitive Examining

Congress and the President have created a number of additional hiring authorities—beyond competitive examining—to expedite the hiring process or to achieve certain public policy goals. In some cases, Congress created hiring authorities outside of Title 5 granting access directly to specific agencies. For example, provisions under Title 42 of the United States Code provide authority for the Department of Health and Human Services to hire individuals to fill mission critical positions in science and medicine. In other cases, Congress and the President created authorities under Title 5 which permitted hiring actions to be taken by means other than competitive examining. Through authority delegated by the President, OPM has authorized excepted service appointment authorities for when it is not feasible or practical to use competitive examining. Examples of some exceptions to the competitive hiring process include the following:

Filling critical skills gaps. Congress created “direct hire authority” to help agencies fill vacancies in the competitive service under certain circumstances. Congress authorized OPM to permit agencies to use direct hire authority for a position or group of positions where OPM has determined that there is either a severe shortage of candidates or a critical hiring need for such positions. This direct hire authority expedites the typical hiring process associated with the competitive examining hiring authority in Title 5 by eliminating competitive rating and ranking procedures and veterans’ preference. Congress has also provided direct-hire authority directly to agencies for specified purposes.

Employment of veterans. Congress created a hiring authority called the Veterans’ Recruitment Appointment authority that allows for certain exceptions from the competitive examining process. Specifically, agencies may appoint eligible veterans without competition under limited circumstances or otherwise through excepted service hiring procedures.

Employment of students and recent graduates. To ensure that the federal government continued to compete effectively for students and recent graduates, a 2010 executive order created the Pathways Program. Pathways replaced two former student programs and incorporated the Presidential Management Fellows program.

OPM and Agency Coordination and Oversight Roles

OPM decentralized and delegated many personnel decisions to federal agencies. It also has encouraged agencies to use human capital flexibilities, such as hiring authorities, to help tailor their personnel approaches to accomplish their missions. In January 1996, for example, OPM delegated competitive examining authority to federal agencies for virtually all positions in the competitive service. OPM is responsible for ensuring that the personnel management functions it delegates to agencies are conducted in accordance with merit system principles, and the standards established by OPM for conducting those functions.

The exceptions authorized under Title 5 to the competitive examining process, and the creation of exceptions to hiring rules through new agency-specific non-Title 5 hiring authorities mentioned above, also affect oversight responsibilities. Oversight of hiring actions depends on the origin of the authorized exception. For example, if the position was excepted from the competitive service by OPM, OPM is responsible for ensuring that the hiring actions taken to fill those positions are consistent with merit principles and other relevant Title 5 laws and regulations. However, if Congress directly granted an agency authority to appoint individuals into the excepted service without regard to Title 5 and OPM authority, generally the agency (rather than OPM) must ensure that it is meeting relevant standards under that grant of authority or additional oversight provisions detailed by Congress.

Further, the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Act of 2002 established the CHCO Council to advise and coordinate the activities of member agencies on such matters as the modernization of human resources systems, improved quality of human resources information, and legislation affecting human resources operations and organizations. The CHCO Council is chaired by the Director of OPM and serves to coordinate and collaborate on the development and implementation of federal human capital policies.

Agencies Relied on 20 Authorities for Over 90 Percent of New Hires in Fiscal Year 2014

Our analysis of OPM data found that overall, agencies used a relatively small number of hiring authorities to fill nearly all of the vacancies in 2014, and a large number of hiring authorities to fill the small proportion of positions that remained. Specifically, we found that agencies used 105 hiring authority codes for 196,226 new appointments in fiscal year 2014. These appointments were for competitive service positions, as well as for excepted service positions, made under both Title 5 and agency-specific non-Title 5 authorities. However, of these 105 authorities, agencies used just 20 hiring authority codes for more than 178,000 (91 percent) of the new appointments, while using 85 hiring authority codes for the 18,000 (9 percent) remaining new appointments (see fig. 1).

As noted, Congress and the President have created a number of additional hiring authorities—beyond competitive examining—intended to address positions that cannot be filled through competitive examining in order to expedite the hiring process or to achieve certain public policy goals, such as facilitating the entrance of certain groups into the civil service.

Importantly, our analysis provides only a snapshot of a single fiscal year. The use of hiring authorities was influenced by particular hiring levels at certain agencies. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) used the Title 38 hiring authority—the second most used authority—to hire almost 8,000 nurses and more than 3,000 medical officers in fiscal year 2014 in response to increased demands for healthcare providers.

Of the 20 top-used hiring authorities, agencies relied most heavily on three types of authorities: (1) the competitive examining hiring authority, (2) other Title 5 hiring authorities, and (3) agency-specific hiring authorities (non-Title 5 as well as Title 5). Each of these is discussed in greater detail below (see table 1 for a description of all 20 hiring authority codes most commonly used in fiscal year 2014).

Competitive examining hiring authority. While the Title 5 competitive examining hiring authority—has been the traditional method for federal hiring—was the single most used hiring authority in fiscal year 2014, it accounted for less than a quarter of all new appointments government- wide. Further, only 3 of the 24 agencies covered under the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990, as amended—the Department of Justice, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of the Treasury—used the competitive examining hiring authority for a majority of their new appointments in fiscal year 2014. At the same time, 6 of the 24 CFO Act agencies used competitive examining for less than 10 percent of all new appointments in fiscal year 2014. They include the Departments of Agriculture, and Transportation, VA, U.S. Agency for International Development, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the National Science Foundation.

Other Title 5 hiring authorities. In addition to competitive examining, in fiscal year 2014, agencies often used other Title 5 hiring authorities available to all agencies. For example, agencies used direct hire—which waives the rating and ranking process and the application of veterans’ preference under competitive examining for certain critical needs, or when there is a severe shortage of candidates. In other instances, agencies used special hiring authorities to hire veterans, students, and recent graduates.

With respect to direct hire, OPM provided agencies with government-wide direct hire authorities for certain IT specialists and medical occupations, among other critical needs occupations. This enables an agency with delegated examining authority to hire, after public notice is provided, any qualified applicant without regard to certain competitive hiring requirements such as category rating and veterans’ preference. Additionally, agencies often used hiring authorities related to hiring veterans and students or recent graduates. For example, the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act (VEOA), a competitive service appointment authority, was the fifth most frequently used hiring authority code for new appointments in fiscal year 2014. One of our case agency officials told us that they used VEOA to recruit veterans eligible to apply for positions announced under merit promotion procedures.

Fiscal year 2014 was one of the first years agencies used two new Pathways excepted service hiring authorities for interns and recent graduates. These authorities are to be used as a supplement to, not a substitute for, the competitive hiring process. Pathways Programs are tools for agencies because of their focus on students and recent graduates. For example, nearly all of the 24 CFO Act agencies used at least one of the three Pathways Programs (the third being the Presidential Management Fellowship), and two agencies—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation—used the Pathways Internship authority for more than 50 percent and 30 percent, respectively, of their new hires. At the same time, 7 of the 24 CFO Act agencies that used at least one of the Pathways authorities used it for less than 5 percent of their new appointments in fiscal year 2014.

Agency-specific hiring authorities. Agencies also relied heavily on hiring authorities that are only available to specific agencies. As shown in figure 2, in fiscal year 2014, 38 percent of all new federal appointments were made using hiring authorities designated only for specific agencies.

Agency-specific hiring authorities can be authorized directly by Congress or may be provided to the agency by OPM. As previously noted, VA used Title 38 hiring authorities—attributable to the second most used hiring authority code—to hire for medical occupations in fiscal year 2014. In addition, two of the most used non-Title 5 hiring authorities related to entire agency-components—the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration—were provided by Congress with additional flexibility in hiring agency personnel for all occupations.

OPM also provided special Title 5 excepted service hiring authorities to certain agencies. OPM annually publishes a consolidated listing of all agency specific Title 5 excepted service hiring authorities granted under Schedules A, B, or C in the Federal Register. Schedules A, B, C, and D refer to distinct suites of authorities that enable agencies to hire in those circumstances when it is not practicable to use competitive service qualification standards or to rate applicants using traditional competitive examining procedures, when recruiting certain types of students (or others who have recently completed certain educational programs), or to fill positions of a confidential or policy-determining nature. For example, OPM granted a Schedule A hiring authority to the General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget to hire digital services staff as a part of the President’s Management Agenda’s Smarter Information Technology (IT) Delivery Initiative through September 2017 and 2016, respectively. In May 2015, OPM approved government-wide Schedule A hiring authority for digital services staff for all agencies working on IT projects as part of this initiative, also through September 2017.

Three Selected Agencies and OPM Need to Better Assess the Effectiveness of Hiring Authorities to Strengthen Hiring Efforts

Selected Agencies and OPM Do Not Measure the Effectiveness of Individual Hiring Authorities in Meeting Agencies’ Needs

In our 2002 report, we found that to address their human capital challenges, it is important for agencies to assess and determine which human capital flexibilities, including hiring authorities, are the most appropriate and effective for managing their workforces. Among other things, such assessments help ensure that agencies use hiring authorities as part of an overall human capital strategy. By helping agencies to better understand the impact that different authorities have on the pool of available candidates, agencies could use hiring authorities more strategically to achieve specific talent management and public policy goals such as closing mission critical skills gaps, employment of veterans, and increased workforce diversity. Assessments can also better ensure that agencies first identify and use the flexibilities already available under existing laws and regulations and only seek additional flexibilities when necessary based on sound business cases.

Moreover, given agencies’ reliance on a relatively small number of authorities in 2014, assessments of authorities’ effectiveness could help inform whether there are opportunities to refine, consolidate, or reduce the number of available authorities to simplify the hiring process, or whether provisions of some agency-specific authorities should be expanded to more agencies. Indeed, OPM officials said they do not know if agencies rely on a small number of authorities because agencies are unfamiliar with other authorities, or if they have found other authorities to be less effective in meeting their needs.

As part of its hiring reform efforts, in 2010 the administration launched the Hiring Reform Initiative, which was aimed at improving the effectiveness of the hiring process. To gauge agencies’ progress in meeting those goals, OPM tracked improvements in time-to-hire and manager and applicant satisfaction levels as key indicators for jobs posted on the USA jobs website. Time-to-hire and satisfaction surveys are useful metrics of the effectiveness of the hiring process as a whole. Neither OPM nor the selected agencies used or explored the potential for this information to analyze the effectiveness of individual, or the different types, of hiring authorities. Without this information, it is difficult for OPM and agencies to assess the impact specific hiring authorities are having on the administration’s reform efforts and other goals.

As one example, OPM requires agencies to report time-to-hire information for all job announcements posted on USAjobs.gov. However, neither OPM nor officials from our selected agencies said they used this data to analyze the effectiveness of individual hiring authorities. Likewise, OPM surveys managers and applicants to gauge their opinions of the application process. OPM officials said while they conduct some government-wide analysis of these surveys and brief the CHCO Council on trends and findings, they have not analyzed the relative effectiveness of individual hiring authorities.

OPM officials said that the time-to-hire, manager satisfaction, and applicant satisfaction databases were located in different systems, thus making it difficult to analyze or identify trends. Further, OPM officials said they view the use of hiring authorities as case-specific and in some cases tied to agency-specific goals, which makes it difficult to compare them to one another and develop meaningful conclusions about how they are used.

However, there are several potential benefits to understanding the relative effectiveness of different authorities for particular agency requirements. First, different types of hiring authorities have different procedures associated with them. By analyzing the effectiveness of hiring authorities, OPM and agencies could identify improvements that could be used to refine those procedures. Second, Congress and OPM could provide more agencies access to specific authorities found to be highly effective. Third, authorities found to be less effective could be revised or eliminated by Congress or OPM, thus helping to ensure only those hiring tools found to be the most useful were available to agencies.

Moreover, a better understanding of the relative effectiveness of different hiring authorities could enhance agencies’ awareness of the implications different authorities may have on the composition of their workforce. For example, when agencies use one hiring authority to achieve a particular public policy objective, it may have implications for the attainment of a different objective. In its 2015 report, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board found that when agencies used veteran-specific hiring authorities in fiscal year 2012, they hired between 50 and 60 percent more men than women, not surprising given the active duty military is over 80 percent male. Better information on the impact different authorities have on the applicant pool could help agencies use hiring authorities more deliberatively to accomplish different hiring outcomes.

Officials from our selected agencies—AFMC, Energy, and NIH—said that they had not used time-to-hire data or manager and applicant satisfaction survey data to evaluate specific hiring authorities. Like OPM, officials from the selected agencies said they have focused their efforts and used this information to better understand and improve the overall hiring process but had not considered it for analyzing the use of individual authorities. Given that an individual agency may only use a subset of all authorities, an agency-specific analysis may not reveal many differences across authorities. However, compiling agency evaluations of the range of authorities available would likely provide greater insight. A number of factors can determine how and whether agencies get the talent they desire. Selected agencies described for us additional strategies they use to help meet their workforce requirements. These are discussed in greater detail in appendix II).

Improved Hiring Authority Data Could Identify the Most Effective Hiring Authorities

Despite the importance of assessing the effectiveness of individual hiring authorities, there are some limitations to using available OPM data for this type of analysis. The hiring authority codes used in OPM’s EHRI database are a tool for tracking the use of hiring authorities across the federal government. However, the codes are not a perfect one-for-one match for individual hiring authorities, and some hiring authority codes represent an unknown number of authorities. For example, the hiring authority codes for “Digital Service Experts” are also used to track the use of other hiring authorities. As a result, it is unclear how frequently these particular digital services authorities are used.

Similarly, OPM uses a single hiring authority code for all “other laws, executive orders, and regulations,” which was the sixth most used hiring authority code for new appointments in fiscal year 2014.

As a result of these data limitations, OPM is unable to use its own data to determine the extent to which special hiring authorities like these are being used, to determine (or aid agencies in determining) whether they are meeting their intended purpose, if refinements are needed, or whether they should be expanded for other agencies with similar needs. With this analysis, OPM could revise authorities within its authority and work with agencies to develop legislative proposals as warranted to revise authorities beyond its authority.

OPM Conducted Compliance Audits and Evaluations, but Did Not Analyze the Effectiveness of Authorities Subject to Its Oversight

OPM is responsible for executing, administering, and enforcing the civil service rules and regulations and the laws governing the civil service, including those pertaining to hiring. Additionally, OPM is required to establish and maintain oversight over delegated personnel activities, including delegated competitive examining activities, to ensure agencies are acting in accordance with the merit system principles and the relevant standards established by OPM, such as compliance with applicable laws, rules, regulations, executive orders, and OPM policies. OPM monitors overall implementation and identifies corrective actions when deficiencies are found. OPM conducts this oversight through three primary means: delegated examining unit audits, human resource management evaluations, and special studies.

Delegated examining audits: OPM oversees agencies’ use of the delegated examining authority for competitive service. These audits focus on compliance with merit principles and other key goals. To a lesser extent they consider the effectiveness of the overall hiring process, but typically do not analyze the effectiveness of specific hiring authorities.

Human resource management evaluations: OPM and agencies evaluate how well human capital programs, align with agency mission and goals and comply with the merit system principles, laws, and regulations. In contrast to the delegated examining unit audits, officials said that human resource management evaluations provide an opportunity for identifying best hiring practices at agencies.

Special studies: OPM officials said they periodically conduct special studies of hiring issues. For example, officials said OPM is currently studying the use of Pathways Programs government-wide. Officials said the study will identify trends in agencies’ usage, highlight notable practices by agencies, identify any challenges within the programs, and assess whether the programs are being used as intended.

OPM’s oversight functions provide an in-depth understanding of agency hiring, and could provide important information to help OPM identify opportunities to streamline and consolidate federal hiring authorities. However, OPM officials identified two challenges to analyzing audit findings to understand the effectiveness of hiring authorities. First, OPM does not maintain all the different types of audit reports in a single, centralized location. Conducting a government-wide analysis would require manually piecing together reports from different systems. However, even identifying trends within the audit type could provide leading practices for OPM to share and opportunities for agencies to improve their use of hiring authorities. According to OPM officials, OPM is developing a new database capable of housing all audit findings, which will enable it to conduct this analysis in future years.

OPM officials said a second challenge to government-wide analysis of hiring authorities is that OPM’s oversight is limited to the hiring authorities established in Title 5. According to OPM, the evaluation or oversight requirements, if any, of non-Title 5 excepted service hiring authorities are authority-specific. Since non-Title 5 excepted service hiring authorities are granted to agencies directly by Congress, OPM does not generally have a direct oversight role under these authorities.

OPM Manages Numerous Hiring Reform Initiatives and Tools

In recent years, OPM has launched several initiatives and provided agencies with tools to address federal hiring challenges. In 2008, for example, OPM and the CHCO Council partnered to lead the End-to-End Hiring Roadmap, which aimed to improve the hiring process from an applicant perspective. Then, in 2010, the President’s Hiring Reform initiative aimed to address impediments to recruiting and hiring highly qualified employees into the federal civilian workforce. Also in 2010, OPM began an effort to increase employment of veterans. In 2011, OPM started a new initiative to increase employment of students, and recent graduates, in part by educating agencies about new or existing hiring authorities for these groups. OPM also established the Veterans Employment Program Office and Office of Diversity and Inclusion. In 2015, OPM introduced the Recruitment, Engagement, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Strategy. REDI’s objective, in part, was to improve the quality of the hiring process by meeting with HR professionals and hiring managers to ensure they understand current hiring flexibilities through guidance and resources, referred to as “untying the knots” sessions.

Since 2014, OPM and the Presidential Personnel Office have led the People and Culture Cross-Agency Priority Goal intended to deploy a world-class workforce by creating a culture of excellence and enabling agencies to hire the best talent from all segments of society. As part of this goal OPM with OMB’s assistance, kicked off a new initiative in early 2016—the Hiring Excellence Campaign—designed to improve the federal hiring process. According to OPM officials, one of the objectives of the campaign is to raise awareness and effective use of hiring authorities by managers and human resource professionals and to address administrative and other obstacles that may be impeding the government’s ability to recruit and hire the best talent. Officials said the campaign will feature a series of multi-agency, in-person discussions about hiring and assessment policies and corresponding guidance led by OPM and OMB officials. The events are to be in locations with high concentrations of human resources specialists, where agencies have been hiring for hard-to-fill occupations, among other factors.

OPM’s Hiring Excellence Campaign is designed to bring together agency hiring specialists and hiring managers to discuss hiring tools and opportunities for improving the hiring process, and therefore could help agencies make better use of available hiring authorities. The campaign’s ultimate effectiveness will depend to a large degree on OPM’s ability to implement the effort as planned and ensure it generates lasting improvements. To help in this regard, OPM officials said they have identified objectives, strategies, and baseline measures to track the success of the campaign. Further, OMB officials said they were identifying agency-specific hiring authority subject matter experts to assist in the discussions where audiences may have questions about non-Title 5 hiring authorities. OPM officials said they are developing a project plan for implementing the campaign. These activities could help improve OPM’s management, monitoring, and oversight of the Hiring Excellence Campaign and will need to be implemented as planned. Given the similarities between the Hiring Excellence Campaign and OPM’s prior efforts to improve federal hiring, it will also be important for OPM to ensure that the campaign leverages these prior initiatives, incorporates relevant lessons learned, if any, and ensures there is no unnecessary overlap or duplication with other efforts to improve federal hiring.

In addition to the initiatives noted above OPM makes available a variety of resources to help agencies make better use of hiring authorities, as shown in table 2.

Description The Hiring Toolkit, available on the HR University web site, describes the fundamentals of federal hiring, the hiring process, competitive and excepted service hiring, veteran’s appointing authorities, hiring authorities and pay. It complements the interactive Hiring Decision Tool, which matches potential hiring flexibilities with hiring needs.

End-to-End Hiring Roadmap The End-to-End Hiring Roadmap is a timeline tool based on a generic process model for conducting efficient, high-quality hiring. The purpose of this is to help identify similar steps in agencies’ hiring processes and diagnose areas of greatest need for improvement.

The Delegated Examining Operations Handbook provides assistance to agencies with delegated examining authority under Title 5 and applies to competitive examining only. The handbook provides agencies with guidance, options, and specific operational procedures designed to ensure that examining programs comply with merit system laws and regulations.

The Vet Guide consolidates the laws and regulations that affect the employment of veterans in the federal government in one central location. The guidebook describes veteran’s preference and special hiring authorities for veterans.

The Hiring Excellence website provides information, tools, and guidance to hiring specialists and hiring managers to assist in agency hiring. The website includes, among other things, information about strategic recruitment, assessment and selection, hiring authorities, and diversity and inclusion.

Officials from our selected agencies reported mixed impressions about OPM’s online resources, including some of the above examples. During our discussion groups, some hiring managers and HR specialists said they found OPM’s resources useful, some said OPM’s website and guidance were fragmented and difficult to use, and some officials said they were not familiar with OPM’s tools and resources and relied on agency-specific policies and tools. Officials familiar with OPM’s resources said they most often relied on agency-specific policies and procedures before turning to OPM’s resources and guidance on hiring authorities. While OPM’s resources may be developed and targeted for different users, without additional review these tools may not be having their intended effect. We have previously recommended, and continue to encourage OPM ensure agencies are getting the needed guidance and tools by evaluating the communication and effectiveness of relevant tools or leading practices created by OPM or agencies to address crosscutting human capital challenges.

Conclusions

Given the long-standing human capital challenges and difficulties in filling critical skills gaps, federal agencies need to have an assortment of effective tools to bring qualified applicants onboard as well as to meet public policy goals. In fiscal year 2014, 20 authorities were used to make around 90 percent of new appointments.

A critical first step in understanding if and which authorities are meeting agency needs is for OPM and agencies to analyze if and how specific authorities contribute to the effectiveness of the hiring process. This information would help OPM and agencies better manage the suite of hiring authorities and identify opportunities to simplify and improve the hiring process by refining, consolidating, or eliminating some authorities or by expanding provisions of some agency-specific authorities to more agencies. Likewise, agencies could make more strategic use of the hiring authorities, selecting those that data have shown are best suited for their particular talent needs and other objectives. However, despite the metrics available to assess their performance, OPM and our selected agencies do not measure the effectiveness of hiring authorities.

Finally, while OPM has launched several initiatives to reform the hiring process over the last several years, some of the issues they were designed to address, including improving agencies’ use of federal hiring authorities, remain. Going forward, it will be important for OPM to ensure that its most recent initiative, the Hiring Excellence Campaign, is implemented as planned, as well as to ensure that there is no unnecessary overlap or duplication with earlier efforts.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To help strengthen the government’s ability to compete in the labor market for top talent, we recommend that the Director of OPM, in conjunction with the CHCO Council, take the following actions to improve the federal hiring process: 1. For hiring authorities for which OPM oversees, conduct a study or assessment of specific hiring authorities and/or processes to gain insight into why these agencies relied on the authorities, the relationship between the agencies’ choices and the agency mission and broader public policy goals, consistent with merit systems principles, and determine whether modernization is necessary. For agency-specific hiring authorities and/or processes, OPM should collaborate with the CHCO Council to obtain similar insights agencies may have regarding their authorities and/or processes and to determine whether there are lessons learned which may be relevant to government-wide modernization efforts. 2. Use this information to determine whether opportunities exist to refine, consolidate, eliminate, or expand agency-specific authorities to other agencies and implement changes where OPM is authorized, including seeking presidential authorization (as necessary) in order to do so. In cases where legislation would be necessary to implement changes, OPM should work with the CHCO Council to develop legislative proposals. 3. As OPM continues with the implementation of the Hiring Excellence Campaign, determine ways to sustain aspects of the campaign that focus on equipping agencies with information, tools, and support to strengthen their knowledge and ability to attract and hire top talent beyond the active roll out of the campaign and leverage prior related efforts through such activities as incorporating applicable lessons learned and that there is no unnecessary overlap and duplication across their individual efforts.

Agency Comments

We provided a draft of this product to the Acting Director of OPM and the Director of OMB for comment. We also provided relevant portions of this product to the Secretaries of the Department of the Air Force, Department of Energy, and Department of Health and Human Services for technical comment. Technical comments were received from OPM, OMB, and the Air Force, and incorporated, as appropriate.

In written comments, reproduced in appendix III, OPM generally concurred with our findings and recommendations.

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Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

This report examines: (1) the hiring authorities agencies used in fiscal year 2014 (the most recent year for available data when we began our review), (2) the extent to which selected agencies and OPM assessed the effectiveness of hiring authorities used for selected occupations in helping meet hiring needs, and (3) how OPM ensured that agencies have the assistance and information needed to use the hiring authorities effectively.

To address our first objective, we used Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) data, which contains personnel action and workforce data for most federal civilian employees. We analyzed government-wide and agency-level EHRI data from fiscal year 2014, which was the most recent year that data were available during our review. We primarily used the following EHRI data variables: (1) “current appointment authority 1 and 2” to describe the hiring authorities agencies used; and (2) “nature of action” codes to identify new appointments into federal service. First, we used OPM’s “current appointment authority” codes in EHRI to determine which hiring authorities agencies used in fiscal year 2014. According to OPM’s Guide to Data Standards—the guidance document that describes data elements in EHRI—the current appointment authority code is a mandatory data code that describes the law, executive order, rule, regulation, or other basis that authorizes an employee’s most recent conversion or accession action. Each agency must record the appointment authority codes for each hiring action in its own personnel system, which is then submitted to OPM’s EHRI data warehouse. Second, to calculate the new appointments made with each hiring authority, we aggregated the hiring actions using a subset of EHRI’s “nature of action” codes. Nature of action codes capture information about the type of personnel action being tracked, such as whether the action was an appointment, conversion, or separation. We limited our analysis to include nature of action codes for new full- and part-time, and permanent and non-permanent federal appointments in the competitive or excepted services. We also excluded certain groups outside of the scope of this engagement. Using these parameters, we aggregated the hiring actions for new appointments by current appointment authority in fiscal year 2014, and we sorted the current appointment authority codes from most used to least used government- wide.

Sometimes agencies entered two current appointment authority codes for the same hiring action. Based on OPM documentation, we determined certain situations in which OPM instructed agencies to enter two codes for a single hiring action. However, there were a number of situations in which OPM could not provide documentation explaining why agencies should enter two current appointment authority codes. For these instances, we generally counted each current appointment authority code agencies entered as a single hiring authority “use.” We confirmed our methodology for describing government-wide use of hiring authorities with OPM.

Additionally, we used OPM documentation to match the current appointment authority codes with a name and citation in applicable laws, regulations, and executive orders. We examined laws, OPM regulations, and additional OPM materials to obtain a description of the most frequently used hiring authorities government-wide in fiscal year 2014. We reviewed OPM’s EHRI data for reasonableness and the presence of any obvious or potential errors in accuracy and completeness. On the basis of these procedures, we believe the data are sufficiently reliable for use in the analyses presented in this report.

To assess the extent that hiring authorities are effective in helping meet the needs of selected agencies, we focused on three occupations at three agencies as case examples. Based on our prior work on government- wide mission-critical occupations and skills gaps, we focused on the following occupations: Information Technology Specialists, Contract Specialists, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) occupations. We reviewed OPM’s list of white collar occupational groups and included occupations within groups that appeared to be related to STEM. Specifically, we aggregated hiring actions for the occupations within the following occupational groups: (1) Natural Resources Management and Biological Science Group; (2) Medical, Hospital, Dental, and Public Health Group; (3) Veterinary Medical Science Group; (4) Engineering and Architecture Group; (5) Physical Sciences Group; and (6) Mathematical Sciences Group.

Using data from OPM’s EHRI database, we made a nonprobability, judgmental selection of three case agencies based on two primary factors. First, we only considered agencies that hired our selected occupations in fiscal year 2014. Second, we selected agencies that used a variety of hiring authorities for these occupations in fiscal year 2014. Based on these factors, we selected the following case agencies: Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At AFMC, DOE, and NIH, we interviewed human resources (HR) policy officials to learn about which hiring authorities agencies used for our selected occupations, reasons for using these authorities, and ways that agencies were measuring the effectiveness of the authorities. We also covered these topics with HR specialists and hiring managers for our selected occupations at each case agency using a series of group discussions that we conducted using a standardized set of questions.

In addition to the case study approach, we also identified available government-wide data sources on the effectiveness of the hiring process. For example, we reviewed OPM time-to-hire data government-wide and by agency. We reviewed the Chief Human Capital Officers’ (CHCO)

Applicant Satisfaction Survey and the CHCO Manager Satisfaction Survey, which provided information on the applicant and hiring manager experience with the hiring process. Further, we reviewed government- wide reporting on the administration’s hiring policy goals, such as increasing the employment of veterans and people with disabilities in the federal workforce. We also interviewed knowledgeable officials at OPM and the Merit Systems Protection Board about the effectiveness of federal hiring authorities.

We also assessed the extent to which OPM’s oversight of hiring authorities evaluated their effectiveness. Specifically, we identified relevant laws and policies that outline OPM’s oversight responsibilities for hiring authorities and interviewed OPM on the implementation, results, and analysis of these oversight efforts. We identified and reviewed OPM’s policy documents that describe the key components of OPM’s oversight program for hiring authorities, Delegated Examining Unit (DEU) audits and Human Resources Management Evaluations (HRME). Examples of policy documents we reviewed included the Practitioner’s Guide: How to Conduct a Delegated Examining Audit and Merit System Audit and Compliance Evaluator Handbook. We interviewed knowledgeable OPM officials about oversight activities related to Title 5 hiring as well as officials at our selected case agencies—AFMC, Energy, and NIH—who are responsible for working with OPM on these oversight reviews. For both OPM and the selected case agencies, we interviewed knowledgeable agency officials about the types of analyses they conducted based on audit findings and how, if at all, they shared information on any lessons learned. In addition to reviewing oversight of Title 5 hiring, we also reviewed documentation from our case agencies and interviewed case agency officials about non-Title 5 hiring authority oversight procedures.

To assess the extent that OPM ensures agencies have the assistance and information needed to use hiring authorities effectively, we identified online tools and guidance from OPM’s website as well as OPM documents, such as online trainings, handbooks, toolkits, and hiring authority fact sheets. We interviewed selected case agency officials to gauge their awareness of and satisfaction with these resources. We reviewed documentation on previous OPM initiatives that focused in part on making improvements to hiring authorities. These initiatives included OPM’s End-to-End Hiring Roadmap, OPM’s responses to the 2010 hiring reform executive orders, the Recruitment, Engagement, Diversity, and Inclusion initiative, and OPM’s work on cross-agency priority (CAP) goals. We interviewed officials from OPM, the Office of Management and Budget, and our selected case agencies to discuss these initiatives, particularly about measuring impact and sustainability. We reviewed OPM’s plans for its most recent hiring initiative—the Hiring Excellence Campaign, which is part of the “People and Culture” CAP goal—with practices outlined in our prior work that are associated with success of such interagency efforts.

We conducted this performance audit from May 2015 to August 2016 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our finding and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Selected Agencies’ Strategies for Improving the Effectiveness of their Hiring Efforts

Institute formalized recruitment meetings with human resources (HR) staff and hiring managers to discuss recruitment strategy. HR specialists and hiring managers at NIH said they used recruitment meetings to clarify the needs for the position, characteristics of an ideal applicant, possible applicant pools, and potential hiring authorities to use. They also discussed the use of professional or private-sector organizations to identify applicants and of broader recruitment topics, such as agency goals for diversity and veteran hiring. Hiring managers told us that these meetings helped them target the intended applicant pools for their open positions.

Use specialized experience statements to help ensure a better fit between the applicant and the position. Hiring managers at Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) and Department of Energy (DOE) said specialized experience statements—an explicit description provided in the job announcement—helps ensure that applicants possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the work of the position. Without using a specialized experience statement, AFMC officials told us that it can be difficult for HR specialists to filter out unqualified applicants. Hiring managers felt that specialized experience statements helped improve the quality of applicants on certificate lists.

Actively recruit, particularly among preference groups such as veterans, to direct qualified applicants to the job announcement. Hiring managers at NIH and DOE said they used professional networking sites, university contacts, and professional organizations to target potential applicants who may not be actively searching for a new employment opportunity. For example, hiring managers at NIH reported using LinkedIn to identify and send potential job applicants to specific vacancy announcements for hard-to-fill IT positions. Sometimes these applicants would be eligible for excepted service hiring authorities. NIH officials said it enabled them to hire them more quickly than through a competitive examining process. Hiring managers said that they have used this recruiting technique to successfully identify qualified veterans for several IT positions.

Use global job announcements when possible to reduce duplication of effort and to share quality applicant lists. Officials from DOE and NIH said that using global or open vacancy announcements allowed hiring officials to make multiple selections from a single vacancy announcement. For example, NIH uses an agency-wide recruitment strategy for commonly filled positions across the institutes. Under this initiative, NIH posts one vacancy announcement for a specific position. Then, any of the 27 institutes can use it to fill a vacancy for that position. Hiring managers at NIH told us that using the global recruitment saved them the time of creating multiple, similar announcements. It also allowed them to review a large number of resumes to find quality applicants.

Include subject matter experts in the assessment process to filter out applicants who are not qualified. Hiring managers for STEM occupations at DOE involved subject matter experts in the assessment process to help HR specialists determine which resumes met technical job qualifications. After the HR specialists conducted the initial screening to determine which applicants were eligible to apply for the position, DOE’s subject matter experts reviewed these resumes without applicant identifying information and provided documentation to show whether the applicants met technical job requirements. HR personnel were then able to use subject matter expert feedback to complete applicant assessments and assign a qualification rating. Officials told us that this process has resulted in better qualified applicant on certificate lists.

Appendix III: United States Office of Personnel Management

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Acknowledgments

GAO Contacts

Staff Acknowledgments

Individuals making key contributions to this statement include: Chelsa Gurkin (Assistant Director), Rebecca O’Connor (Analyst-in-Charge), Sara L. Daleski, Christopher Falcone, Karin Fangman, Ellen Grady, Shelley Rao, David Richards, and Elizabeth Wood.