The cornerstone of federal hiring is its merit basis. Congress has retained the principle of appointment by merit throughout its various amendments and compilations of civil service laws. In enacting the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Congress reiterated the importance of merit in hiring by including a merit principle, which requires that “ecruitment should be from qualified individuals from appropriate sources in an endeavor to achieve a work force from all segments of society, and selection and advancement should be determined solely on the basis of relative ability, knowledge, and skills, after fair and open competition which assures that all receive equal opportunity.” OPM is responsible for ensuring that the personnel management functions it delegates to agencies are conducted in accordance with merit principles and the standards it has established for conducting those functions. In January 1996, OPM delegated examining authority, acting under the authority of Public Law 104-52, to federal agencies for virtually all positions in the competitive service. The delegated examining authority requires agencies to conduct competitive examinations that comply with merit system principles, other personnel- related laws, and regulations as set forth in OPM’s Delegated Examining Operations Handbook. Even though the majority of the civilian workforce obtained positions through the open competitive service examination process, certain positions are in the excepted service and are excepted from the competitive examination process. The competitive hiring process, which is described in more detail in appendix I, is shown in figure 2. The number of new hires increased substantially since the mid-1990s— increasing from about 50,000 employees in 1996 to over 143,000 employees in 2002. Hiring in the mid-1990s declined because many agencies were downsizing and did not need to fill positions. With the slowdown in downsizing and the increasing numbers of personnel retiring, agencies are increasingly hiring new employees. Prior to fiscal year 2002, about one- third of all hires were hired by DOD. In 2002, the largest federal hirer was the Department of Transportation, primarily the Transportation Security Administration. Table 2 shows total new hires by department in fiscal year 2002. The federal government’s hiring is expected to continue to increase. In 2003, the President’s budget called for approximately 27,000 additional full- time equivalent federal civilian workers in the executive branch. This follows a 36,000 increase in full time equivalent positions in fiscal year 2002. It is widely recognized both within government and the private sector that the federal hiring process is lengthy and cumbersome and hampers agencies’ ability to hire the people they need to achieve their agency goals and missions. Numerous studies over the past decade by OPM, MSPB, NAPA, the Partnership for Public Service, the National Commission on the Public Service, and GAO have noted problems with the federal hiring process. Our October 2002 survey of HR directors at 24 major departments and agencies indicated that 21 of 24 said that the time needed to fill positions in their agencies was a moderate to very great problem. Moreover, directors at 13 of those agencies reported that the time to hire was a great to very great problem. Our October 2001 survey showed that 22 directors reported that time to hire was a moderate to great problem. Nearly all (22 of 24) of the HR directors we met with said the lengthy and cumbersome hiring process is a major factor that affects or increases the time needed to fill positions. HR directors cited problems with the lengthy hiring process. For example, an HR director of a major federal department noted that thousands of applicants had responded to nationwide openings for a critical occupation at a number of locations. However, because it took so long to manually process the applications, only 1 in 20 of the applicants were still interested in the job when notified that they had been selected. Another HR director noted that many managers, supervisors, and job applicants do not understand the rules and procedures governing federal employment. She said that because of the lack of expertise and complicated process, the agency often loses out in competition with the private sector because of its inability to make timely job offers. Another HR director told us that a significant factor that hampers hiring is the paperwork-intensive hiring process that continues from application, rating and ranking of applicants and production of best qualified lists, through to the “17 forms” that a new hire must complete before being brought onboard. Although, as noted above, nearly all HR directors and others note that the time to hire is too long for most federal hires. Comprehensive department or governmentwide data are not available; however, in fiscal year 2002, OPM compiled and analyzed data on time-to-hire and found that it typically took 102 days for agencies to fill a vacancy using the competitive process. OPM defined the time to hire time frame as the time between when the request to hire or fill a position was received in the HR office to the appointment of an applicant to the position. Additional time might be needed for a manager to obtain approval for the requested hiring action at the beginning of the process or for the new employee to receive a security clearance at the end of the process. Other organizations have noted problems with the lengthy cumbersome federal hiring process. In July 2002, NAPA reported that federal “hiring remains a slow and tedious process.” The report noted that “Many managers are attempting to rebuild a pipeline of entry level employees in this very competitive labor market, yet current hiring methods do not keep pace with the private sector.” In September 2002, MSPB said that the federal hiring process has a number of key problems including “overly complex and ineffective hiring authorities” and “inadequate, time-consuming assessment procedures.” In November 2002, OPM in its strategic plan for 2002 through 2007 stated, “ There is a general perception that our hiring process takes too long and may not provide well-qualified candidates.” In January 2003, the National Commission on the Public Service said, “Recruitment to federal jobs is heavily burdened by ancient and illogical procedures that vastly complicate the application process and limit the hiring flexibility of individual managers.” Not only does the current hiring process not serve agencies and managers well as they seek to obtain the right people with the right skills, but applicants can be dissuaded from public service by the complex and lengthy process. According to a poll commissioned by the Partnership for Public Service, “many people view the process of seeking federal employment as a daunting one. Three-quarters of non-federal workers say making the application process quicker and simpler would be an effective way of attracting talented workers to government.” As many of these and other studies have noted, and as many HR directors noted in our interviews, nearly all parts of the competitive hiring process hamper effective and efficient federal hiring. Key problem areas include the following. Outdated and cumbersome procedures to define a job and set the pay are not applicable to the jobs and work of today. Unclear, unfriendly job announcements cause confusion, delay hiring, and serve as poor recruiting tools. A key assessment tool and hiring programs used for several entry-level positions are ineffective. Convening panels and the manual rating and ranking of applicants to determine best-qualified applicants is time-consuming. Numerical rating and ranking and the “rule of three” limit the choice of applicants and are viewed as ineffective. OPM and the agencies we studied have taken steps to address some of these hiring obstacles. Specifically, five agencies we examined—USGS, Army, Census, ARS, and FS—took systematic and comprehensive approaches that helped to transform their process-oriented hiring systems to ones that are focused on meeting their agencies’ goals and missions. The USGS approach was to focus on automating its hiring process for all of its occupations, except research Senior Executive Service positions, in order to reduce hiring time, increase the number of applicants, and better serve its internal and external customers. Army’s approach was a data-driven approach—Army developed automated tools to identify weaknesses in its hiring process and identified an approach to overcome them, including automation. Census’s approach, in reaction to the need to quickly hire 500 specialists for the 2000 Census, was to work with OPM to jointly develop an automated hiring system for three mission-critical occupations and later to work toward integrating hiring for all its occupations into its parent organization’s automated hiring system. And, as discussed later, OPM also identified hiring improvements as a critical goal in its strategic plan and has a multi-faceted hiring initiative under way. ARS and FS implemented a pilot project that demonstrated a more effective way to rate and rank candidates for positions. The following sections describe each of these problems in more detail and discuss some specific actions under way by agencies and OPM to begin to address the problem. The process of defining a job and determining pay is complex and antiquated, according to HR directors and experts. Defining the job and setting pay must be based on federal job classification standards, which are set forth in the Classification Act of 1949. The classification process and standard job classifications were generally developed decades ago when typical jobs were more narrowly defined and in many cases, were clerical or administrative. However, today’s knowledge-based organizations’ jobs require a much broader array of tasks that may cross over the narrow and rigid boundaries of job classifications. The federal job classification process not only delays the hiring process, but more important, the resulting job classifications and related pay might not match the actual duties of the job. This mismatch can hamper efforts to fill the positions with the right employees. Once management decides to fill a vacant position, or create a new position, the HR office is called upon to see if a position description exists. If a position description does not exist or is not accurate for the vacant position, a position description must be completed. Such a description documents the major duties, responsibilities, and organizational relationships of a job and includes, among others, the knowledge required for the position, supervisory controls, complexity and nature of the assignment, and the scope and effect of the work.