Creating a Foundation for the 21st Century Federal Workforce: An Assessment of the Implementation of the Department of Homeland Security Alternative Personnel System

摘要

Federal agencies are accelerating their efforts to build contemporary personnel systems to enhance leadership and employee performance. These Alternative Personnel Systems (APS) have the potential to significantly improve agency performance through changes in the way civilian employees are paid and evaluated. In particular, performance-based and marketsensitive pay systems have proven successful in the private sector and are an essential element of successful APSs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was charged by Congress in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to implement an Alternative Personnel System for its civilian workforce to provide mission-essential flexibility while preserving core civil service and merit system principles. By enacting the Homeland Security Act, Congress signaled its intent for DHS to build an effective infrastructure for aligning strategic human capital management with agency mission requirements. The Act gave the DHS Secretary joint responsibility, along with the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), for prescribing regulations to implement a new APS for the Department. In keeping with OPMs overarching leadership role in the strategic management of the Governments employees, including assessing the management of people by Federal agencies, this report provides an expert analysis of DHSs implementation of its new authorities. It describes the assessment methodology, the framework, and the results of the analysis. We believe the report will be a valuable tool in helping DHSs ongoing implementation of its APS. Through this analysis, OPM also responds to Congresss expectations of the agencys oversight of Alternative Personnel Systems. The results of this report demonstrate DHS effectively planned for implementing, and is making progress with, its performance management system. This APS system is the only one implemented to date. DHS indicated extensive planning was conducted in anticipation of deploying the other systems of the APS. However, the assessment tool used requires system implementation in order to assess both preparedness and progress, so classification, pay, appeals and adverse actions systems of the APS were not assessed. The labor relations system, which has been enjoined by the courts, was also not assessed. OPM recommends, and is ready to support, DHSs implementation of the remaining systems as soon as possible to take advantage of existing program momentum.