Tag: CHCO

News, Opinion

Let’s Talk About DHS

by Jeff Neal4 Comments on Let’s Talk About DHS

 

DHS Seal

 

The Department of Homeland Security has been in the news recently regarding leadership vacancies. DHS being in the news is not news – the Department is in the news virtually every day. When I was Chief Human Capital Officer for DHS I got sick of reading the stories about DHS – everyone wants to write about the negatives and almost no one writes about the positives. Does DHS have morale issues? Yes. Does it have turnover issues? Yes, but not as bad as it might appear. Does DHS have issues with organization and command and control? Yes. Those and other issues lead some people to conclude DHS never should have been created and should be done away with. If that happened, the work DHS does would have to be done somewhere else. Regardless of how they are delivered, we need the services of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Border Patrol, Customs, immigration and citizenship services, and the aviation security services of TSA.  That means doing away with DHS would result in a massive government reorganization that would most likely be even messier than the one that created DHS.

I am never surprised when people say the solution to a problem is to reorganize. I am also never surprised when the reorganization fails to solve the problem. Reorganization can be a solution when organizational constructs are the source of a problem – otherwise they solve nothing. Many of the issues DHS faces are the result of the reorganization that created DHS. When the Homeland Security Act was passed, it was in response to post-September 11 fear. I will leave it to others to judge whether that was the best solution or not. What I do know is that the stand-up of DHS in 2003 was done in haste and without adequate planning. In a perfect world, Secretary Tom Ridge would have been appointed, given a transition planning team and adequate resources, and would have had a year or more to plan an orderly stand-up. He did not have that luxury, so the department was assembled on the fly. Given the circumstances under which they had to work, the people who stood up DHS did a remarkable job. They built a functioning department quickly and without any major disasters. In the years since, DHS has successfully executed a massive buildup to double the size of the Border Patrol, consolidated countless systems, dealt with H1N1 and terrorist threats, responded to the BP oil spill, made tremendous strides in improving management integration within the Department, arrested more than 12,000 child sex tourists, predators and child pornographers, deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants (increasing the number from 88,000 in 2008 to almost 200,000 in 2010), responded to dozens of natural disasters, and innumerable other accomplishments that few people hear about. Here are a few more of those accomplishments (sourced from the 2015 DHS Budget in Brief):

  • The Department of Homeland Security has dedicated historic levels of personnel, technology, and infrastructure to border security to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit contraband while fostering legal trade and travel across both our North and Southwest borders and at our air and sea ports of entry. Every day, DHS personnel pre-screen 6 million air travelers, screen 1.8 million passengers and their baggage for explosives and prohibited items, patrol 4.5 million square miles of U.S. waterways, and screen 100 percent of cargo and vehicles entering the country from Mexico and Canada.
  • Annually, DHS personnel naturalize three quarters of a million new citizens, assist over 500 thousand employers in determining the eligibility of their employees to work in the U.S., process 168 million visa and border crossing card holders, and process more than 300 million travelers entering the U.S. by land, sea, and air. DHS secures $2.4 trillion dollars of trade, and enforces U.S. laws that protect health and safety, welcome legitimate travelers, and facilitates the flow of goods and services essential to our Nation’s economy.
  • Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed $2.38 trillion in trade and nearly 25 million cargo containers through our nation’s POEs.
  • In FY 2013, CBP officers conducted more than 24,000 seizures due to intellectual property rights violations and prevented $1.7 billion in counterfeit goods from entering the U.S. economy, representing a 38-percent increase in value over FY 2012.
  • CBPOs and Border Patrol agents seized nearly 4.4 million pounds of narcotics, a 2-percent increase from FY 2012, and more than $106.0 million in unreported currency.
  • In Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made 40,218 criminal arrests while seizing $1.3 billion in U.S. currency and other monetary instruments, 1.6 million pounds of narcotics and other dangerous drugs, and 58,672 weapons. ICE responded to 1,424,320 alienage inquiries from other Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies through ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center.
  • The Transportation Security Administration screened approximately 2 billion carry-on bags at checkpoints and more than 425 million checked bags, preventing approximately 111,000 dangerous prohibited items including explosives, firearms, flammables/irritants, and weapons from being carried onto planes in FY 2013.
  • The United States Coast Guard responded to 17,721 Search and Rescue incidents, saving 3,263 lives and protecting $44 million in property in FY 2013.
  • The Secret Service made 46,132 arrests for counterfeit, cyber crimes, identity theft, access device fraud, mortgage fraud, and protective intelligence cases.

So let’s talk about whether DHS should exist or not. The anti-DHS camp argues DHS  is too big. It is disorganized. It intrudes too much into people’s lives. It is a waste of money. We would be better off if the components of DHS were put back where they came from. The pro-DHS camp says DHS is still coming together as a Department. It needs time to get itself together and operate smoothly and has made tremendous progress in recent years. It provides a means of integrating homeland security efforts in a way that did not exist when the components were spread across multiple Departments. And it is providing services such as those described above that most people are not aware of.

Prior to my appointment as DHS CHCO, I probably leaned more toward the anti-DHS camp. Then I saw what it is like from the inside. My view of DHS changed completely, and now I strongly believe DHS is a valuable and necessary part of the Federal government. I also believe doing away with it would generate far more problems that it would solve, and would make the US less secure. Here are three reasons why:

  • There is little disagreement that there is a strong relationship between many of the missions of DHS, such as customs and border protection, aviation security, immigration enforcement and citizenship services. The intent in creating a single department was to make improve interactions between the people carrying out those missions. You may not hear about that in the news, but DHS has significantly improved how its components interact. As DHS becomes less stovepiped, interactions between the components will improve and its efforts will be far more efficient and effective.
  • A multi-agency reorganization will increase the problems, not solve them. Doing away with DHS would result in reorganizations in the Departments of Treasury, Transportation, Energy, Justice, Agriculture, Defense and Health and Human Services, as well as the General Services Administration. It would cost money, divert attention from the mission, and have no guarantee of improving anything.
  • Congress created DHS – it should help fix it. After spending most of my career in the Department of Defense, I was surprised to find that Congressional oversight of DHS was so disorganized. For much of its mission, Defense works with the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees and their subcommittees. That allows Congress to provide oversight in a cohesive and effective way. When the Homeland Security Act was passed, the House and Senate did not assign oversight to the Homeland Security Committees of the House and Senate. They kept it the way it was. That means DHS is overseen by 92 committees and subcommittees and 27 additional caucuses, commissions and groups. On September 11, 2014, former DHS Secretaries Ridge, Chertoff and Napolitano signed a letter urging the House and Senate to do something about the oversight mess, saying “This is a matter of critical importance to national security on which there is broad bipartisan agreement, and it remains the only major recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that ten years later has not been acted upon.” They were being polite. In fact, not only have the House and Senate not acted upon the recommendation, they actually increased the number of committees and subcommittees overseeing DHS. In a separate letter, more than 30 homeland security experts, including the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission, made a similar plea. They said “The tangle of overlapping committees leads to political paralysis, increasing the nation’s vulnerability to multiple threats, including cyber-attacks, biohazards, and small boats and planes carrying unknown cargo.” They also pointed out that “During the first year of the 111th Congress, DHS spent approximately 66 work-years just responding to questions from Congress. A significant portion of the millions of dollars it took that year to answer more than 11,000 letters, provide more than 2,000 briefings, and make available 232 witnesses at 166 hearings, could have been better spent directly carrying out DHS’s core mission of ensuring a safer, more secure America.” Putting DHS back where it came from would only make the problem worse.

I am not making the argument that DHS is perfect, but we should give credit where credit is due and recognize the progress DHS has made. We should also think very carefully about using a massive government reorganization to solve the problems of a previous massive government reorganization. We should also resolve to focus on making constructive suggestions for improving DHS rather than constantly trying to tear them down. Being inside DHS, I know that the barrage of criticism has an effect on the workforce. Perhaps morale would improve if DHS were not the target of so much negative press and political rhetoric.

 

News, Opinion, Performance, Strategy

Is it All or Nothing on General Schedule Reform?

by Jeff Neal2 Comments on Is it All or Nothing on General Schedule Reform?

Last week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on the General Schedule. The report, “OPM Needs to Improve the Design, Management, and Oversight of the Federal Classification System” outlines eight key attributes of a modern classification system and assesses the degree to which the General Schedule aligns with those attributes. The eight are:

  • Internal equity. All employees with comparable qualifications and responsibilities for their respective occupations are assigned the same grade level.
  • External equity. All employees with comparable qualifications and responsibilities are assigned grade levels and corresponding pay ranges comparable to the nonfederal sector.
  • Transparency. A comprehensible and predictable system that employees, management, and taxpayers can understand.
  • Flexibility. The ease and ability to modify the system to meet agency-specific needs and mission requirements, including modifying rates of pay for certain occupations to attract a qualified workforce, within the framework of a uniform government-wide system.
  • Adaptability. The ease and ability to conduct a periodic, fundamental review of the entire classification system that enables the system to evolve as the workforce and workplace changes.
  • Simplicity. A system that enables interagency mobility and comparisons with a rational number of occupations and clear career ladders with meaningful differences in skills and performance, as well as a system that can be cost-effectively maintained and managed.
  • Rank-in-position. A classification of positions based on mission needs and then hiring individuals with those qualifications.
  • Rank-in-person. A classification of employees based on their unique skills and abilities.

GAO recognized that some of these attributes appear to be in conflict with one another. For example, classifying positions based upon rank-in-position and based upon rank-in-person appear to be polar opposites. GAO also criticizes the Office of Personnel Management for not having adequate oversight of GS classification, not updating standards frequently enough, and not adequately resourcing the program. OPM partially concurred with most of GAO’s recommendations, but did not concur on the issue of developing a strategy to systematically track and prioritize updates to occupational standards.

Both GAO and OPM positions have merit. GAO is correct that the GS system is outdated and overly complex. They are right that OPM has not adequately resourced the program. They are right that OPM should address the shortcomings of the GS system sooner rather than later. OPM is correct in saying it does not need a new process to get classification standards written and updated more regularly. OPM also said it has only 6 full time classification policy staff. GAO says OPM has to make tradeoffs the same as any other agency.

That last point is one that I think is important. Yes, OPM has to make tradeoffs. I have not hesitated to criticize OPM when it is off track. In this case, I think they are in a no-win situation. The agency’s recent budget requests show OPM’s appropriated dollars are significantly less than they have been in the past. The agency operates more on revolving funds than appropriations. They also have trust fund money that covers management of retirement and insurance programs. Those color-of-money distinctions are important, because they limit the number of people OPM can devote to policy and oversight work. While the agency has over 5,000 employees, less than 20% of them can be assigned policy, oversight and agency management tasks. That puts OPM in the position of playing management whack-a-mole with priorities. If they decide to devote far more resources to classification, they will have to come from other programs, leading to those programs being under resourced.

GAO’s Recommendations

GAO’s report established a good set of criteria for an effective classification system. It also made three recommendations for executive branch action:

  • Working through the CHCO Council, and in conjunction with key stakeholders such as the Office of Management and Budget, unions, and others, should use prior studies and lessons learned from demonstration projects and alternative systems to examine ways to make the GS system’s design and implementation more consistent with the attributes of a modern, effective classification system. To the extent warranted, develop a legislative proposal for congressional consideration.
  • Develop cost-effective mechanisms to oversee agency implementation of the classification system as required by law.
    • Develop a strategy to systematically track and prioritize updates to occupational standards.
    • Develop a strategy that will enable OPM to more effectively and routinely monitor agencies’ implementation of classification standards.

The first recommendation is the most critical, because it could negate the need for at least one of the other two recommendations. In recent years the CHCO Council has become an effective means of driving government human capital policy. A CHCO Council working group, partnering with OMB and with unions (at the national level), could develop a set of policy recommendations that would make the current classification process far less complex, without changing the underlying laws. That last point is critical – the likelihood of significant Civil Service reform that is enacted by the Congress is remote, due to the combination of Congressional dysfunction and a lack of appetite for Civil Service reform.

Reform Does Not Require Congress to Act

How would we dramatically change GS classification without rewriting the law? Most people think the highly complex GS system is entirely a creation of the Classification Act of 1949 (as amended). It is true that the Classification Act created the General Schedule and defines each of the 15 GS grade levels. Much of the complexity (23 occupational families and 420 job series) comes from policy decisions made by OPM and others in the 65 years since the Classification Act passed. There is no legal requirement to have 420 job series. OPM creates new series when it determines they are necessary, is asked by the White House to do so, gets statutory direction, or they are requested by agencies. A great example is Cyber Security. There is a lot of pressure (including in the intro of the GAO report) to create a Cyber Security job series. OPM has not done so, and with good reason. At the Department of Homeland Security we had a need for more Cyber Security professionals. They were not in a single job series and could not be. Cyber Security is a complex field that includes Computer Scientists, Network and Systems Engineers, Security Specialists, Digital Forensics Specialists, Program Managers, Intelligence Specialists, and about 10 more categories. A single job family cannot address so many different positions that have radically different duties and qualifications requirements. In fact, GAO points out that the use of 420 job series adds unnecessary complexity to the GS system.

Where we need to go is in the opposite direction. The number of job series should be reduced by at least half, and more likely by three quarters. One reason OPM cannot maintain current standards for all of the jobs is that there are too many of them. GAO also points out that the stove piping of jobs into narrow series may hamper career growth. So – we have too many series, we cannot maintain the classification standards because of that, and the number limits agency flexibility on reassigning staff. It also makes for an arduous and overly complex hiring process for applicants from outside government.

If the number of job series is reduced to a more manageable number (I suggest no more than 100), we could achieve most of the objectives of GAO’s eight attributes of a modern classification system. Even some of the apparently conflicting attributes can be addressed. For example, on the surface it appears we cannot have a system that includes both rank-in-person and rank-in-position attributes. But we can. Take a look at the Research Grade Evaluation Guide (RGEG) published by OPM. The RGEG includes 4 classification factors:

  1. Research Assignment
  2. Supervisory Controls
  3. Guidelines and Originality, and
  4. Contributions, Impact, and Stature

The RGEG recognizes that “Work commonly expands commensurate with the researcher’s motivation, capability, and creativity.” Evaluation of factor 4 is based upon the researcher’s accomplishments rather than a rigid standard based upon the job itself. The RGEG recognizes that it is difficult to separate the person from the work the person does. OPM could use a similar approach to incorporate both rank-in-person and rank-in-position into new classification standards. The RGEG also covers research in many fields – there is not an RGEG for Physics, one for Chemistry, one for medicine, etc. OPM could use a similar approach with multi-series standards to dramatically reduce the number of classification standards it has to write and maintain. For example, a STEM Grade Evaluation Guide could cover many STEM positions. An Administrative Grade Evaluation Guide could cover financial management, human resources, procurement and other administrative positions.

Benefits of Administrative Reform

Administrative reform is faster, more achievable, and less likely to veer off into Fed bashing than a statutory solution might be. It maintains stability in the legal framework of the Civil Service, yet addresses the Adaptability feature in GAO’s 8 attributes. It achieves Simplicity, adopts both Rank-in-Person and Rank-in-Position attributes, and should also improve Internal Equity. It certainly demonstrates Flexibility as well. While we may not be able to get to a completely modern classification system without Congressional action, we can certainly improve on what we have today. By pursuing an administrative rather than statutory solution, OPM can begin to rapidly address many of the shortcomings of the existing system. The points of view of key stakeholders, such as unions and the Senior Executives Association, can be taken into account, as can those of good government advocates such as the Partnership for Public Service and the National Academy of Public Administration. The CHCO Council can drive the process, ensuring the resulting changes are implementable and consistent with accomplishing agency missions. Rather than waiting for the day when Civil Service reform might be achievable in Congress, we can act now. Why wait??