Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing Focuses On The Federal Workforce 20170216

Noon eastern. Oklahoma senator James Langford chairs this twohour hearing. Good morning and welcome. Sub Committee Hearing entitling the work force and the Sub Committee will work to find solutions to the recognized challenges from effectively serving the american people. Federal agencies employ some of the best and brightest individuals this country has to offer. Every day federal Civil Servants help protect our communities and keep our airports running safely and smoothly and military running extremely effectively. We are grateful and interested in their ideas and concerns. The important work of our federal employees is often obje obstructed by a culture. A culture does not differentiate between those who excel. They often complain harm workplace moral and raise concerns that compensation is not related to ones job performance. The office of federal Employee Viewpoint survey found 22 of employees agreed with this statement. Pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs. While the government failed to compensate basd on employment managers face additional challenges. Federal managers are frus ratd by time consuming hiring process, something this committee talked about often. It took an average of 100 days to fill an open position in the federal government. In 2015 it took 90 days. The problem is getting worse. Many cannot wait over three months to start work. Managers need employees to start work promptly to achieve their agencys mission and managers need to make sure we are hiring the right people in the right spot. When there is an ongoing structural problem it is our responsibility and duty to address it. Civil Service Structure created in the 1950s. The last Time Congress accomplished wide reform was in the Civil Service reform act of 1978. No successful business operates an Employment Model for the 1950s. The president can implement to improve the functioning of the entire federal work force. On january 23rd, 2017 the president department of agencies establishing a hiring freeze until the incoming director of office of management and budget to reduce the work force through attrition. President trumps hiring freeze is a similar memoranda issued by past president s. President carter and reagan issued broad hiring for executive agencies. Attrition through hiring freeze may not be the optimal solution. But in the absence of any notable legislative reform the administration has every right to alter the status quo through executive action. Congress can either watch as the administration deals through executive actions or find consensus and work with administration, take up the mantle of legislative reform. We plan to have discuss a broad number of topics including discipline and separation and will have a variety of viewpoints. We look to tackle some of these cham lengs. It is extremely important the hear from Senior Executives who confront these issues on a daily basis. Our Witnesses Today will be able to provide unique perspectives we may see some of the same challenges. I hope my colleagues will join me in this pursuit. This is not a partisan issue. It is a nonpartisan issue. I look forward to discussing a and will introduce all of them after our Ranking Member has her opens remarking. Thank you. While the Public Sector cannot do its job when the Public Sector cannot do its job the private sector has a more difficult time ding its job. From making sure the food we eat is safe to taxpayer inquiries to ensuring our veterans are cared for to protecting our nation from harm flederal employees wok to make my state and the country better. I want to tell a quick story. During the huge boom of Oil Development in north dakota we had a difficult time recruiting federal workers, engineers into the agencies that helped provide permitting. It was so bad in fact that the industry offered up resources to hire and to expand the pay of the current federal employees. I think it was eye opening for many of us who for years might say that the federal employees are a drag on the economy to realize that the oil industry in my state could not function without a fully staffed federal b. O. M. So with the shrinking of the work force are not the making it more effective. These will come at the expense of talent, moral and mission of our work force, none of which we can afford to lose. Im looking to ward to more efficiently as well as to make them more efficient as well as how we can improve supervisor training. I will be doing all that i can to protect federal workers and i think its important that we are in continued communication with the administration regarding how they plan to implement initiatives going forward. We have been at this table before, the two of us talking about the ageing of the federal work force, about recruiting the best and brightest americans to a job and career in Public Service. We have been talking about what managers tools we need. These are all great challenges in moving our country forward and making our country responsive. We cant take a step back ward. So mr. Chairman, im grateful for our attention in this congress to the federal work force. I hope that well be able to see invasions that will lead to Better Outcomes for Public Employees, for public managers and as a result Better Outcomes for the people of our country. Thank you. Thank you. Let me proceed with testimony from our witnesses and swearing in our witnesses. Let me introduce all four of them first. Renee is an organization she served since 2009. She currently is the u. S. Navy Customer Engagement branch head east in cherry point, north carolina. Bill is Senior Executive association. He is former cochair of science policy from 2005 to 2014. He retired from federal service as a career Senior Executive in 2014 after 20 years of service. Robert is the chief of staff for manpower, services for the u. S. Air force prior to his 18 year of civilian service. He served for 28 years. He retired from federal service in october of 2016. David cox has been here before. We appreciate you coming back again. He is the National President of the American Government of employees. He worked from 1983 to 2006 when he became secretary treasurer. All four of you we appreciate you very much being here. We appreciate all of your written testimony you have already submitted. It is very thorough and excelle excellent. It will go into the permanent record. It is custom that we swear in all witnesses. Please stand, raise your right hand. Do you weer the testimony youre about to give will be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Yes. Thank you. Let the record reflect all of the witnesses answered in the affirmative. There will be a five minute countdown for your time. Mrs. Johnson, we would be glad to be able to receive your testimony. Thank you. I appreciate you allowing me before you today. Im currently employed as Customer Engagement branch head. Im here adds the National President of fma on my own time representing my active and retired members. I do not speak on behalf of the navy. So we are honored to appear today to discuss ways to empower managers as we seek a more efficient and federal government. I addressed a number of issued related to recruitment, hiring, termination and other topics. As National President i hear how proud our members are to serve our nation. I am pleased to note fma has chapters in Tinker Air Force base and in oklahoma providing resources for national security. We also have members ensuring americans receive their Social Security checks, collecting taxes to Fund Public Safety measures and protecting the nations food supply. The most redent Defense Authorization bills lends support for direct hiring authority. Fma sees this as a potential avenue to allow managers to expedite the process. It is also competing for new wage great hires. The federal government makes significant investments and often they lead before they finish a year of service. Managers should have options to adjust hiring packages to reflect the unique circumstances in their areas. While fma is opposed to the current hiring freeze we are more concerned with the potential proposals for hiring in the long term specifically blind attrition policies. All federal agencies should be allowed to match hiring actions that are aligned with missions and funding. Regarding Performance Management fma supports a system that provides incentives such as pay for performance. Departments and agencies must have maximum flexibility to attract the best and brightest work force to answer the call of Public Service. Managers must be able to address both misconduct and poor performance. Many managers feel it is easier to keep performers rather than take steps to document and convince agency of removal. All employees including managers should be held accountable for executing duties and responsibiliti responsibilities. They need access to Fund Training program. Fma calls for the reintroduction that require ace genergencies w interactive instructor base training ranging from mentor ship, Career Development and accurate performance appraisaap. They are intended to be an extension of the hiring process. It is a time to evaluate the not just for the service in general in the 2015 the probation nar period for all employees for the department of defense to two years. It would benefit the government and employees by allowing supervisors based on employees performance. I commend the Sub Committee for holding this hearing early to discuss how to best equip those of us charged with managing the federal work force and to ensure we are equipped to meet the agencys goals. Thank you for affording the opportunity to express our organizations views. Im eager to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Sub Committee today. The Senior Executives association and our members are eager to work with you and the new administration to present common sense solutions. The 7,200 career Senior Executives play a vital role when eveimplementing positive change and knowledge will be critical as we develop the common sense solutions. It discuss sz many possible solutions. Im ready to answer any questions you might have. I would like to focus my remarks on several broad issues that will help inform that discussion, namely the answer to three questions. First, are federal leaders currently empowered to effectively manage the federal work force . Second, what are the constraints on empowerment and what are the most impactful . The answer to the first question sadly is no. There are two group causes for this lack of empowerment. First, the complexity of Work Force Management processes and rules makes it extremely difficult for leaders to be sufficiently empowered navigating rules and regulations while focusing on the primary objective of a federal leader fulfilling the mission is a task for the most adapt federal leader. Second, federal leaders lack the tools they require to manage work force when achieving missions. Corporate america realizes it needs to know the composition of its work force, the best places to hire talent and to incentivize work forces. In the federal government the tools that would enable federal leaders to do the same are not availab available. This leads to the discussion on constraints on empowerment. I would put them into three baskets. The first is complexity of federal Work Force Management. The second basket has many routs of appeal. Avenues of appeal at their dispos disposal. It occurs whether we were talking about a gs 2. The third is absence of a functioning risk reward frame work. Raises an bonuses are tied to tenure and performance. It rewards average awards. Please help us with rules and regulations. It is in the written testimony. Second, lets figure out a way to simplify employee appeals of adverse personnel action. We are fully supportive of eeo, whils blower and union grieve advance processes and believe they have their appropriate place in the federal work force. A separate process must be developed. Finally, we desperately need a new risk reward frame work particularly tied to annual performance reviews. Not everyone deserves to be promoted or get a bonus. It should be earned and recognized. I would like to conclude by thanking the Sub Committee for holding todays hearing. Senior executive association are thankful for your thought leadership. Every day as you noted, mr. Chairman, millions of federal employees are doing Amazing Things on behalf of the american taxpayer, managing public lands, protecting the environment and helping to build an Invasion Committee to na economy to name just a few. You should take satisfaction knowing it will help all federal employees and leaders accomplish their Vital Missions more effectively. Thank you, chairman for the opportunity to share my experiences of over 46 years in the air force in my military capacity. To assist the committee in finding ways to improve the management of federal work force. It had the distinct honor of some of the most professional dedica dedicated providing necessary continuity during periods of high leadership turnover and we hold them in high regard. My comments, oral and written will literally address most aspects of managing the civilian work force. I would need first to say that the civilian system needs major rework. It has evolved over many years but has not changed since its inception. What has changed is a dynamic budget environment, a work force held in disregard and pressures to reduce the work force without knowing the true work requirements. Managers are consumes with dealing with a 90yearold pay system that rewards longevity. Archaic hiring processes that dont allow agencies to compete with the private sector. A lack of ability and grievance and complaint processes that drag on for years. On any given day we have approximately 2. 1 million on board which equates to approximately 210 billion per year using average of 100,000 per person. For the most parent there is a foundation to support the federal employees to which credit the they have manpower professionals to determine it is to defend manpower. Most agency heads are blind to their true manpower requirements and most have no centralized accounting for their manpower and skill levels at every level in their organizations. Fiscal pressures demand that agencies need to justify the size of their work force. This will require congress to insist that work force levels are requirements based, that agency heads can and that authoritative documents support those levels. Congress must also help with timely budgets and consider giving a planning target for personnel levels for an additional two years for to allow them to make more informed decisions. For over 90 years we have had the general schedule pay system, locality pay, special pay authorities, expanding the work forces and longevity not performance based increases all make a compelling case to eliminate the general schedule pay system. The time is now to export the less sons learned from pay demonstration projects and to move forward with pay for performance system. There is no requirements except to have strategic plans to guide current. Managers are hired in a hiring process that limits the ability there are limited tools and hiring authority for agency heads to obtain. Congress can help by directing to ensure all agencies have viable Human Capital strategic plans. It heads all decision authorities to use direct hires. It requires agencies to have training and training program. Congress can mep by providing dedicated and importantly fenced training moneys in the agency moneys. Any changes that will give more authority to manage their work force and to empower them with the proper tools will pay great dividends in giving more time to be managers. I applaud the committee for taking on this challenge. I offer my service to do everything i can. Our are there any questions . Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member and members of the Sub Committee thank you for the opportunity today. It aims to address real or perceived problems is to ask what is needed. New laws are more effective enforcement of existing laws. On the question of whether current laws give federal managers adequate authority to manage the federal work force or whether new laws are needed to expand their authority the answer is clear. No new laws are needed. America has the very best Civil Service in the world. This is something we should all be proud of and should celebrate. Virtually all studies of federal employee performance find that the vast majority perform well. It is just a small percentage, probably less than 1 that are problem employees. The focus is so frequently on that minority than on the 99 plus protect were doing a great job every day caring for the american people. It is no overstatement to say it is a cornerstone of our democracy. It is not allegiance to any political power. Veterans need to be sure their doctors and nurses are highly qualified for their jobs. Mechanics need to know not politics. And researchers hired because of their skills not their connections. While Agency Career employees remain accountable and appointed officials our system makes sure that actions against career employees for misconduct or performance require evidence to back up allegations and due process including Third Party Review by neutral decision makers. Be it a suspension, promotion or determination the body that hears any appeal is called merit system protection board. Note that is a body focused ton protection of merit system, not the employee. It is not only fast and efficient it upholds Agency Management decisions in 80 to 90 of the cases. Theres a popular perception sit too hard to fire a federal employee. The careful study points out that these are cases of management failure. When managements are unwilling or failed to use the already substantial tools available to them the answer is not to weaken the merit system. The answer is to train and support and discipline managers so that they do their part to uphold the merit system. Who wont or cant do their jobs. History is full of examples corrupted by employment decisions. That is the reason we urge you to reject calls to weaken the merit based Civil Service. Federal hiring and firing must remain merit based and subject to Third Party Review. Performance management improvements such as the new beginnings approach recently undertaken are always welcomed and we look forward to working with our lawmakers and Agency Managers to make this new program a success. We also support better training of both supervisors and employees so that clear expe expectations are established, appropriate steps are taken to either fix performance problems or remove the number of performers. This concludes my statement. I look forward to answers any questions. Thank you very much. We have a tradition that we defer our questions to the end. With that based on the order i would reck koz noise senator harris was here. But at the gavel youre the Senior Member that was here. Senator harris, you okay to step up . Harry truman used to say the only thing is the history we forgot or never learned. It remains as firmly as my colleagues now i call on former colleagues. I talked to him last month. I wish i could have got called. As you recall he passed away last year. They spent an we normal mouenorf time. I think our Witnesses Today we thank you for being here today. We thank you for your testimony. We thank you for your service. I want those of you who may recall the efforts of senators and their staff over several years, if you recall their efforts, talk to us about what they focused on, what was established and maybe where they fell short and what we need to do today as a result. Mr. Cox, youre pretty young. You may not remember these guys. Lets start with you. I saw a great concern from both of those leaders to have federal employee managers particularly trained. Where do i believe we fell short . I think some of my colleagues would agree with me, particularly my brother right here, that agencies dont fence off money or manager training. We have had short budgets so training takes a backseat over and over. I have found in my career the best technician becomes the manager but then that doesnt necessarily give them management skills. The agency needs to spend time helping that person to become a manager giving them training, mentoring them so that they can encourage, develop employees, manage good performers and recognize good performers and take appropriate actions on poor performers. I want to say it very openly, we do not want bad employees working for the federal government. Okay you can hold it right there. Thats a good place to hold it. Thank you for those comments. I would echo mr. Cox. You dont have to agree with him. Again, what was my question . I want you to walk us back to what they worked on. They were very proud of what was accomplished. You have been in a leadership position. What did they accomplish and what did they not accomplish . I apologize. I cant get into those specifics. All right. Thank you. Mr. Valdez. In general i think the focus on pay for performance and making the federal agencies federal employees more accountable was an aid admirable move. I dont think they were fully successful and that the work of this Sub Committee could be focused on those two areas with the high degree of success. All right. Thank you. M schlt johnson. Yes. Demanding resources that they need i think is very important, something that needs to be supported with the budget requirements that are submitted and should be support bid congress when ever the congress is approved without having those resources in the agencies. It makes it very difficult for us to meet demands of the agencies. Pogo, a cartoon is saying we have met to enemy and it is us. By virtue of not providing predictability and relying on continuing resolution is expensive. It is wasteful. Well be reminded. But to talk very briefly about my time expired. I am not going to pursue this. If you agree thats a problem say yes. All right. Thanks so much. So its my understanding that in the last couple of weeks about one thousand state Department Employees signed onto the decent channel to enable to basically publicly noelt their disagreement with the executive order. Following that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said those who disagree should get with the program or they should go. Can each of you tell me your perspective on that statement and in particular what are the rights and the responsibilities of federal employees to be able to freely decent and point out whatever they believe is not in the best interest of our country and what are the protections available to them . Ill start with you ms. Johnson. I feel like we are there to support mission of the agency and the intent of the duties that have been presented to us. When ever we are presented with restrictions that make it difficult i do feel like that we should should be allowed to express those concerns and but its also important that we still try to accomplish the mission with those restrictions as well. We it is to overcome those. Do you agree with having the decent channel and the ability for those using the example that i offered to be able to express their opinions . Yes. Thank you. First, yes, i wish every agency had a decent channel. Different agencies would set up employee suggestion boxes and those were used to in the same manner to provide decent or, you know, comments on existing administration actions. Just as the going in position i think we should all understand that all federal employees to uphold the constitution and that they exercise those powers under the direction of the president of the united states. If an employee feels if a Civil Servant believes what he or she is being asked to do is unconstitutional, unethical, criminal or guest existing regulations they have an obligation to speak up within the agency to express those views. You can do that through the ig, through the whistle blower process. But it is not within the per ogtive of federal employees not to execute in an order from the president that is constitutional, that is within regulations and that is perceived by the administration to go to further the mission of the agency. You agree they should be able to express their decent without fear of being fired. Within existing Agency Infrastructure and mechanisms. Are you aware of any that prohibits an employee from expressing their decent and if they do on pain of being fired . No. I dont know how to say it any better than mr. Valdez. They have a unique system in terms of being able to have that network to get to the senior leaders. Uhhuh. Above all it is supposed to concentrate on what their job is. We are supposed to not be political in anything that we do. With anything that would detract from that focus is not productive. There are mechanisms in place to express concern with policies and procedures and members know how to use those processes. Thank you. Mr. Cox. I believe all of our contracts that afg has with any agency says employees have their First Amendment rights to voice their concerns and raise those issues and certainly there are whistle blower protections however afg tells its membership if they are being asked to do something unless it is illegal to obey and grieve. I would never encourage an employee to be insu board nant. As federal employees we still have First Amendment rights to agree or disagree and to be an apolitical work force in that nature. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you mr. Chair and good morning and thank you for your testimony and for your work and for the employees you represent and speak for. I wanted to start to talk about budgeting predictability a little bit. In your testimony you talk about budget predictability and its importance for management and Government Employment as an issue more broadly. I recently joined in introducing a bipartisan bill that would allow for any at the federal level, which is one of the things we do in my home state of new hampshire. I loved your thoughts about whether it would provide the kind of predictability we are looking for as well as from a management and personnel angle, what clhallenges for you. We tried several years ago and what i remember is that congress was not willing to work that second year. Yeah. It would have been wonderful because of the amount of time that is consumed in putting a budget together. Yeah. You dont have a 2 million work force. You dont get your budget until six months into the fiscal year and then youre working on finalizing that next years budget and you dont even have a budget for the current year. Right. Anything that we can do to put more predictability in the budget process, to give managers flexibility and at least look into the next year and in my testimony i recommended actually two years out. At least a planning level for the work force so that they can make decisions in the current year based on a known level in those other years. Yes. A very good example is an agency that works to be very efficient. They save manpower resources only for that then to draw the next line for reductions you can use the second year to manage and assess and work with agencies as opposed to being in this cycle. I also had another question for you. You recommend opm should require to retention and exit surveys. Im curious about whats happening now. I would get in the air force. Yeah, right. We recognize the importance. A lot of organizations do exit service. It is also very important to survey folks as to why you are staying with us. Yeah. We initiated that two years ago. What you find is one of the major reasons why people are leaving you is leadership. Also one of the major reasons people are staying with you is leadership. Yeah. It gets to the point of training our managers, making sure that they are very competent, making sure we have mentoring programs that are targeted folks that no are the talent that we want to keep. We have done that in the air force. Thank you. I have about a minute and a half left. Maybe ill ask just a general question for the four of you. We obviously where it is important. We are recruiting people who are able is particularly important and we are good Cyber Security hygiene on behalf of all of our employees is really important. In whatever way strikes you as best can you comment on that particular challenge and if you have ideas on how we can be recruiting and improving our Data Literacy in Cyber Security . I think clearly youre going to have to be out at the best schools and universities offering competitive salaries, encouraging these folks to come and also apropuating the money for the latest technology opms computer system. It was almost as outdated as a schwinn bicycle has become in this country. I would go beyond that. We have so many of our technical specialties. You have got to give hiring manage j manage j managers. They need to make commitments in order to compete. Cyber is kind of the focus right now. It goes well beyond cyber. It is given managers direct hiring authority for the skills that they determine that they need. Thank you. I would agree completely with all of that and just note that the chairman pointed out that it takes 100 days to bring somebody on new. Thats in the thats the average. Okay. When you get into these highly technical fields you find that it probably exceeds that average because of the difficulty of bringing them on. We need to have a review of how agencies are allowed to provide them with mechanisms that enable them to bring on the best and brightest. Thank you. Ill certainly agree with mr. Cox when he was speaking about the systems that we used within the federal government. I think updated systems for our employees to work with would make it much easier to bring new employees on using systems that they have been trained on in the private sector as well as in school. It would benefit the government as a whole. Thank you. Im sorry for going over my time. Youre fine. A reminder we will do a second round of questioning and our second round will be open without a clock. If there is interaction you can stay on that. I know he could not stay. Thank you so much. I wanted to commend you for doing this. It is hugely important. Ted kaufman was senator for two years. He became senator when biden stepped down to become vice president. He was thanking different agencies it is any major agency. They helped put together terrific leadership team. They were basically swiss cheese. So many vacancies there. We made it clear we appreciate the work they were doing. I would just mention that. The other thing is i told this story before to my colleagues but not to you folks. I listen from delaware. A couple of years ago they were reporting at the top of the news a news story about what it is people like about their work. It was an International Survey what do people like about their work. People like having benefits, getting paid, some like the folks they work with. They like the environment. People liked the fact they knew what they were doing was important and felt like they were making progress. One is to look at ourselves and say what can we do to make sure they are empowered to make that kind of progress. Thank you so much. Thank you. I want to defer to him for questioning as well. It is he brought up about budgeting. Youll find wide support for that on this and many parts of the senate. We have got to get a more predictable process on that. It is by no means at a majority yet. We are working to be able to get to that jeert. So we can get that moved along with that. Senator portman and i have worked on something we called the Government Shutdown prevention act. It gets us to a point we no longer have the threats of shutdown but it pushes congress to be able to get the budget done, puts in the criteria to accomplish that. It does not help us to have budget cliffs all of the time. We have to have some predictable system but direct pressure points. We hope to get it accomplished in the days ahead. Thank you so much. Most of us come from state entities where you do have more predictability, find that to be a much more predictable system. I want to start out with you, mr. Valdez. As you heard in my statement im concerned about the hiring freeze or morality probably some of that too but the moral and kind of disruption it creates. I know that in your testimony you have said you believe the hiring freeing freeze will have Chilling Effect to attract and recruit the talent that it needs. You know, as you can see from my Opening Statement we had a situation where people saw what happens when you dont have people in federal positions. So i want to ask you, how does the freeze and negative publicity surrounding that impact the ability to meet the mission here and in our states and what message does a hiring freeze send to managers about the value of their work . I think you raised a number of issues, but in terms of the Chilling Effect people like certainty in their employment, and thats what we are referring to is that if you cant if you think that the federal government is not place where you can find reasonable employment and have a secure job, then that does have a chilling affect particularly individuals coming into federal government. And i just want to make this point, that frequently the vacancies we have would be highly sought after. Where theyd be highly technical. So you have three people, now someone leaves and those two know they there is no way they can fill that gap, they get frustrated, and now theyre bearing the brunt and they can find employment someplace else. Meaning its a meat ax to something we should be looking at very strategically. And i have a concern about what that means for highly sought after employees. And basically people seeing Public Service as a career. Miss johnson, in addition to the impact of the hiring freeze, im concerned about the longterm plan that was alluded to the in the executive order. You said that fma opposes any arbitrary plan to cut the federal workforce. What do you think are dangerous to the arbitrary cuts in the federal workforce and whats the longterm impact of that pronouncement . I look at the arbitrary cuts across the federal government as being detrimental to the mission of the agencies. As any company, there are areas that we can cut the budget and the personnel within those agencies, but to do a blanket acrosstheboard cut of all federal agencies i think is going to be detrimental to them to be able to move forward with the mission that they have been provided and putting people in those positions that have to take on the duties of others as their counterparts leave, that puts additional pressure on them and impacts the morale of the agency. Isnt it likely that those is people who can leave when they do and its hard to fill that position, its going to have a cascading effect . Oh, absolutely. And probably in those areas whether its cyber, where theres a whole lot of competition in the private sector for that kind of talent and skill set, but even if i can say, you know, it takes 20 people in housekeeping to make up the beds and you only have 10 you wont stay in business long as a hotel if cant hire the people make the beds and the rooms. Maybe thats a context that can be appreciated in a different category. I have to just back out just for a little bit here, and ill be back. So ill defer the rest of my time, albeit very small amounts, to the chairman, and ill be returning. That will leave me completely unsupervised in the hearing here as well. Theres cameras here. Always accountability. Let me run through several things because there are quite a few issues that have come up. I do want to thank all four of you again for your written statements. Theyre very thorough and theyre also very practical. And that is very helpful to this committee because as were trying to work through things, mr. Cox, as you mentioned before, it may not be a legislative solution. It may be a training issue. So the task of this committee is not just forming new legislation. Its oversight for existing authorities. So i want to walk through a couple of things on that. I mentioned in my Opening Statements the 100 days on average it takes to go through a hiring process. It was 90 days last year. Its now 100. So this problem is accelerating. When it needs to get better. Weve had hearings on usa jobs. Weve had hearings on the process of actually doing the application, the security. Let me ask just for the managers, and mr. Cox if you want to jump in as well on this. There are 105 hiring authorities that exist. 105 of them. 90 of the hires are done with just 20 of those hiring authorities. But there are 105. And most of you mentioned we need direct hiring authority as well for certain things. My question is not rhetorical. There are 105 hiring authorities. Whats being missed at this point . What is slowing down the process . And what i repetitively hear is the hiring is the most important part of it, you dont have as many issues with firing and with oversight if you have good hiring. That involves managers getting a good list, working with hr to make sure that everyone knows exactly what youre looking for, getting that in place, and so when they go through the process we actually get the right person at the beginning. So my interest is open to anyone who wants to jump in this. What am i missing . Where can this be fixed . Mr. Corsi. A little history. About two years ago the air force Personnel Center actually worked with the leadership at Tinker Air Force base, the Sustainment Center leadership, to put the whole hiring process on the table. They peeled back every process associated with it. The 80 days in a lot of ways is a misnomer because the clock starts when the mda puts a hiring demand on the system. What doesnt happen is if you had good Human Capital planning, workforce planning, managers are able to predict months in advance in terms of the skills that they need. The real test is how long does it take from the time the manager decides they need a replacement till the time the individual shows up. And thats much more than the 80 days. So take a guess. What is that . I would say guess is probably in the 150plus. From the time they identify that. So as part of that major relook at i dont know how many individual processes, well over 100, that it took about a year to peel that back, and now were in the process, started implementing those air forcewide. Bay lot of the onus is on the manager, getting out in front, knowing what new workloads are coming in the future, and putting the demand on the system for either the new workload or when they know that theyve got populations that have communicated that theyre going to be leaving the workforce. So that upfront piece is very important on the part of the managers side of the house. How do we fix that because that is one of the key issues, is trying to get managers to make sure that they are predicting what they need and then getting very specific on the criteria, that for this task this is the skill set thats needed. If you make it real open, they need to be a nice person, they need to be well dressed and professional, youve got this huge pull and you may or may not get the qualified person. If the manager gets very specific in what they need as far as criteria, that helps to be able to narrow the process to be able to work through. Am i correct or not correct on that . Yes, senator, you are correct. So how do we get to the point where we can help our managers understand the importance of predicting in advance and very specific on what they need and so when they get to the end of it we get better output . So one of my recommendations is youve got to require that the organizations have a Human Capital strategy, strategic plan, which forces them to look at the current workforce, whats coming down the pike, and require them to use analytics to get really smarter on the front end of this so they can actually get the right talent. So do we have a good example of that . Is there an agency thats doing that well, that we can look at as a model . Thats a senator, i would say look at the recommendations that came out of what the air force and air force Materiel Command were able to do during that period of time. We know opm went in and took a look at what air force is doing. Theres some great info. There was a lot of effort. Leadership was involved. They had a brief, myself, afmc leadership, the Sustainment Center commander on a regular basis as to the progress of what they were doing. And now were in the process of rolling it out. So i dont lock into that 80day. All im looking at is from the time we put a demand on a system or knowledge of what we need to the time we get a warm body, in past hearings you hear about the time it takes for suitability checks. For an example, as part of improfession the process as coming out of that review at Tinker Air Force base and within afmc, they used to bring an individual to in process. They would work on filling out security papers, they would go home. They would work on the medical. Then they would go home. They now do that in one process once they get the individual on board. Were also trying tone courage commanders to take a little risk. Bring the individual on board before the suitability check plays out. Then you have that caveat in there, if its not successful then youre not going to have employment with the air force. But get in front of that time it takes. Take that short risk. But thats all part of it. Its managers. Its opm with its process. All of it has to Work Together. I would certainly agree whats happening at Tinker Air Force in the relationship with aftg, with management, with the air force, everyones trying to make this work, we have a tremendous number of people that are coming on board, thats the lead sustainment facility for the air force and theyre trying to be able to set the example for it. That is a great example. Im pleased that youre able to say if were going to look at anything look at Tinker Air Force base and try to get it done. We can continue to work with tinker to help pull those ideas out of whats happening there in their hiring process. But at the end of the day as ive chatted with several folks around my state when you have someone thats warehouse or forklift, for instance, i hear this all the time from mcallister, from the Army Ammunition depot there, theyre trying to hire on a forklift operator, that same person goes and applies at five other places around mcallister that day and then they also apply at the Army Ammunition depot. Four months later they get a callback from the ammunition depot. Theyve already been employed by somebody else 3 1 2 months at that point. And so its too slow in the process, and we are missing a lot of Great Potential employees based on the slowness of the process. Senator, if we opened up the window or i should say the authorities for the hiring officials to have more direct hiring authority, even a forklift operatort an installation could be critical for other things to happen at the installation, and give the hiring manager direct authority when they determine that the skill is critical and you can bypass some of the other processes to allow you to do exactly what you are saying, on the spot job offers, and individual can commit at that time. When youre moving munitions, that forklift operators pretty essential and fairly important in the process. Let me move to senator portman. Thank you, chairman langford. And i wanted to come to the hearing today partly to support what senator langford is doing, which is look at the tough issues of management within the federal government. And we dont do it enough in my view here in terms of oversight. So i thank him for that. And weve got a great panel here. My questions may have been answered earlier, and i apologize if im asking about topics that have already been addressed. But i have three basic questions. One is with regard to hiring. And one of my frustrations when i was at the office of management and budget was our difficulty of competing with the private sector, particularly for Technology Jobs at the time. And thats still true i believe. We just dont have the speed of hiring that is the real world speed. And therefore, people take other opportunities. Even when theyre willing to forgo a higher salary to be in Public Service, we cannot provide them that opportunity quickly enough. So comments further on that would be helpful. Second is on separation. When someones not performing, how do you provide the ability to get that person out of the way of those who are performing . And i think this is a real problem in terms of morale. And i certainly found out when i was at omb, as you know, some specific statutes tried to deal with this including on the defense side and including on the irs side but any thoughts you have on that. You know, when someone is not performing, going through the proper procedures, how do you ensure that that person is given the opportunity to leave so that others can take the positions, and feel if they are performing well, their performance is being valued . And the third one goes to the broad issue of Performance Measures. You recall the p. A. R. T. Scores, which were not without controversy, which was an attempt to measure the performance of agencies and also measure the performance of personnel. Part of part was to look at how people were being motivated, empowered and whether that was working. We have a new administration, we have a new opportunity to look at how tone courage better management in federal agencies. Broadly, what do you all think of that . So lets start if we could just quickly on this issue of hiring. Maybe again thats something thats already been discussed. And i like your idea, mr. Corsi, of giving more authority to the people on the line who are making the hiring decisions so you can cut back on the layers of bureaucracy. But any other quick thoughts on that . I would like to speak on that, about the budgeting for hiring. And thats something thats very critical, that we have that budget in place. Weve talked about possibly a twoyear budget plan that allows the agencies to know what they will be funded for. I know at cherry point, we get our workload from other d. O. D. Agencies, and when they do not know what their funding levels are going to be, its very difficult for them to give us the forecast on what workload they will be sending in to us. And with our staff being very trade driven and getting that right skillset in those positions when we are not funded or do not know what the funding is going to be up front, it takes we cant bring someone in off of the street, and put them into the sheet metal world and say, go forward and make an aircraft. We need someone that can be in there and can be trained and so that we have the adequate staffing for those positions. So i think that having the budget in place early instead of waiting until half of the year is has gone by, and then trying to bring in additional supports that now the customer has been able to fund, it is very difficult with trying to flex our work staff to accommodate that workload. Thinking about this, and you are competing with the private sector, and they have ups and down, and the private sector, some of the companies that you deal with and contract with, but they have a more predictable budget, in other words, that they make a decision, hey may end up not being in the black because of that and then they may have to make adjustments but typically thats after the fact. In the meantime they know what their budgets going to be for the year. Having a couple of years in most companies have much longer period of time to train people, get them up or so on would be a disadvantage. Right. And that would also help us with the succession planning and knowing which positions were critical and that we needed to make sure that we were able to hire people or have people in the positions for potential retirees because of our aging workforce and with our limited budget and not being able to bring in new employees to have them trained up oftentimes restricts our ability to be able to seamlessly move forward when we lose. How about the separation issue . Do you want to talk about that quickly . Well, id be happy to. I think in my testimony i talked about forum shopping, and i think that that is probably the most effective way we could deal with this issue, which is having a single avenue of appeal for performance issues. Currently, there are multiple avenues of appeal or they can drag out separations, you know, by appealing to, you know, Union Grievances or eeo processes or i. G. Complaints. And so i think we could speed up the system that way. I dont think anybody at this table feels that we, you know, should keep bad performers on, and we were all interested in, you know, expediting the removal of employees who should be removed for performance. Id like to return to the hiring issue for one second. I think that part of what we are talking about here is a systemic issue in the federal government. No corporation in the world would have a Human Resources office that does not serve as the principal adviser to its operating units on issues like hiring, on issues like separation. Unfortunately, i think whats happened with opm is theyve delegated much of the authorities that they have to the agencies on the transaction issues and how you hire, et cetera. But there wasnt a concurrent upgrading of the opm to serve as that corporate adviser for the federal government. Let me give you a specific example. I was heading up an hr shop, and my Senior Management directed me to come up with a workforce analytics plan to do exactly what bob was talking about in terms of figuring out what our retirement rates were, et cetera. So i went to opm and said can you help me out because im not an expert in this area. And it turned out opm was not an expert in that area. And so but i think if you think about it, they should be. And they should be providing to agencies advice about how to manage their workforces and make it easier for them to do that. I have in front of me, you know, title v, the u. S. Code, that governs personnel in the federal government. I also have three volumes of opm guidance on this. No federal manager can possibly understand all of this. And so when you mention, mr. Chairman, that there are 105 hiring authorities, thats the first time ive heard that number. When i was in the federal government, i probably knew of 5, 10 of them. So if i was able as a manager to be trained by opm to understand what was available to me, it would make a much more effective federal government, i think. And then in terms of Performance Measures, im a big fan of p. A. R. T. The agency where i worked at was one of the first p. A. R. T. Ed. And it was a refreshing exercise. But i think we should build on that experience in a way to i incentivize agencies and personnel to relook at how they view risk and reward within the syst system. Omb just sent out about revised circular a123 and talked about enterprise risk management. Thats a fundamentally different way of viewing how you run the federal government. You want to encourage risk. You want to encourage appropriate risk and reward it. And thats the same thing with Performance Measures and Performance Management for federal employees. You want tone courage risk. You want to encourage rewards for those highflying innovative employees. My time has expired, so i dont want to take up more than i should. But if there are other i think mr. Cox is going to burst if he doesnt have a chance to comment on this. Mr. Contradiction id love to hear your comments. Senator portman, i agree. In looking with removing poor performers, the probationary period i dont think is adequately looked at and reviewed by managers. High number of federal employees the oneyear period . High, high numbers have a twoyear period, and now in all of d. O. D. , it is two year, and most title 38 and the va are two years. So id say that we are moving pretty much to way over 50 of the federal government and if not 70 in a twoyear probationary period. There needs to be strong Management Training, there needs to be ongoing dialogue, interacting with employees, evaluating their performance. I supervise and manage employees myself in aage. I know usually within three to six months if theyre going to be able to make it or not. And that period, many times people do not Pay Attention to that. And i think thats a very, very valuable thing. Valuable, because . Basically in the probationary period its thank you very much, go away. But even cree employees, its a 30day notice. From i notify you today 30 years 30 days from today you can be removed off the rolls. You are not paid. Now, the grievance process may go on. You may be able to forum shop. But you can only choose one forum. Once you have elected it, thats it. You cant keep jumping from one system to the next. Again, the people continue on the rolls for long periods of time. I looked at my management colleagues. The law is very, very clear. 30 days, youre out that door. And thats your problem. And back to the long time of hiring. The issue of the security clearance. Opm has basically contracted all of that out. In 1984 from the day i asked for an application to go to work at the va as a registered nurse, i filled it out, was interviewed, was selected, went through a security clearance, had a physical, gave notice of my other job and was on the job in less than 28 days. Thats because youre such an extraordinary human being. They were doing a fair number. Nowadays ill be honest with you. The security and background and suitability, we dont want people that are not suitable working for the government, and our environment has created some of that. But still yet i agree with what my colleagues said, that many times you can bring people on. And if you get on that probationary period you can let them go. On the security process we passed legisla secity process w passed legislation i think it was proba t now to try to not just expedite it but put some more resources against it because of the backlogs. And that is a huge issue with regard to competing with the private sector. And i appreciate you talking about the appeal process too. Everybody wants to have an appeal. The question is how can you make sure that appeal is fair but also something where youre not again giving other people who are performing well the sense that it doesnt matter. I think thats part of empowering people. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator portman. Can i read a truly bold and i like bold statements that mr. Cox wrote in his written testimony that id love for us to be able to have a conversation on it. Mr. Cox, without embarrassing you im going to quote you here. When poor performers are not dealt with, it is never because the Civil Service laws or procedures are too difficult to navigate but rather because some managers either done want to take the time and effort to properly document poor performance and remove or demote poor performers or because they lack the knowledge, skills, and ability to do that. I would love to have a conversation about that. Because ive heard this back and forth as well. If i can just kind of build on that, because i think one of the areas that i completely agree with mr. Cox is in management supervision. You get the absolute best floor nurse you promote her to a role where he or she is going to do scheduling. Maybe not even interested in it but in order to move up the pay ranks thats a promotion, youre going to do it. And you dont say here is the bundle of supervisory training that were going to give you Management Training to see if this is something you can do. In fact, maybe the best nurse manager would be someone whos not a very good nurse. Thats one of the challenges. Included with this issue id like to throw in the bill ive introduced, which is a supervisory training bill. Im going to introduce it again in the 115th. So to senator langfords point, how much would supervisory training, really quality supervisory training take care of a lot of problems were talking about today rather than simply arbitrary now were going to reduce probationary times, the maybe easy fixes that dont fix anything. Mr. Corsi. Senator, i would agree. You have to understand managers are torn many days day in, day out. We have hugely reduced those staffs with reductions over the last 15 years. In the air force i would say 50 reduction on the Personnel Management side of the house because with all the budget challenges, and youve got the mission and youve got the support side, those staffs have taken a disproportionate hit. Managers day in and day out are weighing the value of pursuing the disciplinary action in knowing the commitment on their part its going to take to pursue those versus turning a blind eye, which is not ideal. But theyre making those value judgments. The twoyear probationary period would go a long way in now giving managers the time to deal with performance issues. Unless the manager was very aggressive going through all the process even with the oneyear probationary period, it is very difficult to get everything that needs to get done within that first year. The two year probationary period to be quite honest with you would give management the flexibility to be able to go through that due process they need to go through before working with the employee Performance Improvement plans, in order to work that weve just heard from mr. Cox that we have a twoyear probationary period de facto building, in fact 70 . Whats the proof that a probationally period actually accomplishes what you suggest it might accomplish . Given that 70 of the workforce is already under a twoyear probationary period. For the department of defense, the ndaa of 2015 put the twoyear probationary period in effect. All i would say its probably a little too soon. And again, since i retired end of october i dont know what that experience has been. I just want to say that i didnt you know, ive managed by this tone not a very big workforce but i ran big organizations in north dakota that had Property Rights to their jobs and you had to go through the process. It would never have taken me two years to know i had somebody i didnt need in my workforce. So to suggest that this is the endall and beall is problematic to me because it may in fact be that this person would be a wonderful person with the right supervisory skills, could in fact emerge as one of the best employees you could ever have. But if you dont have attention focused by managers on developing the skill sets of who they are i dont see any amount of time whats the old idiom, that time work expands for the time youve given to fill it. Two years 15 months. I dont know. It doesnt seem to me that thats the fix to the problem that we have, that we have Public Employees who stay on the rolls too long in an illfitting position and we have managers who dont know how to inspire and train employees to be good employees. So i completely agree with you and i completely agree with mr. Cox. And and senator langford. Completely agree with senator langford. Everybody. Im in complete agreement. One of the first things that happened to me when i was a new ses was i denied an employee a promotion. And that employee then filed a grievance on me for age discrimination. And it took me six months to resolve that. And the end result was that, you know, i denied her the promotion. But it was wearing and it was he have time consuming. After that i became the manager of the departments eeo shop. And what i found there was that there was a lot of forum shopping. People would come in, theyd have an adverse personnel action against them, and they would be seeking a way to redress that you know, address that through the employment through the eeo process. A lot of this gets to i really support your notion of supervisory training because it certainly is needed. Managers do need to know what their rights are. And in my testimony we talk about this a lot. But we also talk about agency culture. It has now come to the point with a lot of agencies, and i will speak mostly about the department of energy where it is considered to be too much trouble to deal with poor performers. And that you you know. As bob said, you have so many zrients on your time you that just want to make these things go away. Can i ask for a clarification . Is that because of the paperwork requirement on it . The number of hearings . Because thats something youve mentioned a couple of times. One of the things thats come up often is if managers document and during their evaluations actually show lower evaluations and actually have the meetings with someone saying youre not performing, im going to put this in your file and you need to be able to perform better, then that dismissal goes a lot faster. But if managers are not putting paperwork in the file and theyre not having those meetings then this becomes a lot more complicated. Right or wrong . Well, even if proper documentation the employees can still go forum shopping. They can claim that you rated their performance adversely because you discriminated against them, for example. Or that you were favoring other employees and not them. So that goes into separate processes and gets you involved in a number of different forums. But i think the real issue were talking about here is that you need to change the culture of the agency and that can be done with supervisory training but you also need to make it clear to managers and supervisors that they do have a responsibility to the taxpayer that they will deal with low performers and take that as part of their everyday job. Is that part of a supervisors or managers yearly evaluation of how they handle it . When theyre evaluate d. I asked for the executive performance agreement and the annual evaluation. There is a section as i go through it and it talks about leading people. But it has this long list of things in that criteria. One line of it is holds employees accountable for an appropriate level of performance and conduct, seeks and considers employee input, recruits, retains and develops talent needed to achieve high quality Diverse Workforce that reflects the nation with skills, need to accomplish with organization performance. But it is this incredibly long list of all the things that are in it. And part of my question is when managers are held to account in their evaluation is this something that is considered important for their evaluation so theyd know its important for the way they manage and elvis . In my experience no. Any opinion on that, mr. Corsi, miss johnson . In my opinion it does not get thell visibility in the annual performance cycle. Miss johnson. I know within our agency there are requirements in our performance appraisal for supervisory functions that we are graded on. To say that its truly a reflection of how were graded at the end, i dont know that thats a completely true statement. Its one of the things i look at and say most people know what theyre being scored on. My daughter studies most on the things that will actually be on the test. We all do. And if i know at the end of the year theres going to be a test on how i did hiring, how i put together the criteria for that, how i documented issues, both good and bad, how i encouraged employees in their training, how i helped facilitate a better workforce, if i know thats a major part of my evaluation i will make sure that i accomplish that. Because thats a part of the evaluation. And i would recommend i know we havent talked about this yet. But that we get an opportunity to be able to work with opm on how everyones evaluated and what are the key criteria of that. Mr. Cox . Senator, im thinking back to my days of working in the va medical center. There were various units that always had people wanting to go work on that unit, number one, because it was a great nurse manager, the care for the veterans was superb, the ratings that the veterans gave was great. Everybody seemed happy. There was a give and take mode of always getting the scheduling done, the work done. If there was someone that was slacking, the group would immediately take care of it. Then there would be a unit where nobody wanted to go to work, that it was disastrous all the way through. And it usually had to do with the management skills. I suspect some of my colleagues here probably have pljd units where theyre always trying to get people to go to work and other places where people are begging, move me to that section. I would welcome the stunt for afge, congress, and managers association, s. E. S. , for some of us to do some type of studies in the workforce. Theres things that motivate people. And what is it that creates good managers, that makes people want to go work with that group and perform well. And i find good leaders always seem to attract good employees and that even makes them a better leader. So i dont have all that pulled together. Im not quite the researcher. But ive seen this happen well in organizations. Miss johnson, were you about to Say Something as well . I was. And it actually will add to what mr. Cox has mentioned. I think oftentimes within the federal government we bring people in on a technical side. Theyre very good at that. And as senator heitkamp had mentioned we moved them into management. And they may not have management skill sets to be successful in managing but they feel like thats the only way that they can continue to progress their career, is by going into a management field. So having that dual track that i know they support to continue to progress their career in the technical side as well as having an opportunity to bring in managers that have those soft skills, and have those management skills that can be successful in managing the workforce and know how to manage a workforce i think is very important. And providing adequate training for new managers whenever they come in to the workforce not only for dealing with the processes but ensuring that they have that soft skill as well to be able to successfully manage employees i think is very important. Mr. Valdez. I would encourage you, senator heitkamp, to think more expansively about supervisor training. At the Senior Executive association were highly supportive of building a leadership pipeline within the federal government. Leadership leading people is fundamentally different than managing an organization. And so we are supportive of developing leaders down at the gs 9, gs 11 level, and providing them with the skills that they require as they move up the management ranks to be able to effectively lead organizations to get to the point where mr. Cox was saying theyre a preferred employer. Currently, there is no such thing in the federal government. Can i ask you, are you familiar with my bill . No. It would be great if you would look at it, make any suggestions that your organization wants to make. I totally agree. I think that you can take that great nurse and during the period of time provide leadership, have them understand the dynamics of the group and actually move them into a management way if you build leaders. I couldnt agree with you more. I think our challenge right now is we look for the easy you know, the easy fix. None of this is easy. And growing leadership and growing management skills because its two sides of the same coin is not easy but people have to see theres some benefit in their career to take that on. Lets talk about the senior nurse or in my case ill give you a personal example. One of my first jobs was working in the Legal Section of the Tax Department in my state. The man who headed that up, the general counsel, probably one of the best attorneys in the state of north dakota and probably one of the best aterns itorneys i worked with, and ive worked with great attorneys. Wasnt exactly a good manager. But i learned so much from him that it gave me the confidence to move forward. We should reward him, rather than putting the management responsibility, we should reward him for being a mentor in place, for building the capacity and building the leadership. And i understand that there has to be a hierarchy. But the best organizations have invisible hierarchy in my opinion. They have a unified consistent purpose in what theyre doing, and people know everybodys role. They know what their responsibilities are. And they come to a point of achievement together. And so thats not easy all the time when youre trying to take my dads army, you know, dont ask questions, just march, thats not the army anymore. It wouldnt be successful recruiting people to that model anymore. We have to get away from kind of old ideas and old thinking about hierarchies and start thinking about leadership and management. I totally agree. I would welcome any input you have. We havent introduced it yet but im curious about what you think you can do more. Let me give you one further input then while i have the chance. Which is that training budgets have been slashed throughout the federal government. Its usually one of the first things that go. And and i think one of the things you should consider when youre thinking about this training is giving agencies funding and finding ways to carve out dedicated line item funding for this kind of training because it doesnt exist and its the first thing thats cut. I would just say youre not going to find disagreement with us on that. You and i both know training is often farmed out to some outside group and they scum in and sometimes the employees find it to be helpful and sometimes they dont and sometimes the way they do training ends up on somebodys waste list at some point and somebody says what in the world are we paying for that for . The only thing i would say on training is lets make sure trainings effective and that were not just saying were supposed to do training on a budget, this is a near contractor, theyll come and we can check the box that training was done when really no one saw it was useful at the end of it. I have another appointment i have to rush off to. I just want to also ask that a statement of the national treasurys Employment Union be entered into the record. Without objection. I think were okay. And i look forward to a continuing discussion. I want to thank senator langford for making the federal workforce a major priority of this committee. We started that work last congress. Were going to continue. So dont think this is your one chance. We want to hear from you. Im always amazed when we get into these discussions how no matter what perspective you have we kind of come down to the same thing. And so that means theres an answer. And that means if we make the investment of time on the oversight side of the dais to listen to what you all are challenged with that we can make real progress. And maybe we can have fewer employees if we have more productive employees, happier employees, less turnover. And so theres a way that we can do this without breaking any budgets i guess is my point. Another six minutes or so were about to wrap this up. Everyone trying to wonder if were really going to go 207 p. M. , were not. Well be another six minutes. Thats fine. I totally understand. One of the things i would say is we are building a bucket for Nick Mulvaney when he comes in and leads omb. Our conversations with him have already been. That is not just a budget office. That is a Management Office as well. And we fully expect the management side to be aggressive on trying to fix some of these broken systems that are there. Its something beth cullbert worked very hard on at opm when she was there and fasd a lot of frustration ppz we will anticipate a new opm director to step in and be able to finish out some of the work they had already started and lets see what they can get done. Thats one of the buckets. The other bucket is what do we have legislatively thats in the way, thats overly complicated or that needs to be fixed with a process system . And so as you have ideas on these things we are very welcome to those things, both of oversight ideas and ways that we need to engage or legislative ideas. Do i want to bring up one thing that has been mentioned a couple of times just to be able to get input because its new. Mr. Cox, you mentioned this in your testimony. And that is the d. O. D. New process of new beginnings. Trying to work toward a meritbased and addressing in some ways the gs system to say is there a better way to do this . I understand this is actually a fivehour conversation were going to cram into five minutes, but its new, its being rolled out. Part of it for us is the oversight part of it. Part of it is i guess the large part of my question is what concerns and you what excites you about that process of the new beginnings as were looking at it being rolled out at this point . So open question of what concerns you, what excites you, if you have any specifics on it that would be very helpful. What excites me is its been a joint cooperative partnership between labor and management, working through it together, figuring out how to best recognize and take care of good employees and also for managers to listen to the input of the unions, how to measure and to evaluate Performance Management. The holdback i think is working well at the top as it moves down to actually where the rubber meets the road between a very front line supervisor and a Front Line Group of employees that there is probably not as much attention, the level of training, the level of commitment for those parties to Work Together as well as the parties at the pentagon level and various parts of d. O. D. Your written testimony you made an interesting statement as well when managers said they need to have some courage, which i thought was an interesting statement to make. And that is to be able to address the issues that are there and to be able to confront those and not just be passive. And it is how i took that. But just also to be able to step in and affirm. I mentioned earlier the statistic that 22 of the federal workforce is done based on merit. I didnt mention before in a similar study out there that 37 of federal employees are affirmed for positive things in the workplace, which would tell me the vast majority of them dont even feel like theyre verbally affirmed for taking on and doing a good job which by far most of them are. So that affirmation part of it is i think also very important as well, being able to figure out. So i may be looking at how this works. Mr. Corsi, you want to make some comments . Senator, very positive on new beginnings. Working with the unions. We went from a passfail system to now three tiers where you can recognize outstanding performance. Biggest challenge is it requires a manager to have more facetoface discussions with a member, talking about performance, talking about expectations, and feedback, more dialog. So there are no surprises in the evaluation process. If you can now tie new beginnings to a system like the demonstration projects that are out there right now, which are all pay for performance, now youve got the Evaluation System to go with the pay system, which can be a winwin situation. Mr. Valdez. You said it correctly at the beginning when you said that we have a 20th, maybe even a 19th century, you know, workforce structure for 21st century missions. And so the Senior Executive association is fully engaged and were ready to work with you and anybody else to get a modernization of the workforce. Were supportive of new beginnings. But wed also like to see a wholesale top to bottom review of the general schedule and also frankly of the Senior Executive service, you know, what is its current role and purpose in the federal government today. Let me throw an unfair question out to you. How long does new beginnings need to be out there to get a good feel for whats working and not working before it transitions into a gs evaluation . Is that five years we need to watch . Is that three years . There are other demonstration programs that have been out there much longer. I consistent heres what i hear and the reason i bring it up. I consistently hear people say we need to address the gs system. And then right behind it they say and thatll be the most painful experience the federal governments taking on in decades, i would never, ever touch it if i was you. But we need to do it. Sought question is how do we get a good read for it to know this works well, management, afge, everyone looks at it and says this is a good functioning system, lets start trying to multiply it outside other places. Id say its probably going to take three to five years, because they phased the implementation to begin with for parts of d. O. D. And then once everybody is transitioned its going to take two years, three years beyond that to get a good assessment whether we need to make some adjustments. Okay. Thank you. Miss johnson. As far as the new beginnings i think that is very positive, having additional conversations with our employees and making sure they understand what their goals are. Oftentimes there is a conversation at the beginning of the grading period and one at the end of the grading period, and that does not give the employees the opportunity to understand how theyre performing in that period so they can make improvements and give the management the opportunity to give suggestions to the employees on how they can improve their performance and also to recognize their good performance during that period instead of waiting until the end of the grading period to even recognize good performance. As far as how long we need to look at the system, i do feel like there were some good opportunities with nsps, whenever that was rolled out. I think there were areas that it needed some improvement. But i think instead of trying to make that system better we ended that system and went back to the gs system, which is very old and does not lend itself to recognize our good employees and be able to adjust within that system for hiring practices. So i think i dont know that i can put a time frame on it, but i do think that we need to make sure that we are looking at the system and making sure that weve utilized all of the opportunity for a new system before we just say its not going to work. Okay. Theres a tremendous amount we can still talk about. As i mentioned before, several of you put things in your written testimony that we never even got to today. Those are a part of the record. Theyre not being ignored. Again, we could be here a very long time talking through those issues. I do appreciate both your written statements, your oral statements, and the conversation we can have. If we can multiply this type of conversation and multiple other places, it would certainly be helpful. We look forward to working with Mick Mulvaney and with new omb and opm leadership to be able to help share some of these ideas with them as well and be able to see where we go. Before we adjourn i do need to announce that we hope to have a hearing on thursday march the 9th to discuss the issues surrounding the use of data in science and the regulatory process. Well cloound todays hearing. I do want to again say thank you to you before we conclude for all the work and preparation you did on this. The hearing record will remain open for 15 days until the close of business on february the 24g9 for the submission of statements and questions for the record. This hearing is adjourned. [ room noise ] [ room noise ] [ room noise ] since its official opening last september the National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture has welcomed over 750,000 visitors. And sunday American History tv on cspan 3 takes you inside the museum for a live exclusive afterhours tour. Our special includes a look at the galleries and exhibits telling the africanamerican story, from slavery to the first africanamerican president. Well talk with the museums specialist, mary elliott, and its curator william pretser. And throughout the program our guests will be talking with you through your phone calls and tweets. Join us for a live visit inside the National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture. Live sunday beginning at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Watch cspan as President Donald Trump delivers his first address toe i ajoint session of congress. This congress is going to be the busiest congress weve had in decades. Reporter live tuesday february 28th on c sxan cspan. Org and listen live on the free cspan radio app. A signature feature of cspan 2s book tv is our coverage of book fairs and festivals across the country. With Nonfiction Author talks, interviews and viewer callin segments. Saturday book tv will be live beginning at 9 00 eastern from savannah, georgia for the tenth anniversary of the savannah book festival. Featured authors include john tamney, author of who needs the fed. Cassandra king presents her late husband pat conroys book. William daugherty talks about his book in the shadow of the ayatollah. Gerry willis on her book rich is not a fourletter word. And dan slater, author of the book wolf boys. Well also be taking your calls with the featured authors throughout the day. Be sure to follow and tweet us with your questions booktv on twitter. Join us Live Saturday beginning at 9 00 a. M. Eastern for the tenth anniversary of the savannah book festival on book tv. Department of Veterans Affairs officials and veterans advocates testified at a house hearing about the va backlog in processing disability claims and how to expedite claims and appeals. The hearing focused on the vas National Work system for handling disability claims. This is an hour and a half. Good morning. Welcome, everyone. This is the oversight hearing of the subcommittee of disability assistance and Memorial Affairs will now come to order. I first want to take a moment to welcome the subcommittee