Big challenges lay ahead for next OPM director

By Brian Drew
Internet Editor,
FederalNewsRadio

President Obama officially named John Berry as his nominee for Director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Tim McManus, Executive Vice President of Outreach and Education at the Partnership for Public Service, tells FederalNewsRadio the new OPM director faces unique challenges in attracting and retaining federal workers.

“We are in a new day and age here,” says McManus. “In order to make sure that we are getting good talent in the door throughout government, and keeping that talent really requires OPM taking a leadership role.”

McManus says that there is no reason to believe that Berry doesn’t have those kinds of leadership skills, but the problems the government is facing goes beyond the OPM director.

Workforce issues and the people issues to really solve the challenges that this country is dealing with are not simply on Mr. Barry’s shoulders, they’re on all of the agencies shoulders, and that really starts at the very top, and that’s not simply Mr. Berry, that’s actually at the White House. So, the White House really needs to make people a priority in this, and realize that in order for government to really meet it’s challenges it really does need good, good people in those roles.

McManus says that all government agencies have both unique and common problems.

“Somehow OPM has to be able to get a handle on that and be able to take this very decentralized hiring, recruiting, training and provide some common resources and common strategies to move all of these forward.”

McManus says that even without a new director, OPM has already realized that the stimulus package has created new challenges for many agencies. OPM held a forum to discuss the collaboration that’s needed to hire new positions.

That conversation was much more around not business as usual, but if there are hiring authorities, or hiring flexibilities that agencies think that they need, the word from OPM was ‘let’s have that conversation up front, and we’ll actually help navigate the waters to figure out what you really need to get those people in the door.’ I think in the past it has been ‘you go off; you show that you can’t get people in the door, and then you come to us and request that.’

Berry began his Federal career as a Legislative Director for Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and was the primary craftsman behind the locality pay reform. Most recently he was hired to help turn around the National Zoo.

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