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foan Timoney, Vice President for Programs
Partnership for Public Service (PPS)
THE MISSION OF THE PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE:
ENSURING A STRONG CIVIL SERVICE
The Partnership for Public Service is a new nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization dedicated to recruiting and retaining excellence in the fed-
eral civil service. Through an aggressive campaign of agency reform, leg-
islative advocacy, focused research, and educational efforts, the Partner-
ship encourages talented people to choose federal service for some or all
of their careers and works with the government to help retain high-achiev-
ing federal employees.
The mission of the Partnership is to help ensure that the federal gov-
ernment has the workforce it needs to meet the economic, social, and se-
curity demands of the 21st century. There are a number of areas of con-
cern. High among them is the challenge of recruiting and retaining a
highly skilled technical and scientific workforce.
The Partnership looks forward to working with the members and sup-
porters of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable
(GUIRR) to encourage young scientists and engineers to consider federal
service. We appreciate that a critical first step is to encourage more young
people to pursue careers in engineering and science so the country has the
talent pool required to meet its public- and private-sector needs. One way
the Partnership can help is by working with GUIRR and others to educate
young students about the important and often exciting work that is car-
ried out each day by scientists and engineers working for the federal gov-
ernment. Exposing students to the work, and to the committed federal
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employees engaged in it, may have the dual benefit of drawing more stu-
dents to the profession and encouraging some number of them to em-
brace a public service that sorely needs their skills.
THE NEED FOR ACTION
The need for the federal government to recruit and retain talented
workers is ever more urgent as many of its most experienced workers
prepare for retirement. In the next five years, over 50 percent of the fed-
eral workforce may qualify for retirement and 70 percent of its senior
managers will reach retirement age.
It is a graying workforce among federal scientists and engineers as
well. According to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management,
nearly 40 percent of the physical scientists and 30 percent of the biological
scientists in cabinet-level agencies are over the age of 50. Among federal
engineers, 32 percent of those working in the cabinet agencies are over 50.
The urgency of the issue at just one agency was brought home re-
cently by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) direc-
tor Sean O'Keefe who said earlier this year in testimony before the Con-
gress, "In an agency where the expertise is not as deep as we would like it
to be, even a few retirements can be critical. Everywhere I go across the
NASA Centers, I hear the same story: we're only one deep; we can't af-
ford to lose that skill."
KEY FINDINGS ON RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION BARRIERS
As it seeks to replace its most experienced employees, the federal gov-
ernment is entering a recruitment marketplace that even in today's
economy is characterized by keen competition for top talent in most pro-
fessions. That competition will only intensify as the U.S. labor force con-
tinues to shrink. And there are additional factors that often add up to a
competitive disadvantage for the federal government.
TROUBLING ATTITUDES TOWARD FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT
The government has the burden of promoting its opportunities to a
public that considers the private and nonprofit sectors to be much more
attractive employers. A poll conducted by the Partnership last year about
attitudes toward federal employment found the following:
· By 40 percent to 9 percent, college-educated Americans believe the
private sector offers more interesting and challenging work.
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PAN-~CANIZAHONAL SUMMIT
· By 62 percent to 5 percent, the private sector is seen as better re-
warding outstanding performance; 60 percent of those polled believe the
private sector does a better job of allowing employees to take initiative.
· Among those who consider "contributing to society and making a
difference," the nonprofit sector won out over government as the em-
ployer of choice by a startling 52 percent to 10 percent.
Added to these perception problems is the issue of compensation.
While salary is not always the determining factor in career choice, for
certain professions the disparity between public- and private-sector sala-
ries can spell too much sacrifice to talented young job seekers. This is
particularly true for younger Americans who graduate with significant
student loan debt.
A LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT FEDERAL OPPORTUNITIES
The perceptions about federal employment are set against a backdrop
of a general lack of information about the civil service and the opportuni-
ties that abound across government. Many college-educated Americans
know very little about the civil service or the varied work of federal em-
ployees. Only 29 percent of those the Partnership polled felt well informed
about federal government opportunities; a mere 20 percent could recall
seeing a federal recruiter on their campus.
The good news is that these findings should improve over time as
many federal agencies are working hard to reconnect with college cam-
puses and becoming more sophisticated in their education and recruit-
ment campaigns. The more information college-educated Americans re-
ceive about the civil service, and the more effective the communications,
the greater the chances that the unfounded perceptions about federal em-
ployment can be changed.
BROKEN HIRING PROCESS
The sometimes impenetrable federal hiring process remains a real
barrier to recruitment. In a study conducted by the Brookings Institution
last year, federal employees themselves, by very large percentages, de-
scribed the process as too slow, too confusing, and unfair. And these are
people who are reasonably familiar with the system. For outsiders, the
process can be incomprehensible. Talented people with multiple options
are unlikely to make the effort or wait the six months that it can some-
times take to hear back from an agency. The director of the Office of Per-
sonnel Management has taken this issue head on and there are proposals
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pending before Congress that could help. Some agencies have also made
great strides and can serve as a model for others. But there is still a great
deal of work to be done across government to make the federal hiring
process a 21st century system.
UNDERUTILIZATION OF INTERN PROGRAMS: A MISSED
RECRUITMENT OPPORTUNITY
Internships have long been recognized as a particularly valuable
cruitment tool. According to a 2001 Employer Survey conducted by the
National Association of Colleges and Employers, internships were rated
as the most effective means of bringing in new talent, particularly techni-
cal talent. Other studies have shown that recruits who were originally
interns tend to stay with their employer longer than their counterparts
hired off the street. And interns who have enjoyable and productive expe-
riences are walking advertisements for their employers a boost the fed-
eral government clearly needs on campuses.
Unfortunately, as the Partnership found in its research on internship
opportunities in the federal government, internships represent a missed
recruitment opportunity for many agencies. Despite the anticipated need
for new talent, there has been almost no growth in the government's ca-
reer-oriented Student Career Experience Program in the last seven years.
Further, the federal government falls significantly behind the private sec-
tor in the percentage of interns it converts to employees. The federal gov-
ernment converted only 12 percent of its career-oriented interns, while
the private sector typically converts 36 percent of its program participants.
We also found that, over the past five years, seven agencies account
for approximately 70 percent of federal interns in the career-oriented pro-
gram. Therefore, there is a great deal more that could be done across gov-
ernment to expose younger Americans to the rewards of public service
through internships.
And much more could be done to better inform students about the
opportunities that do exist. Currently, there is no central source of infor-
mation on internship opportunities across government. For younger
Americans who know very little about the civil service, it is a high hurdle
to search agency by agency for opportunities.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Organizations that share a concern about the availability of skilled
scientists and engineers to meet public- and private-sector needs in the
new century should work together to help educate the Congress about
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PAN-~CANIZAHONAL SUMMIT
the issues and to support funding for scholarships and other incentives to
encourage students to embrace those careers.
2. Federal agencies, schools, and other interested organizations
should work together to better inform young people about opportunities
that exist for scientists and engineers in the civil service. By more aggres-
sively publicizing the exciting, often state-of-the-art, work being done in
federal laboratories and research centers across the country, agencies can
counter erroneous perceptions about the federal work environment. This
education and outreach effort should start at least at the high school level.
University students must also be given the tools they need to pursue fed-
eral employment opportunities once they are made aware of them. The
Partnership can be of assistance through its campus-based initiative A
Call to Serve: Leaders in Education Allied for Public Service. This is a joint
initiative of the Partnership and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Launched last April, the network has grown to over 380 schools and 58
federal agencies that have agreed to work together to educate students
about the importance of a strong civil service and the opportunities to
serve.
3. Federal agencies should also make student employment programs
part of their strategic workforce planning and use them as a critical tool
for building the talent pool for future hires. The agencies, the Office of
Personnel Management, and other organizations providing student em-
ployment and internship opportunities should work together to improve
the visibility and quality of the information made available to students
about those opportunities.
4. Federal offices around the country should begin to work more
closely with their local high schools to afford young students the opportu-
nity to experience firsthand the important and varied work of the civil
service. This is particularly important in the hard-to-recruit professions
such as science and engineering where there is a need to interest many
more young people in these careers and in public service.
5. Agencies should make it a priority to ask for funding to implement
the various recruitment and retention incentives that will help attract top
talent to the federal service, and Congress should provide those funds.
This includes funding scholarship for service programs, loan repayment
assistance programs, recruitment and retention bonus Programs and con-
tinuing education programs.
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6. Federal agencies must make much better use of existing tools and
authorities to improve the federal hiring and selection process. And where
legislative changes are required, Congress, the agencies, and other inter-
ested organizations should work together to bring about needed reforms.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
federal employment
