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Federal Downsizing: Controls Needed to Ensure Compliance With Buyout Repayment Provisions

GGD-98-12 Published: Jan 26, 1998. Publicly Released: Feb 10, 1998.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed whether: (1) the 23 buyout recipients returned to federal employment and, if so, whether they repaid the buyout or met the Department of Defense (DOD) reemployment policy; and (2) the 9 agencies that were identified as employing these 23 buyout recipients and other selected agencies, which may have buyout recipients under contract, had internal procedures in place to help ensure that buyout recipients repay buyouts when required to do so.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Personnel Management To help ensure that agencies establish procedures to comply with the buyout repayment provisions of the FWRA and other buyout authorities, the Director, OPM, should promulgate regulations requiring agencies to identify buyout recipients who: (1) are applying to return or have returned directly to federal employment; or (2) are applying to work for or already work for the federal government under a contract that is, by its terms, a personal services contract, or administered as such, and require them to repay their buyout. In doing so, the Director may want to consider OPM's list of possible options that agencies could take to help ensure compliance with the buyout repayment provisions.
Closed – Not Implemented
According to OPM, the number, variety, and disparity among the many separate buyout authorities passed by the Congress between 1993 and today, makes standard, governmentwide regulation, monitoring, and tracking virtually impossible. OPM believes that this recommendation, while feasible at the time it was issued, does not appear to be practical at this time.
Office of Personnel Management To help ensure that agencies establish procedures to comply with the buyout repayment provisions of the FWRA and other buyout authorities, the Director, OPM, should create a form that job applicants would be required to complete to certify whether they were buyout recipients and, if so, from which agency they received the buyout. The Director may want to consider requiring that the form: (1) be attached to employment resumes or to the "Optional Application for Employment"; or (2) be completed by those applicants to which agencies are considering making job offers.
Closed – Not Implemented
OPM is not inclined to require a new form for applicants to complete. It does not believe that creating a form and requiring every applicant to complete it is in proportion with the perceived problem. According to OPM, a form would simply create additional paperwork and serve no useful purpose.

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Topics

Employee buyoutsFederal downsizingReemploymentFederal employeesGovernment collectionsHiring policiesInternal controlsPostemployment restrictionService contractsCorporate mergers