Federal Hiring: OPM Should Collect and Share COVID-19 Lessons Learned to Inform Hiring During Future Emergencies
Fast Facts
Congress and the Office of Personnel Management authorized certain agencies to temporarily use alternative hiring procedures to expedite hiring for staff with skills needed to respond to the pandemic.
OPM gave 5 agencies "direct hiring authority"—allowing them to temporarily eliminate competitive rating and ranking procedures and veterans' preference procedures for some positions.
Lessons learned during the pandemic could improve the use of hiring authorities during future emergencies. We recommended that OPM develop and implement a process to collect and share these government-wide lessons.
Highlights
What GAO Found
The CARES Act provided temporary hiring authorities to six agencies with responsibilities for responding to the public health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19. A hiring authority is the law, executive order, or regulation that allows an agency to hire a person into the federal civil service. In addition, as of September 30, 2020, five agencies received direct hiring authority (DHA) from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in response to the pandemic. DHAs allow agencies to expedite hiring by eliminating competitive rating and ranking procedures and veterans' preference for specific positions. Also, in March 2020, OPM authorized the use of COVID-19 Schedule A hiring authority, which allows agencies to fill positions for up to 1 year as needed in response to, or as a result of, COVID-19. GAO found that the number of staff hired by 10 selected agencies using these three temporary COVID-19 hiring authorities varied.
Figure 1: Availability of COVID-19 Hiring Authorities and Total Number of Hires Made at Selected Agencies, March through December 2020
aCOVID-19 Schedule A hiring authority allows agencies to fill positions for up to 1 year as needed in response to, or as a result of, COVID-19.
bAgency received approval to amend an existing authority so hires were not all related to COVID-19.
cCommerce's CARES Act hiring authority is limited to the Economic Development Administration.
The selected agencies described a few lessons learned that could help other agencies improve the use of hiring authorities in future emergencies including: (1) collaborating with internal stakeholders to maximize information sharing across the agency; and (2) creating an inventory of hiring needs and available authorities to assist in addressing agency workforce needs.
OPM intends to conduct reviews in fiscal year 2022 that may provide insight into agencies' use of hiring authorities in response to the pandemic. However, according to OPM officials, the agency has not yet developed plans to collect and share lessons learned on the use of COVID-19 related hiring authorities. Collecting and sharing lessons learned would help OPM understand how the various hiring authorities could be used during future emergencies and identify opportunities to improve the hiring process.
Why GAO Did This Study
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects on federal programs and operations. To address this public health crisis, Congress and the administration made several hiring authorities available to agencies to hire staff with the needed skills to effectively respond to the pandemic.
The CARES Act includes a provision for GAO to report on ongoing monitoring and oversight efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This report examines: (1) the new hiring authorities provided to federal agencies for COVID-19 response and the extent to which selected agencies have used them; (2) selected agencies' experiences using those hiring authorities, including lessons learned; and (3) OPM's efforts to assess agencies' use of the COVID-19 related hiring authorities.
GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from OPM and the 10 agencies that were provided hiring authorities in the CARES Act or DHA for the public health emergency from OPM between March 1 and September 30, 2020. The documents reviewed included data on the agencies' hiring and OPM policies and guidance for its oversight of agencies' use of hiring authorities.
Recommendations
GAO is making one recommendation to OPM to develop and implement a process for collecting and sharing government-wide lessons learned associated with agencies' use of different hiring authorities in response to COVID-19. OPM concurred with the recommendation made in this report.
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Office of Personnel Management | The Director of OPM, in conjunction with the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, should develop and implement a process for collecting and sharing comprehensive government-wide information on the lessons learned associated with agencies' use of different hiring authorities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Recommendation 1) | OPM concurred with the recommendation. In response, OPM issued a report in February 2024 entitled, Human Capital Management Evaluation of Agencies' Use of Hiring Flexibilities for the COVID-19 Crisis, which evaluated the effectiveness of special hiring flexibilities authorized in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report concentrated on the 15 federal agencies that used at least one of the four hiring and compensation authorities -- either the (1) CARES Act authority, (2) Schedule A authority, (3) direct-hiring authority, and/or (4) dual-compensation waiver. The report uses data from OPM's Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) and FedScope systems to review Governmentwide... hiring trends made under COVID-19 special authorities. Additionally, OPM surveyed federal hiring managers and human resource staff involved in the hiring process, specific to the COVID-19 response initiative. An analysis of the data enabled OPM to identify additional actions that could potentially support agency hiring needs during national emergencies. These actions might include providing agencies with human resource policy guidance (including reminders of existing flexibilities) and establishing a standardized mechanism to track the use of authorities by assigning designations in EHRI. By collecting and analyzing data on agencies' use of the four hiring and compensation authorities and publishing the results of their analysis, OPM has sufficiently addressed the recommendation from our October 2021 report.
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