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Government Leader home > news stories
06/13/06
A lesson from GAO on career conversions
By John L. Guerra
Special to Government Leader
When agencies convert a political appointee to career employee status, they have to follow proper procedures. Under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, for example, they must document who the conversion candidates are, their qualifications, background data and other information. This helps ensure that conversion employees don’t bypass traditional hiring scrutiny or fail to jump through the same hoops the career employee in the next cubicle was required to leap through.
Members of Congress three years ago asked the Government Accountability Office to review the status of conversion employees in the federal agencies and determine whether those agencies followed proper procedure when hiring them.
The recently issued GAO study, titled “Personnel Practices, Conversions of Employees from Non-Career to Career Positions” (GAO-6-381), investigated records surrounding 144 conversions between May 2001 to April 2005 and found that that in 18 of those conversions, agencies failed to document the employee’s history, merit standings and other supporting paperwork. Some agencies even created new career positions to serve particular individuals. In most conversions at the GS-12 level and higher, agencies followed proper procedures, the report said.
Four agencies accounted for 95 conversions, roughly 66 percent of the conversions in the four-year period. The agencies with the most conversions were the Health and Human Services Department with 36; the Justice Department, 23; the Defense Department, 21; and the Treasury Department, 15.
Among the biggest agency transgressions was to create positions for political appointees or to rewrite job descriptions and requirements to fit a political hire’s resume. GAO cited seven examples of reserving jobs for favored applicants, among them:
- The Homeland Security Department created a career-excepted service position and gave the job to a former political appointee without letting other candidates apply;
- In two cases, HHS changed mandatory job requirements already posted in job announcements to closely match a Senior Executive Service candidate’s experience;
- DOD “preselected” a political appointee for a job, giving him an unfair advantage over other applicants.
In other instances, agencies showed preferential treatment to under-qualified applicants over others with more experience and knowledge, and agencies ignored merit system procedures.
It’s worth an agency’s time to make sure hiring procedures are followed, said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association. “If you are an agency manager and you’re hiring for a position, you have to cross all your t’s and dot your i’s,” she said. By following the procedures properly, she says, one can’t help but hire people whose qualifications match the job description. “If one doesn’t follow the process, that’s when GAO steps in.”
The presence of a pampered hire, especially if the new person is to manage employees who also applied for that job, can create ill feelings. On the other hand, political appointees have a limited shelf life. If they are converted to a career policymaking position after their patron administration has moved on, Bonosaro said, members of the new administration will view them with suspicion.
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