In a recently released preliminary fiscal 2011 employment report, the President’s Council on Veterans Employment found that the percentage of veterans being hired is the highest it’s been in more than 20 years. Almost three of every ten new hires made by the government this year were veterans.

Veterans comprise 28.5 percent of new employees at a time when government is hiring few people in totality. This signifies a constant growth since 2009 when President Obama put in motion the Veterans Employment Initiative to encourage agencies to recruit veterans by making the hiring process and the subsequent transition easier.

A recent survey found that more than 50 percent of federal managers believe that multiple programs should be cut by a super committee in order to save money and minimize government contractors. An overwhelming 84 percent of survey respondents maintained that decreasing the contractor workforce would save expenses, while more than half opined that reducing the number of contractors would help in eliminating waste.

The survey report stated that “paying more into their pensions, reducing the salary used to calculate annuities, further freezing pay and raising health care premiums are unacceptable to the majority of managers.”

Do you support reducing the size of the contractor workforce? Why or why not?

Long before President Barack Obama launched the hiring reform initiative in 2010, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry voiced his concern over too-lengthy job descriptions.

Berry says that federal hiring is still a very long process and asks too many questions from the applicants, but is headed in the right direction. At an event at the Brookings Institution, he said that the federal hiring process has somewhat began to resemble the hiring process of Fortune 500 companies. According to Berry, it takes 15 percent less time for an applicant to make it through the entire process. Most job applications are no more than five pages in length and are easier to read.

In spite of the advantages brought in by the revamped system, however, some experts say that the process still needs work. For instance, panelists suggest that the agencies should more closely consider the tools that they use to assess the candidates.

Talent always trumps time, however. Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service sums it up best: “That assessment of talent is vital. At the end of the day, it doesn't much matter if you hire quickly or slowly if you've got the wrong person.”

Do you agree with Stier? Or is it more important to hire swiftly? Is it too much to ask to hire quickly, while still placing highly-talented people in key positions?

In the opening of the hearing, however, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia, showed concern that federal government is exceedingly clinging on to contractors. He cautioned of the understaffed and undertrained federal acquisition workforce and probable conflict of interest among the contractors after referring to a Washington Post report from last year that 30 percent of intelligence workforce is contractors. 

Do you think the government relies too heavily on contractors? What about your agency? How can we decrease dependency on contractors government-wide?

The Integrated Process Team for Spouse Employment and Empowerment organized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff found that spouses of disabled service members or of deceased were not making use of the hiring authority, while those affected by relocation had no issues with the two-year requirement. OPM says that “all other noncompetitive hiring authorities have a time limitation for appointment eligibility.” It further adds that “elimination of the two-year window for [permanent change of station] military spouses would create an inconsistency between this group and other individuals eligible for noncompetitive entry into federal service.” 

Do you agree with OPM’s new ruling? Why or why not?

OPM had USAJobs.gov back online after two days, but lost all applications that were submitted between late afternoon August 7 and midday August 9. HHS said that the “unscheduled maintenance … was necessary to research, identify and resolve problematic issues reported by users of the system.” It further added that “this unscheduled maintenance has undoubtedly caused a delay in recruitment efforts and service agreements.”

 Were you affected by the site crash? How can OPM better handle situations like this in the future?

A new report released by a nonprofit organization reveals that more than 50 percent of federal employees hold creativity and innovation in high regard.

The Partnership for Public Service—along with Hay Group, a global management consulting firm—analyzed the factors that drive innovation and modernization in federal agencies and found that 63.3 percent of employees gave a positive score on innovation to the government. This percentage was derived at based on the 2010 Office of Personnel Management's annual survey regarding the attitudes of federal employees; the survey included 263,000 employees from 32 large agencies, 34 small agencies and 224 agency sub-components.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and NASA were ranked as being among the most innovative agencies. The Army, State Department and General Services Administration rounded out the top five.

Do you think the federal government is innovative? Why or why not? How is your agency innovative? What else could the government be doing to modernize itself?

New government data has revealed that while 17 large agencies have sped up their hiring times during the second year of the Obama Administration’s efforts to streamline and systematize federal hiring, three agencies took longer to hire in 2010 than they did in 2009.

The Social Security Administration, the Justice Department and the Small Business Administration all reported longer hiring times last year. Four agencies showed no progress in 2010: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NASA and the Departments of Treasury and Agriculture.

Many agencies, however, are making considerable growth and reported decline in hiring time—from when an agency decides to hire a new employee to that new employee's first day. The Departments of State, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and Health and Human Services all reported a decline in hiring times as high as 40 percent. The average hiring time for Health and Human Services has dropped from 152 to 80 days.

The Office of Personnel Management, which released the latest figures on agencies' hiring times, says agencies should take no more than 80 days to hire a new employee.

Does your agency comply with OPM’s standards? Do you think 80 days is a realistic timeline for government agencies to adhere to? Why or why not?

A recent review of the Army’s acquisition process found that the service branch did not put to good use more than $1 billion a year between the years of 1996 and 2004, and more than $3 billion a year between 2004 and 2009, on significant programs which were eventually cancelled. 

The 2010 report blamed the “erosion of the core competencies of the personnel responsible for the development of requirements and the acquisition of systems and services” for the broken Army acquisition process.  The review was carried out by retired 4-star general Louis Wagner, who served as commander of the Army Materiel Command from 1987 to 1989, and by an outside group headed by Gilbert Decker. Decker served as the assistant secretary of the Army for research, development and acquisition from 1994 to 1997.

In response to the recommendations of the Decker-Wagner review, the Army states that it intends to recruit around 2,000 acquisition workforce personnel by the year 2015.