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Partnership for Public Service Applauds the Senate for Introducing Hiring Reform Bill

June 16, 2015

WASHINGTON – Partnership for Public Service President and CEO Max Stier released the following statement on the Competitive Service Act of 2015, introduced in the Senate today:

“The Competitive Service Act of 2015 will speed up the current cumbersome federal hiring process, help candidates overcome barriers to public service and better enable our government to recruit top talent for mission-critical positions in fields ranging from cybersecurity to veterans healthcare. We are grateful to Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) for their leadership on this important effort.

This bipartisan legislation represents a common-sense way of treating our government as a single organization trying to achieve shared goals rather than a disconnected collection of many agencies. I am pleased that a companion measure sponsored by Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Rob Wittman (R-Va.) will be introduced in the House of Representatives later this week. I urge Congress to pass this important reform legislation.”

Under existing law, if agencies have similar hiring needs, they cannot share assessments of applicants with one another. By allowing this information to be shared, the legislation would cut down on duplicative work and provide qualified candidates not chosen for a critical position at one agency to be expeditiously considered for a similar job at another agency.

The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service released a comprehensive report in April 2014 calling for major reforms to the government’s decades-old civil service system, laying out a plan to modernize outdated hiring policies and other personnel practices. “Building the Enterprise: A New Civil Service Framework” calls the federal personnel system, the foundation for effective government, obsolete and in crisis, and an obstacle rather than an aid in attracting, hiring, retaining and developing top talent.

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