Federal – Resource Library

Succession planning is becoming a valuable strategy for organizations to undertake when looking to minimize the impact of changes on its workforce. Although still not widely utilized across Federal agencies, it is becoming recognized as an important talent management and change management strategy for retaining leaders at all levels and thus reducing disruptions caused by continual turnover. Here are two reasons this rings true:

The quest to improve management of change in public sector agencies is by no means a new one. In 2006, Frank Ostroff, writing in the Harvard Business Review comments, that “the greatest challenge in bringing about successful change and significant, sustained performance improvement in the public sphere is not so much identifying solutions, which are mostly straightforward, as working around the unique obstacles” that are found in the public sector organizations.

For Federal HR professionals and managers planning their staffing, there is good news to help you ensure that highly-qualified employees fill key government positions. As of this month, the 2011 spending cap that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) placed on the 3Rs—recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives—has been lifted. Previously, agencies were required to ensure that any 3R spending did not exceed calendar year 2010 levels. This guidance expired at the end of 2015.

Under the Guiding Principles in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), FAR 1.102-3 – Acquisition Team states that identifying the members of the acquisition team encourages teamwork, unity of purpose, and open communication in sharing the vision and achieving the goal of the Federal Acquisition System.

In my last blog I discussed the findings from a study the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), in conjunction with the Project Management Institute (PMI)® recently published in a white paper, “Improving Program Management in the Federal Government.” They found acquiring knowledge to develop new skills or improve current skills is important, but it is just one factor in managing the challenges associated with delivering projects successfully. The organization and the context of project management in the organization can directly influence the success of projects.

A common source of project failure over the past two decades has continued to be the management or mismanagement of project requirements. We are not going to discuss project failure, but only to show that a clear understanding of some of the management concepts for project requirements is crucial to the dismantling of this frightful statistic of poor performance. One such understanding is the difference between requirement verification and validation: a concept in its current state of confusion that in our experience continues to provide a level of misapplication of requirements, management techniques, and practices. This is especially true of Information Technology software-oriented projects.

The grants community is under increasing scrutiny and pressure to protect Federal funds from waste, fraud, and abuse. 2 CFR 200 (Uniform Guidance) establishes protections at each part of the grants lifecycle to protect Federal funds from risk. The Uniform Guidance also defines the responsibilities for Federal awarding agencies, pass-through entities, grant recipients, and auditors to guarantee grant funding is used for its intended purposes.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of the billions in Federal Financial Assistance were spent without any violations, overpayments, or nefarious actions? While the Uniform Guidance provides a framework with checks and balances, it’s an impossible task.

Why? We’re human.

Although Individual Development Plans (IDPs) are used throughout the Federal government, their usefulness varies greatly based not only on how they are used in the agency but also on the quality of the IDP itself. HR can help managers to change IDPs from an administrative process to an opportunity to improve both individual performance and engagement.

Tag: Federal