A report from the Government Accountability Office has found that federal agencies approved political conversions without first seeking approval from the Office of Personnel Management.
The Sept. 30 report found that of the 69 conversions studied — so-called for the process of converting a political appointee to a career position — 17 were approved by federal agencies without first seeking the approval of OPM, which is required to approve any political conversion.
Conversions are also called “political burrowing” and have been a hot-button topic on Capitol Hill as the Obama administration winds down.
OPM released additional guidance in January for agencies looking to convert political appointees and the House Oversight and Government Reform committee has been actively requesting correspondence on the conversions for much of the year.
Following enactment of the Edward ‘Ted’ Kaufman and Michael Leavitt Presidential Transitions Improvements Act of 2015 in March, OPM is required to report the number of conversions to Congress at varying times during the year, while agencies are required to apply new reporting requirements as well.
The GAO report studied political conversions at 30 agencies from Jan. 1, 2010 to Oct. 1, 2015, finding a total 69 conversions. Of the 17 approved without OPM review, the agency conducted post-appointment reviews of 13 employees, approving nine. The remaining four were denied.
OPM found that of the four employees who did receive a post-appointment review, three were no longer in those career positions and the review process was set to begin for the remaining employee in September 2016.
Agency officials told the GAO that their human resources departments didn’t understand OPM’s review policy, including which employees would require a pre-appointment review.
“Agency officials identified difficulties understanding OPM’s policy for prior approval of political conversions as a reason for not seeking prior approval, and they identified various steps they are taking to better adhere to OPM and agency policies,” the report said.
OPM is also supposed to track conversion reporting through its Enterprise Human Resources Integration system, a database that tracks potential political conversions.
Eleven of the 17 suspect conversions were identified by the EHRI system, but it took a year after the conversions for the system to identify them, the report said.
OPM said that the EHRI system was reliable, but should not be the lone method for identifying conversions due to issues like coding errors or other agencies’ failure to submit corrections.
The GAO report recommended that OPM establish a process for agencies to verify and correct political conversion data, as well as conversions not receiving OPM approval.
OPM officials disagreed with the recommendation and said it has an appropriate process in place, but noted that it was making improvements to how it identifies conversions.
But the GAO said it considers the recommendation valid.
“OPM currently does not seek from agencies verification of the data OPM has already collected to correct any data discrepancies,” the report said.
“Having agency verified data could help OPM more quickly identify conversions agencies implemented without OPM approval, thus helping to achieve better compliance with OPM’s stated policy.”
Read
the report here.
