Latest news with #civilservice
Arab News
3 hours ago
- Business
- Arab News
Trump administration moves to fast-track firings of federal workers for misconduct
President Donald Trump's administration moved on Tuesday to make it easier to fire federal employees for misconduct, the latest step in a broader effort to overhaul the civil service and shrink the federal bureaucracy. The US Office of Personnel Management published a proposed rule that would allow the office, which acts as the federal government's human resources department, to direct other agencies to fire employees for conduct such as tax evasion, leaking sensitive information and refusing to testify in other workers' disciplinary cases. The rule would extend OPM's existing power to designate job applicants as unsuitable for federal employment, to current federal employees, a change it said was necessary to hold government workers accountable to the public. Federal workers have for decades been covered by an array of job protections, including the ability to contest firings by engaging in a lengthy administrative process. The proposal would allow agencies to refer misconduct cases to OPM instead of going through the traditional disciplinary process. If OPM determines that removal of an employee is required, an agency would have five days to terminate them. 'Illogically, the government has far greater ability to bar someone from federal employment who has committed a serious crime or misconduct in the past than it does to remove someone who engages in the exact same behavior as a federal employee,' OPM said in the proposal. The publication of the proposal kicked off a 30-day public comment period. Since Trump's second term began in January, the administration has moved aggressively to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including directing mass firings and layoffs and implementing changes to the civil service. Many of those policies have been met with court challenges and some have been temporarily blocked by judges. OPM, which is closely linked to the White House, has played a key role in those efforts by attempting to give Trump more direct control of the federal workforce. Many unions, Democrats and advocacy groups have said Trump's various policies violate complex federal civil service and labor laws meant to regulate government employment and ensure that federal workers are insulated from political influence. OPM on Tuesday said the policies agencies have followed for decades rely on overly cumbersome and restrictive procedures that protect misconduct. 'This arbitrary state of affairs seriously impairs the efficiency, effectiveness, and public perception of the Federal service,' the agency said.
Reuters
6 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Trump administration moves to fast-track firings of federal workers for misconduct
June 3 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration moved on Tuesday to make it easier to fire federal employees for misconduct, the latest step in a broader effort to overhaul the civil service and shrink the federal bureaucracy. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management published a proposed rule, opens new tab that would allow the office, which acts as the federal government's human resources department, to direct other agencies to fire employees for conduct such as tax evasion, leaking sensitive information and refusing to testify in other workers' disciplinary cases. The rule would extend OPM's existing power to designate job applicants as unsuitable for federal employment, to current federal employees, a change it said was necessary to hold government workers accountable to the public. Federal workers have for decades been covered by an array of job protections, including the ability to contest firings by engaging in a lengthy administrative process. The proposal would allow agencies to refer misconduct cases to OPM instead of going through the traditional disciplinary process. If OPM determines that removal of an employee is required, an agency would have five days to terminate them. "Illogically, the government has far greater ability to bar someone from federal employment who has committed a serious crime or misconduct in the past than it does to remove someone who engages in the exact same behavior as a federal employee," OPM said in the proposal. The publication of the proposal kicked off a 30-day public comment period. Since Trump's second term began in January, the administration has moved aggressively to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including directing mass firings and layoffs and implementing changes to the civil service. Many of those policies have been met with court challenges and some have been temporarily blocked by judges. OPM, which is closely linked to the White House, has played a key role in those efforts by attempting to give Trump more direct control of the federal workforce. Many unions, Democrats and advocacy groups have said Trump's various policies violate complex federal civil service and labor laws meant to regulate government employment and ensure that federal workers are insulated from political influence. OPM on Tuesday said the policies agencies have followed for decades rely on overly cumbersome and restrictive procedures that protect misconduct. "This arbitrary state of affairs seriously impairs the efficiency, effectiveness, and public perception of the Federal service," the agency said.
The Independent
a day ago
- Business
- The Independent
After DOGE firings White House asks new job seekers to write Trump loyalty essays, from lawyers to janitors
After a months-long freeze on hiring new federal employees and the Elon Musk-led DOGE cuts to the government workforce, the Trump administration is ready to resume civil service hiring — as long as the applicants answer a few essay questions about their level of loyalty to the president and his mission. The Office of Personnel Management last week quietly published a memorandum authored by Vince Haley, the White House 's head of domestic policy that was addressed to the head or acting head of every agency across the entire executive branch. According to the White House's directive, a copy of which was reviewed by The Independent, anyone applying for a civil service position at entry level or above — including such jobs as nurses, janitors, economists and lawyers, among others — must respond to a series of essay questions before they can even be considered for an interview. The 'merit hiring plan' lays out in detail how to implement a January executive order signed by Trump to 'prioritize recruitment of individuals committed to improving the efficiency of the Federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution.' The plan also seeks to prevent anyone who is 'unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch' from being employed in the civil service. One question asks applicants about their 'commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States,' while another question asks applicants to state how they would 'help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities' and to 'identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives' that they find significant to them. They must also explain how they'd help implement these orders or initiatives. If applicants write answers that are satisfactory enough to land them an interview, the memorandum also states that they must participate in an 'executive interview' with a political appointee from 'agency leadership' who will evaluate their 'organizational fit and commitment to American ideals.' For civil service experts and good-government advocates, the new applicant screening process is setting off alarm bells. Adam Bonica, a Stanford University political scientist who publishes the 'On Data and Democracy' newsletter on Substack, wrote on Sunday that the White House's directive 'signals a profound departure from a cornerstone of American democracy: the non-partisan, merit-based civil service' and looks to implement Project 2025 efforts to deconstruct the nonpartisan civil service in favor of a return to the 'spoils system' that was in place until the late 1800s. 'A merit-based civil service that took generations to build is being dismantled via memo,' he charged. The new hiring guidelines aren't the only way Trump and his allies are upending the nonpartisan system that was set up to govern federal hiring in the wake of President James Garfield's 1881 assassination by a disgruntled office seeker. Shortly after he returned to power in January, Trump signed an executive order that ordered agencies to reclassify career employees who work on policy matters into a new 'schedule' that strips them of nearly all civil service protections. The directive largely re-implements an October 2020 order Trump signed to establish what was then called 'Schedule F' and was set to be comprised of any federal worker in 'confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions.' That broad category includes most of the government's non-partisan experts such as scientists, doctors, lawyers and economists, whose work to advise and inform policymakers is supposed to be done in a way that is fact-driven and devoid of politics. Combined with the more than 100,000 open positions created by the massive number of firings and resignations across the entire executive branch during Trump's first few months back in power, these new policies could allow the administration to recruit an equal number of MAGA devotees who would eventually acquire protection from removal by future administrations. Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, told Axios on Monday that it looks like the administration is 'emptying the shelves of the existing nonpartisan expert civil servants' and 'restocking' those same shelves with 'loyalists.' Jeri Buchholz, a former head of HR at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told the outlet that traditional federal hiring, by law, was meant to 'focus on the knowledge, skills and abilities required for the position.' She said the Trump White House's required questions are by contrast 'philosophical' and 'not even aptitude related,' making them difficult to square with the 'merit hiring plan,' especially since it purports to require agencies to speed up hiring decisions.
BBC News
3 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Obituary of Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, former Northern Ireland Civil Service head
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield was one of the most distinguished civil servants in Northern Ireland's the 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, he was a key figure behind-the-scenes, trying to ensure public services ran as normally as death was announced on Saturday. He was Kenneth was born in Belfast on 15 April 1931 and he was educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) and Oxford entered the Northern Ireland Civil Service in years later, he was appointed private secretary to the then Stormont Finance Minister Captain Terence O' rose through the ranks, and in January 1974 he was given a key role working with the new power-sharing executive, led by Ulster Unionist Party leader Brian and nationalist politicians came together to govern for the first time but the cross-community executive collapsed after five months due to hard-line unionist opposition, including a loyalist workers strike. IRA attack In 1988, the IRA tried to kill Sir Kenneth at his family home in Crawfordsburn, near Bangor, County Down, in a Semtex bomb attack.A colleague who was in the civil service at the time remembers how calm Sir Kenneth was after the Nigel Hamilton, who also became head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, said: "Within an hour (of the bombing) he had put out a statement and within a couple of hours he was back in the office, working again."He wanted to show leadership."He wanted to show that we were all resilient and he wasn't going to be deflected from his public sector service because of what had happened." After he retired, Sir Kenneth reflected on the downfall of power-sharing in May said: "It was the worst day of my official career of nearly 40 years – it was the worst single day. I could foresee that we were going to be plunged for further decades into a situation when there would be no local hand on the tiller."He was right. It would take another quarter of a century for power-sharing to the interim, violence raged in the political attempt in 1985 by the then UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher to improve the security and political situation by signing an Anglo-Irish Agreement with the Dublin government led to sustained unionist civil servants trying to keep public services going, the challenges were huge. After Sir Kenneth stepped down from the job of head of the civil service in 1991, he took on a wide range of public and private sector roles, including Northern Ireland national governor of the BBC; vice-chair of the National Museum and was also senator at Queen's University Belfast; the inaugural victims' commissioner; and co-commissioner of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' also worked outside of Northern Ireland, consulting on issues in Jersey, Israel, Austria, Bangladesh and the received honorary doctorates from Queen's University Belfast, Ulster University and the Open University. 'I played by the rules' Sir Kenneth also wrote a number of A New Life, published in 2008, he wrote: "I enjoyed access to ministers and the opportunity to make recommendations and suggestions to them."They might well decide to do something different as was their prerogative."I played the game by the rules, and any disagreement while serving, I kept to myself."Once he left the civil service, he was more free to speak his mind about politics past and wrote a book called A Tragedy of Errors: The Government and Misgovernment of Northern it came to Stormont politics, he was an eyewitness to history, and played his part, in good times and in bad.
The Sun
5 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
More than 80k civil service jobs should be scrapped to save taxpayers £5bn a year, urges report
MORE than 80,000 civil service jobs should be scrapped to save taxpayers £5billion a year, a report has urged. The efficiency plan - backed by former top mandarins - includes slashing communications staff by 70 per cent and halving the HR departments. 1 Whitehall 's headcount has ballooned from 380,000 to 514,000 since just 2016 - costing around £25billion in salaries and pensions. Experts say this has only slowed government output by creating needless bureaucracy rather than investing in frontline services. Analysis by Policy Exchange found identical jobs are being done sometimes two pay bands higher than they were 30 years ago. Ex-Home Office director and report author Stephen Webb said a slimmed-down civil service would allow for better pay for remaining talent while making big government savings. He said: 'The proposals in the paper don't require scaling back services, but should allow the system to work better. "The system will be cheaper and more effective.' Sir John Kingman, who was previously the second-in-command at the Treasury, backed the plan, adding: 'An over-resourced administrative machine inevitably generates ever more process for itself and slows itself down.' Recommendations also include cutting the number of senior civil servants by 50 per cent, and a cap on their numbers. It also proposes using compulsory over voluntary redundancies in order to retain the best performing staff. Ministers have announced plans to cut £1.5billion from the civil service budget by the next election, but Policy Exchange says their plan would go 'further and faster'.
