Personnel Practices

This report looks at the detailing of employees at Executive Branch agencies to the White House. Specifically, GAO determined (1) agency compliance with laws requiring that agencies certify that a Schedule C position is not being created solely to detail an employee to the White House; (2) compliance with reimbursement requirements for details to the White House lasting more than 180 days in a fiscal year; (3) the extent to which Schedule C detailees to the White House have converted to career positions there since January 1989; and (4) whether any other executive branch agencies performed duties at the White House.

GAO found that: (1) 115 employees were detailed to 4 of the 5 EOP agencies during fiscal year (FY) 1991; (2) another 25 persons who worked at EOP agencies during FY 1991 were categorized as nondetailees; (3) 76 Schedule C appointees were on detail at EOP agencies from November 1990 through March 1992; (4) 4 of those employees were appointed after November 6, 1990 and were subject to the certification requirement; (5) EOP identified five categories of other employees working at EOP that it considered nondetailees because they did not meet the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) definition of a detailee; (6) EOP did not apply the reimbursement criteria to the other categories of employees as it did for detailees; (7) it agreed with EOP employee category classifications, except the category of assignee; (8) no Schedule C detailees were converted to career positions during the review period; and (9) EOP should clarify the definition of detailees and report nondetailees to Congress.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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