Personnel Conversions During Presidential Transition

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) investigated 43 personnel conversions processed during the recently completed Presidential transition period. OPM reviewed conversions at three agencies, and GAO subsequently reviewed conversions at four other agencies. As used in this report, conversion refers to the process in which an employee is converted from a position in the excepted service to a position in the competitive service. Excepted employees may be removed at the discretion of the Administration because they are not covered by the regulations governing the competitive service. However, employees in the competitive service are protected by laws and regulations which prohibit any personnel action based on factors other than job performance.

OPM officials stated that they did not know the total number of conversions from excepted to competitive positions during the transition period because many personnel actions were approved at the agency level without OPM review. However, the OPM and GAO investigations indicated that the transition period triggered a number of attempts to improperly convert excepted service employees. The OPM finding that 30 percent of the 43 conversion cases it reviewed were improper suggested that during transition other agencies may be improperly converting employees. The OPM plans to require weekly reports on conversion actions during the transition period would have certainly enabled it to better oversee Government-wide conversion activity. GAO believes that highly visible procedures for monitoring conversion actions would have been very useful during the transition period.

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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