Good News!  Say Goodbye to the Hiring Freeze


To:       Distribution:  A, B, DC, AO

From:     Norman E. Schmidt, Jr.
          Chief, Branch of Human Resources Management Support

Subject:  Good News!  Say Goodbye to the Hiring Freeze


This past Wednesday afternoon, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, 
Management, and Budget approved the draft DOI Career Transition 
Assistance Program (CTAP) Plan, that sets the policy for future staffing 
and recruitment activities in the Department.  The Plan became effective 
when sent to OPM on April 30, 1996.

You'll see that there's a lot to the Plan, but important to you now is 
the order of selection for filling vacancies.  Key definitions include:

     Special Selection Priority (SSP) - Affords priority consideration
     to DOI employees who are still employed, but are facing RIF
     separation, if they apply for a vacant position in the local
     commuting area (LCA) from which they will be separated and are
     determined to be well qualified.

     Reeployment Priority List (RPL) - Provides qualified DOI employees
     who may be or have been separated with priority consideration for
     vacancies within their LCA in most situations when the position is
     being filled from outside DOI's permanent workforce.

The order of selection that must be followed in filling a vacant position 
is the following:

     - Actions not subject to SSP (there are 19 exceptions including
       career ladder and accretion promotions, details, and reassignments
       due to reorganization when the former position ceases to exist);
     - Well-qualified SSP applicants within the LCA; 
     - Any action on a permanent DOI employee (and some other actions 
       provided for in the regulations and cited in the Plan);
     - Qualified RPL registrants within the LCA;
     - At bureau discretion, any other well-qualified former displaced
       DOI employee;
     - Any well-qualified interagency CTAP SSP-eligible applicant;
     - Any other qualified candidate.

What does all this mean?  At the present time there are only a handfull 
of SSP-eligible employees in the DOI.  Now, this would change if 
additional RIF's take place, but right now SSP will not be a problem in 
most places.  If there are no well-qualified SSP eligibles in the LCA, 
you can take any other internal action including promotion and 
reassignment through the Merit Promotion Plan without clearing the RPL.  
The RPL comes into play only if you plan to bring someone in from outside 
DOI, and then, only RPL registrants from the LCA.  If there are no 
qualified RPL registrants in the LCA, and no well-qualified SSP-eligibles 
from other agencies in the LCA who applied for the vacancy, then you may 
select any other qualified individual who applied or was certified by 
OPM, e.g. a former employee, an ECO associate, a WRRI intern, or any 
other non-status candidate.  And, you don't have to get an exception from 
the Department to hire that person!  Now that's good news.  As always in 
your recruitment efforts, please remember our responsibility to be 
sensitive to the overall value of differences among the workforce. 

I know that many of you have been really frustrated and even angry about 
the restrictions that had been placed on us over the past six months or 
so.  And I know that we've lost a number of good potential employees 
during that time even when freeze exceptions were granted.  It is a shame 
that nothing can be done to "reverse the clocks" to recapture some of 
that talent.  All we can do now is "acknowledge and move on."  And move 
on we can.

There will be official guidance coming out from the Bureau very soon on 
the "do's and don'ts" of CTAP.  We must continue to do all that we can to 
provide opportunities for colleagues, peers, and other unfortunate 
Federal employees who have been affected by RIF.  There, but for a 
different swing of the budget ax, are we....  But now we once again have 
some flexibility to manage.  Enjoy.

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*  Cathy Hill                                     *
*  Assistant Chief Hydrologist for Operations     *
*  U.S. Geological Survey                         *
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