President Barack Obama signed a bill into law on Friday that was co-authored by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) to streamline the hiring process used by federal agencies.
Portman and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) coauthored the bipartisan Competitive Service Act, S. 1580, to enable federal agencies to review and hire candidates from other agencies’ lists of qualified applicants to cut down on duplicative efforts.
“It’s critical that the federal government has world-class, highly-trained individuals able to deal with sensitive national security issues like cybersecurity and information technology,” Portman said. “Our bill will streamline the hiring process — enabling agencies to share applicant pools so that qualified individuals will not have to undergo an already slow hiring process time and time again for similar positions across the federal government. This is a common sense bill to help agencies get the right people in the right jobs in a more efficient manner.”
Under current law, federal agencies that have similar hiring needs are not allowed to share information about qualified applicants who have already undergone a competitive assessment process and have already been certified as eligible for selection.
U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) are cosponsors of the bipartisan bill.
Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said that the bill would enable agencies to quickly fill mission-critical vacancies and to meet challenges varying from cybersecurity to veterans’ healthcare.
“This legislation represents a common sense way of treating our government as a single organization trying to achieve shared goals rather than a disconnected collection of many agencies,” Stier said. “We are grateful to Sens. Tester, Portman, Cardin, Moran and Heitkamp for their leadership on this important effort.”