No Time to Wait: Building a Public Service for the 21st Century

Glenn College Professor Jos Raadschelders was part of a five-member panel of National Academy of Public Administration Fellows who conducted a study on how the federal government's civil service staffing challenges can best be addressed. The report, "No Time to Wait: Building a Public Service for the 21st Century" was released today (7/19/17).

Calling the current federal civil service system "fundamentally broken," the panel recommends the federal government establish a new human capital system that provides agencies with the flexibility to effectively manage their missions. Specifically, the panel's recommended system would:

• Provide individual agencies the flexibility to create human capital systems that meet the needs of their missions.
• Uphold the core principles on which a civil service ultimately depends.
• Establish a governance and accountability structure that balances flexibility and core principles while using collaboration and data analytics to redefine accountability and to accelerate the system's ability to adapt to the future.

The Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust sponsored the study. The National Academy of Public Administration is an independent, nonprofit, and non-partisan organization chartered by Congress. It provides expert advice to government leaders in building more effective, efficient, accountable, and transparent organizations.