§1103 Functions of the Director

Summary

The Director of the Office of Personnel Management must run the Office and carry out its main duties. The Director must make sure the Office’s work is accurate, consistent, and fair; hire and supervise staff; organize work and manage the Office internally; prepare budget requests and control spending; enforce the President’s civil service rules and the civil service laws; and oversee other OPM activities like retirement and job classification (except where the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Special Counsel mainly handles a function). The Director must also review operations under chapter 87, help and advise the President on civil service rules and personnel policies (such as hiring, pay, promotions, transfers, performance, tenure, and separations), run research under chapter 47 to improve personnel management, and cover official reception and representation costs within legal limits. Before OPM issues rules that affect other agencies or the public, the Director must publish a notice in the Federal Register with the required information, make sure the proposed rule is posted where agencies keep personnel rules, and, when practical, notify employee representatives and interested public members. Temporary emergency rules are exempt. The notice rules do not apply to setting pay schedules or rates under subpart D of part III, though the methods or criteria used to set pay do fall under the notice rules. OPM must also create systems and measures to evaluate how agencies manage people. Those systems must set standards for linking workforce plans to agency goals and budgets, closing mission‑critical skill gaps, ensuring leadership continuity, building a high‑performance culture, using knowledge management and training, and holding managers and HR officers accountable under merit principles.