§1103 Functions of the Director

Summary

The Director must run and manage the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The Director hires and supervises staff, divides work, manages the office budget, and makes sure OPM’s work is accurate, consistent, and fair. The Director enforces the President’s civil service rules and the civil service laws, and oversees OPM activities like retirement and job classification. The Director also reviews operations under chapter 87, carries out studies under chapter 47, advises the President on civil service policies (for hiring, pay, promotion, transfers, performance, job conditions, job security, and separations), and may incur official reception and representation expenses within legal limits. When OPM proposes a rule that affects others outside OPM, the Director must publish a general notice in the Federal Register with the information required by section 553(b)(1)–(3), post the proposal where federal personnel rules are kept, and, when practical, notify employee representatives and interested members of the public. Those notice steps do not apply to temporary emergency rules or to setting pay schedules or rates under subpart D of part III (but do apply to the procedures or methods used to set them). OPM must also create systems and measures, set by OPM regulation, to judge how well agencies manage their people. Those systems must cover aligning workforce plans with agency goals and budgets, closing key skill gaps, keeping leadership through hiring and succession planning, building a high-performing culture, managing knowledge with training and technology, and holding managers and HR staff accountable under merit system principles.