| What: | Creation of the chief human capital officer role and the CHCO Council |
| When: | The Chief Human Capital Officers Act was passed in 2002 as part of the Homeland Security Act |
| Why it matters: | The CHCO role transformed the way agencies approach human capital management, while the formation of the CHCO Council propelled HR leaders to think of workforce management as a governmentwide goal, rather than being siloed at individual agencies. |
The creation of a key leadership role in 2002 transformed how agencies manage what many say is the federal government’s most critical asset: its people.
Human capital challenges in government have existed for decades. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, converging attempts to address the issue began to take shape. The Office of Personnel Management was looking to enhance the role of HR in government. The Government Accountability Office was beginning to elevate conversations on human capital management. And when President George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the first pillar of his administration’s President’s Management Agenda was about the strategic management of human capital.
The human capital push was coming from within Congress too. The late Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) advocated for years for federal workforce reforms. In congressional testimony from March 2000, Voinovich went so far as to say the government was facing a human capital “crisis” — one that needed to be “aggressively addressed.”
At the time, though, there was no clearly defined leadership position to manage the workforce within each agency. Many agencies had HR directors, but that role didn’t have standardized responsibilities governmentwide. And while there were pockets of collaboration among HR leaders, there was no singular sounding board to bring human capital challenges to the forefront of federal strategy.
Still, what Voinovich and many others saw as a critical gap in human capital management wasn’t immediately taken up. Instead, it took the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, for Congress to fully respond to the issue. The shock of the major national security crisis, in part, led to the passage of the Chief Human Capital Officers Act — wrapped within the 2002 Homeland Security Act. Among the larger government restructuring that came from the landmark legislation, it also created the chief human capital officer role — a key position tasked with ensuring agencies had the right people in place to fully deliver each agency’s mission.
“So many things have gone wrong recently in the federal government because we lacked the right people in the right job,” Voinovich, who led the charge on adding the CHCO Act into the bill, wrote in a July 2002 press release.
Regardless of whether the CHCO position’s creation was intentionally connected to the need for a stronger national security presence in the U.S., or whether the Homeland Security Act was simply a must-pass vehicle that could ensure the role’s establishment, it ultimately heightened the authority of human capital experts in government leadership.
“HR had always been a really important function in the government, but when you compared it to the chief financial officers, the CIOs, even the chief acquisition officers, human capital didn’t have a complete seat at the table,” John Salamone, a long-time federal human capital leader, said in an interview. “The real push was to promote this notion of elevating human resources, giving them a seat at the table with other C-suite functions so they can be on an even playing field.”
The tremendous tasks of the agency CHCO
Under the 2002 legislation, CHCOs were specifically responsible for “selecting, developing, training and managing a high-quality, productive workforce in accordance with merit system principles.” Congress wrote that a CHCO should set workforce development strategies, assess current workforce characteristics as well as future needs and align HR policies with agency mission — among many other tasks involved in attracting and retaining the best federal employees possible.
And if the tasks of the CHCO sound challenging on paper, they are even more difficult to accomplish in reality. They require leaders who are experts not only in the management of employees, but also in navigating the complexities of federal regulations on recruitment, performance, pay and more.
Traci DiMartini, a federal executive who has led human capital management at the Peace Corps and General Services Administration, most recently serving as human capital officer of the IRS, said the CHCO role is “not for the faint of heart.”
“Anyone thinks they can do HR until they’re actually put into the role — then they understand and see how complex it is and how much of a discipline it is,” DiMartini said in an interview. “Everyone thinks it’s just transactional business — like processing personnel actions, or handling payroll and benefits. But it’s also making sure you’re training the next generation of managers and leaders, and taking one step back to actually select the ones who can be successful.”
And the “human” element of a chief human capital officer is hugely important too, DiMartini added.
“In government, people often like things that are very black and white — things that can be looked up in federal regulations,” she said. “But federal regulations do not tell you how to deal with an employee who may be facing a large bill due from a court filing where they have to pay alimony or child support. They’re not telling you how to console a group of employees who just lost of a coworker to a long illness or a tragic accident. They’re not telling you how to deal with hiring freezes, with those long stretches of pay freezes, when employees feel really devalued. But that is HR. That is the heartbeat.”
The foundation of the CHCO Council
In addition to launching the role of the CHCO, the Homeland Security Act also established the CHCO Council — a statutory board of human capital leaders across government who regularly meet to share ideas and lessons learned, and discuss how to tackle some of the government’s longest-standing workforce challenges.
The 2002 legislation called for the council to be co-led by the OPM director and the deputy director for management within the Office of Management and Budget. An executive director would then take the lead on the more specific strategies and goals of the council.
“Anytime you stand something up in the government, it takes time to get some momentum and traction,” said John Salamone, who served as the second-ever executive director of the CHCO Council from 2006 through 2009. “Today, it’s still continuing to grow and still continuing to evolve to meet the evolving nature of the federal government.”
When Salamone stepped in as executive director of the CHCO Council, he took over the role after Mike Dovilla, now an Ohio state representative. At the time, Salamone said he came into the council to build on what already existed — with one of the significant changes being the addition of the deputy CHCO position, as well as a separate council for deputy CHCOs.
The council under Salamone also launched six subcommittees to broadly tackle human capital management from multiple angles: emergency preparedness, hiring and succession planning, the human capital workforce, the HR line of business, learning and development, and performance management.
“When I was leaving the council in 2009, in the very last annual report that I was responsible for crafting and submitting to Congress, we outlined three emerging issues to pass on to the Obama administration,” Salamone said. “I think each one of those emerging issues, even though we were writing them in 2008 and 2009, are still applicable.”
Ron Sanders, who back in 2003 was serving as an associate director at OPM, was integral in shaping the initial CHCO role and CHCO Council’s structure.
“Back then, we were trying to transform government,” Sanders said in an interview. “The CHCO Council was supposed to set governmentwide strategy. It was intended to serve as a model for the other CXO councils and literally set policy and strategy for the government generally, with the individual CHCOs setting policy and strategy for their individual agencies. That was the vision.”
But on reflection, Sanders said he believes the vision of the council has never been fully realized.
“The CHCO position has devolved into a career HR director position, and it has been far more focused on execution, not on things like an agency’s culture, personnel authorities and flexibilities,” Sanders said. “I’m hopeful that there is still time for the CHCO Council to become what it was originally envisioned to be, but it has deteriorated and devolved over time.”
CHCO Council nearly eliminated, then rebuilt
During President Donald Trump’s first term, the administration’s failed attempt to merge OPM with the General Services Administration nearly decimated the CHCO Council in the process. The staff, budget and administrative resources that supported the CHCO Council moved from OPM to GSA in December 2019.
Then in 2021 under the Biden administration, when the council’s responsibilities and resources were returned to OPM, the doors opened to a complete rethinking of the structure, purpose and policy goals of the CHCO Council. Then-CHCO Council Executive Director Margot Conrad and then-CHCO of the Interior Department Raymond Limon co-led the creation of a new charter for the CHCO Council — which focused on bringing the administrative functions back to OPM, acquiring a more significant budget and hiring more staff.
“It was a unique opportunity to update the CHCO charter, to modernize it by understanding where we came from back in 2003, and why that was so important. But also acknowledging the radical transformation of information technology and the future of work,” Limon, who has served as a human capital officer at multiple agencies, as well as vice chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, said in an interview.
A March 2021 report from the National Academy of Public Administration offered up 23 recommendations on restructuring and strengthening OPM to improve human capital across government. Part of that report, which serves as a blueprint for addressing long-time federal workforce challenges, warned that the CHCO Council was underutilized.
“We wanted to make sure that we had the voice of the CHCOs helping to really shape and steer the council,” Conrad said in an interview. “We very intentionally created an executive steering committee that met every two weeks to really ensure that it was a body that was driven by CHCOs, but in partnership with the OPM leadership and subject matter experts as well.”
The new charter of the CHCO Council led to years of work during the Biden administration to bolster the use of human capital data in decision-making, as well as use more collaborative strategies for federal recruitment, such as shared certificates and pooled hiring. And leading up to new final regulations in 2024, CHCOs were also involved in informing the major overhaul of the Pathways Program.
A growing recognition of human capital’s importance
But over time, many career CHCOs have also pointed out various tensions in the federal human capital community — whether it’s how the political and career sides of the CHCO Council should interact, how the CHCO role itself should be approached, or how human capital leaders should work with the executives leading different components of an agency.
“I remember in 2012 we brought the CIOs and CHCOs together at OPM for a meeting. And it was so clear — there were some agencies where the CHCO and the CIO sat side by side. It was a relaxed relationship. But then I swear there were some others where we were introducing them for the first time,” DiMartini said. “We’ve gained a lot more respect over the last 25 years, but I still think there is a reluctance to fully grasp and understand why human capital matters.”
“CHCOs deserve to be at the table for every decision made at the agency,” DiMartini added. “Let the human capital professionals do what they do best — develop policy and provide guidance. CHCOs are important. They should be valued.”
For Conrad, the relationship between career and political leadership on the CHCO Council is an essential one. If done effectively, political leaders can elevate the voices of CHCOs and bring forward legislative proposals attempting to reform human capital in a way that’s fully informed by those who know the issues best.
“If political leadership really views the CHCOs as these senior advisors that can help them understand what’s happening on the ground and share recommendations on how to make things better, that is invaluable,” Conrad said. “CHCOs are perfectly positioned to understand their organizations, the people, the mission, where the challenge points are — and also to creatively problem-solve and figure out ways to do things better.”
The relationships on the council also depend on who’s sitting in the political seats. Throughout various administrations, some OPM and OMB leaders have been deeply involved in the council and attempted to listen to the challenges and advice of CHCOs. But other political leaders might drop in for attendance and opening remarks, then leave within the first 15 minutes of a council meeting.
“The CHCO cannot be seen as out of lockstep with leadership,” Limon said. “And when you don’t have that leadership buy-in, then that’s just going to make the CHCO’s job much more difficult, creating this sense of, who’s in charge? What are we trying to do? What are we focusing on?”
The future of CHCOs and the council
Given all the major, rapid overhauls currently underway for the federal workforce, it’s no surprise that the CHCO Council is currently operating at full force. While the council has continued to hold its regularly scheduled monthly meetings, CHCOs have also ramped up the frequency of “special sessions” of the council, figuring out how to address the massive uptick in policy implementation work over the last several months.
Colleen Heller-Stein, the current executive director of the CHCO Council, likened the pace of the rollout of Trump administration’s workforce changes to interval training for a running race.
“We have been moving at a rapid pace. But there’s not a CHCO out there who hasn’t experienced the need to implement something quickly,” Heller-Stein, formerly CHCO of the Treasury Department, said in an interview. “There are times where you really need to surge, and you are going at a much quicker pace because something needs to happen. But then there might be some downtime where you evaluate, you’re taking stock — and maybe you’re making a plan for the next surge.”
Heller-Stein pointed to the deferred resignation program as one effort the administration wanted to implement rather quickly — and that required the expertise of CHCOs to make it a reality.
“Things like this have happened in industry, but it was something entirely new and novel for government,” Heller-Stein said. “It’s a great example of the CHCOs coming together and really partnering with OPM to figure out how to implement it. We really relied on the CHCOs’ experience and knowledge specific to the federal sector to think that through.”
Despite all of the changes to the federal workforce, some of the long-term human capital goals for the council also remain the same, like figuring out more efficient hiring methods, and using workforce data to make informed, strategic decisions, according to Heller-Stein. Moving forward, she said she’s looking forward to the release of the President’s Management Agenda, which CHCOs have historically been heavily involved with on the implementation side.
At the same time, though, others in the human capital space have said they believe the Trump administration’s changes to the workforce will mark a negative turning point for recruitment and retention, both now and in the future.
“In any agency, how you treat your people, how you hire them, how you train them, how you onboard and offboard them, that makes a difference. We are making an impression on the next generation of civil servants right now — and it’s not a very good one,” DiMartini said. “But I’m hoping, through trial and error over the next few months, we can all come back together as career executives and find a way to improve the experience.”
And in some ways, Sen. Voinovich’s perspectives on the pervasive challenges of federal human capital are more relevant now than they ever have been.
“How can we ensure that federal workforce downsizing is managed strategically to ensure that our need for experienced, skilled employees is not compromised and the government’s ability to provide quality services is maintained and even enhanced?” Voinovich wrote in 2000. “For example, I suspect that, in some instances, the employees most likely to take buy-outs are those the federal government can least afford to lose.”
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