The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, (October 13, 1978, Pub.L. 95-454, 92 Stat. 1111) (CSRA), reformed the civil service of the United States federal government.
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 abolished the U.S. Civil Service Commission and distributes its functions primarily among three agencies: the newly established Office of Personnel Management, Merit Systems Protection Board, and Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Under the "rank-in-the-person" provision of the act, agency heads can move career senior executives into any position for which they are qualified. One provision of the act was the abolishment of the United States Civil Service Commission and the creation of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). OPM primarily provides management guidance to the various agencies of the executive branch and issues regulations that control federal human resources. FLRA oversees the rights of federal employees to form collective bargaining units (unions) and to engage in collective bargaining with agencies. MSPB conducts studies of the federal civil service and mainly hears the appeals of federal employees who are disciplined or otherwise separated from their positions. This act was an effort to replace incompetent officials.
The CSRA is codified in scattered sections of Title 5 of the United States Code.
Patricia W. Ingraham and Donald P. Moynihan describe the CSRA in Evolving Dimensions of Performance from CSRA Onward as "mov from personnel administration to the specific linking of human resource management to broader management activities and performance."
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“Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of patronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
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—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Finally, your lengthy service ended,
Lay your weariness beneath my laurel tree.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8)
“Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When sins are dear to us we are too prone to slide into them again. The act of repentance itself is often sweetened with the thought that it clears our account for a repetition of the same sin.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)