U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

Job Family Position Classification Standard for Administrative Work in the Equipment, Facilities, and Services Group, GS-1600

May 2003

 Table of Contents

Page 1 of 32

Appendix H – Historical Record and Explanatory Material

KEY DATES AND MILESTONES

In December 1999, the Classification Programs Division (CPD) within the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) resumed an earlier effort to develop the Job Family Position Classification Standard for Administrative Work in the Equipment, Facilities, and Services Group, GS-1600.  During 1999-2000, we conducted factfinding at 38 locations representing 13 agencies within the Federal Government.  We applied the information gathered from the factfinding and other data collected to develop the Draft Job Family Position Classification Standard for Administrative Work in the Equipment, Facilities, and Services Group, GS-1600.

In October 2001, OPM electronically released the Draft Job Family Position Classification Standard for Administrative Work in the Equipment, Facilities, and Services Group, GS-1600, for agency review, comment, and test application.  The release of this draft represented the third use of our pre-planned lead agency approach in which we asked those agencies with the largest covered populations to take the primary role in reviewing and commenting on the draft.  By using the lead agency approach, we did not require agencies with few or no employees in the covered occupations to provide comments if it was of no appreciable benefit to them.  The new streamlined approach worked well by yielding prompt, comprehensive information and suggestions.  This appendix addresses concerns and proposals expressed by reviewing agencies and describes our responses in this final job family position classification standard.   It also gives information that may help in transitioning from canceled standards to this new job family standard.

DEFINING STUDY AND JOB FAMILY COVERAGE

There were three existing standards in this job family that covered both nonsupervisory and managerial work:  the General Facilities and Equipment Series, GS-1601; the Cemetery Administration Series, GS-1630, and the Printing Management Series, GS-1654.  In our continuing efforts to streamline and simplify the General Schedule classification system, we are developing and maintaining standards and guides that cover one type of work; e.g., nonsupervisory work in job family standards; supervisory and/or managerial work in a supervisory guide; leader work in a leader guide; research work in a research guide; etc.  We believe this approach reduces the number of choices a user has to make in selecting the appropriate tool to evaluate work, and it further simplifies the task at hand.

In 2001, prior to releasing this draft for agency testing, we met with the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of the Interior (key users of the existing GS-1600 Group managerial criteria) to discuss eliminating coverage of managerial work from this standard and appropriately classifying such managerial work.  We agreed that all managerial positions should fully meet factor level 3-3b in the General Schedule Supervisory Guide as a prerequisite.  In addition, we decided to retain the managerial criteria documented in the existing General Facilities and Equipment Series, GS-1601; the Cemetery Administration

Series, GS-1630, and the Printing Management Series, GS-1654, standards as appendices to this job family standard until we make future decisions about appropriate evaluation of managerial work.  The remaining occupations in the GS-1600 group did not contain duties that would meet the managerial criteria.

For additional information on these issues, see the Results of Agency Review, Comment, and Test Application section that follows.

RESULTS OF AGENCY REVIEW, COMMENT, AND TEST APPLICATION

A.  JOB FAMILY STANDARDS – GENERAL ISSUES.   In addition to using the job family standard (JFS) approach to developing and issuing position classification standards, we make every attempt to simplify and streamline position classification concepts, documents, and procedures with every issuance of a new JFS.  We tested and implemented new ideas in the GS-1600 Administrative JFS, with the help of agency HR offices and subject matter experts.

1.  Changing Names of Series within This Job Family.   In developing the final job family standard, we modified some of the name changes we had originally proposed in the draft for consistency.  Since all of these occupations provide services to a customer base, we modified the titles to include the word “services.”The final series names are:

2.  Adding a Section on General Series Determination Guidelines.   We added a section to this and other appropriate job family standards, “General Series Determination Guidelines,” under GENERAL SERIES, TITLING, AND OCCUPATIONAL GUIDANCE to provide helpful information in selecting the appropriate occupational series when it may not be obvious.

3.  Changing Titling Practices from “Manager” to “Specialist” for All Administrative Work. We proposed to discontinue the use of the term “manager” from titling practices for administrative positions having “program management responsibilities” in occupations covered in this standard as well as all subsequent standards.  We proposed this change in conjunction with our efforts to continually simplify and clarify all aspects of classification.   We proposed to change the title and definition of specialist work and modify position titles within the job family standard to reflect the change.

4.  Retaining Grading Criteria for Managerial Duties in Appendices.   We proposed retaining the grading criteria for managerial duties found in the Equipment, Facilities, and Services, GS-1601; Cemetery Administration Services, GS-1630; and the Printing Services, GS-1654, series pending further analysis of managerial duties.

2.  Removing the Specialty Titles in the Equipment Services Series, GS-1670.  We proposed to delete the specialty titles in the Equipment Services Series, GS-1670, to provide the agencies with greater flexibility in assigning their own unique specialty titles.

3.  Assessing Impact on Grades.  We followed our usual practice of requesting that reviewing agencies report any effect that applying the draft JFS had on the grades of the tested positions.  The JFS covers approximately 10,151 positions Governmentwide.

 Table of Contents