Legislating Civil Service Reform: The Homeland Security Act of 2002

The Homeland Security Act HSA, enacted in November 2002, created the Department of Homeland Security DHS. The legislation combined 22 existing agencies and 170,000 federal employees into a new cabinet-level department -- the largest and most complex reorganization of the Federal Government since the creation of the Department of Defense nearly six decades earlier. Included in this legislation was authority for the Department to initiate new approaches to personnel management outside of the normal rules of the federal civil service. This new personnel management authority was potentially the most significant change in civil service law since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 CSRA. The personnel management provision of the HSA also turned out to be among the most contentious provisions of the proposed law, tying up final passage of the legislation until after the mid-term elections in November 2002 and pitting the administration and major federal employee unions against one another in a hard-fought battle for support on Capitol Hill. This report is an analytical case history of the passage of HSA, focusing on the personnel management section. It includes a review of the recent history of civil service reform, a chronology of the major events leading up to passage of the legislation, and a detailed examination of the rhetorical framing of the debate over the legislation, which the authors conclude offers a powerful explanation for its passage. In examining this case, the authors also suggest some important implications for the implementation of personnel management reform. This analysis is based on a review of public documents and on interviews with key participants.