Hiring Practices Used to Staff the Iraqi Provisional Authorities

This report responds to the concerns of Senators Schumer, Lautenberg, and Durbin regarding the practices and authority DoD used to hire civilians to work for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance ORHA and the Coalition Provisional Authority CPA. The report addresses the Senators concerns over the designation of appointments as political versus civil service, the authority for making the appointments, and the qualifications of those hired. Specifically, the report answers questions regarding who was hired, how personnel were recruited and selected, and how well skill sets matched job requirements. See Appendix D. We reissued the draft report to provide a complete response to the Senators concerns and allow the clients an opportunity to comment. The reissued draft report incorporated the audit results and answers to specific questions posed by Senate staffers. We considered client comments when preparing the reissued draft report. The complete text of these comments is in the Client Comments section. Rapidly staffing a temporary interagency organization in a war zone was a unique and urgent task. DoD used the appropriate employment and compensation authority established in 5 U.S.C. 3394 and 5 U.S.C. 3161 for staffing ORHA and CPA. DoD hired 366 civilians, none of whose appointments were Schedule C commonly referred to as political appointments. DoD also deployed 862 detailed civilians to ORHA and CPA. However, the Department did not fully account for these civilians. DoD can better prepare for future contingencies by establishing a framework to document hiring actions to ensure civilians are promptly assigned, deployed, and accounted for.