With the failed attempt at comprehensive reform of the civil service system in 1995, the Clinton administration encouraged individual agencies to seek their own personnel flexibilities. That strategy met with some success with the granting by Congress of special authorities to units with a total of approximately 200,000 employees. However, the disaggregation of the federal personnel system this approach portends holds profound and potentially adverse consequences for the institution of the civil service, for the values of merit and equity that have been traditionally associated with the civil service, and for the public service ethos that provides the civil service a constitutive role in our system of governance.
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