The Biden administration last week announced the appointment of half a dozen political officials to the Office of Personnel Management in a move that experts say could position the agency well in its efforts to reassert itself.
The list of non-Senate confirmed political appointees includes a mix of campaign veterans and subject matter experts. Rita Aguilar, senior advisor in the Office of Congressional, Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, was on President Biden’s OPM transition team, and has previously served as a deputy associate attorney general, while Deputy General Counsel Rachel Cotton led the transition team's ethics and compliance efforts. Cotton was previously counsel for the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
Biden also appointed Alethea Predeoux to be director of OPM’s Office of Congressional, Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. Predeoux previously was an executive at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, a mark of how the Biden administration hopes to give labor a voice in its decision-making process on federal personnel policy.
“This appointment is further evidence of the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to protecting and honoring the federal workforce and elevating the importance of unions,” an OPM spokesperson said.
The hiring spree comes shortly after the release of a study from the National Academy of Public Administration aimed at re-empowering the federal human resources agency. That report found that the agency must reinvent itself to be more data-driven and forward-looking, focused on the future of federal employment in a strategic manner rather than compliance with federal regulations on a transactional basis.
That study also criticized the Trump administration’s use of OPM ..
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