Chair Aldebol asks public panel what city can implement now without state approval

Yeah, I mean, I agree that, you know, this is, there are a lot of parts of the system that are antiquated.

There are some things that we have to go through the state, you know, the state has to make changes and there's some things that we can implement now.

What are some of the things that the city...

And I'll ask anybody, what are some of the things that the city can implement that you think the city can implement now without having to go through the state process?

I also agree on the licensing.

If people already have to go through a licensing process, why go through the whole process?

Civil service exam process.

I totally agree with a lot of what you have said, but I do want to know from your perspective what the city can do and what we can do as city council to try to move some of these things forward.

Thank you for that question.

There's a lot actually that the city can do.

I'll share some and then invite others to join in.

One of the easiest and most straightforward things.

that DCAS can do on its own is really think about the language that it uses.

Introduce and mandate plain language standards that actually get implemented

for all sources of information, whether it's going to external applicants, whether it's going to existing city employees, to make sure that every New Yorker understands civil service.

I think if you go to the street right now and ask people what is civil service, most people even walking around this district

wouldn't necessarily know.

Another thing that can be done is specifically design materials with hiring managers in mind.

They play an outsized role in bringing staff into the process in partnership with HR.

It's important to recognize the role that they do play and make sure that they're prepared to participate and understand all of the options available to them.

Katrina mentioned some of the social media push and other types of things, which is a great start, but really meeting New Yorkers where they're at through

other types of information that isn't self-selecting and things that people see every day.

I'll quickly go through a couple others.

We don't have any mechanisms right now for agencies to share strong candidates that apply to one job, particularly non-competitive roles with other agencies.

We're seeing this come up with the marketing push that was done for

the public interest technology, the pit crews at OIT.

There are hundreds of other technology vacancies that don't get that same level of marketing.

The 4,000 plus candidates for those 35 roles aren't going to be able to be accessed by other agencies.

So creating mechanisms there.

Others have talked a lot about real timelines, both publishing true hiring timelines and identifying the actual bottlenecks that are holding them up, regardless of agency.

And then finally, adopting things like continuous recruitment, band scoring, and alternative evaluation methods like structured interviews when they're appropriate can both maintain the principles of merit and fitness

while speeding up hiring and recognizing that the job market across the city has changed and that city career paths and job availability needs to change along with it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Let me just say first that the four of us all know each other.

We've actually spent a lot of time kicking around.

We have a giant spreadsheet, right?

And actually went through that to look for ideas that are within the power of the city to enact that have low cost associated with them and that actually in many cases have a way to mitigate the political risks or challenges associated with the changes.

Those are all important variables.

So the things you're hearing us talk about today reflect some of our thinking about what's actionable by the city.

And a lot of it comes down to start with clarification.

You know, it's a complex process.

Most people don't understand it.

I worked for the city for almost 10 years and had to reverse engineer my way into understanding it, like as an investigative journalist, practically.

So I think we can do a lot to make it more approachable.

Then we can actually begin to have an honest conversation with our entire workforce about what reform would look like and actually have informed advocates who are hiring managers who are part of the process to inform it.

The things that we're talking about today, we believe are common sense solutions.

So I'll mention two specifics that Rebecca can call out.

Aligning OMB with the posting authority that's already granted to an agency so that we're not going through another round of approval from OMB for an unnecessary review.

And that mention of practical civil service training.

for all hiring managers and HR managers across the city.

I feel like I could design a really, really good training for people to understand in a practical manner what this thing is and how you interact with it.

I would be more than happy to offer that guidance to my colleagues at DCAS or anywhere else in the city.

I think Mike and Rebecca have covered a lot.

And as we've mentioned, we would love to, we have a whole spreadsheet on this stuff.

And I think it would take longer than the testimony to go over all those things.

But as they've both mentioned, you know, putting pressure on the mayoral administration to take these actions would be.

Certainly recommended by us.

I also know that there are ongoing contract negotiations, you know, right now between the city and unions.

And one way to tackle a lengthy list like this would be to establish a labor management committee as a result of those contract negotiations.

So, you know, in if in the short time before a contract is probably signed, that can be advocated for.

We would certainly welcome it.

I don't have much to add beyond what the three of them already said.

And we can maybe try to put some of what's in the spreadsheet together and something digestible for your committee.

One of our suggestions actually related to the COGE process was to develop

once every five years or once every four years of the new mayoral administration, a workforce plan that's kind of similar to the capital planning process that goes into, you know, for each of the agencies, what their five-year outlook is and the, you know, the changing needs of their workforce, which I think also speaks to

council member wrestlers, questions about kind of an aging workforce and the need to really plan out around turnover.

And then to identify, you know, kind of cross-reference that against data around time to hire and vacancies to identify where do elements of this process need to change.

I think many elements can be changed at the city level.

Certainly there are some laws that would need to change at the state level, but I think, you know, in our spreadsheet, we have many, many rows of, you know, DCAS only, or the administration only could change this.

But I think that part of the issue is the lack of centralized data to really demonstrate where the problems are most severe.

And I think also to Council Member Hudson's point,

you know, like we're the only four people testifying right now, and there might be a few others, but there's, there's, there's not as much of a constituency for this type of change.

And yet, we see the direct linkage between

vacancies and the time it takes to hire and then the really, really important work done by civil servants on crises and emergencies that are happening in the city, whether it's legionnaires or just getting people cash assistance on time, which we've done kind of a dismal job at.

And so I think that there's also some work to do to really demonstrate the tie between.

The experiences that New Yorkers are having that are enabled by government and the bottlenecks and kind of the delays that are written into our policies that are kind of required as part of the process and that don't need to be.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate your testimony, and I look forward to getting that spreadsheet.

I mean, it certainly will assist our committee in thinking through what we can do to...

You know, move civil service in a more modern direction, which is something that I think

is one of my primary concerns, especially as chair of this committee.

And again, thank you so much for your thoughts and your experiences.