WMS program jurisdiction

Since its start in 1993, the Washington Management Service (WMS) system has been under the jurisdiction of the State HR Director, first through the Department of Personnel (DOP) and now through the OFM Office of the State Human Resources Director (OSHRD).   

Improvements recommended in 2010 by a cross-agency improvement team: 

Pre-Changes	Post Changes (complete by Spring 2011)
No enterprise control prior to July 2007	In November 2009, DOP Director revised enterprise wide control point for current biennium to 7.5%
Limited monitoring	DOP began monitoring WMS use through agency control points in July 2007; agencies above control point required to report in their HRM report.  In 2011 agencies will begin submitting a detailed WMS activity report annually
WMS Performance pay (on a limited basis) permissible without Performance Management Confirmation	Expedited approvals for WMS performance pay that were not approved through Performance Management Confirmation rescinded in January 2010
Agencies established evaluation and inclusion processes, no consistency across the enterprise	Each agency must submit evaluation and inclusion procedure to DOP for approval
Evaluation committees determined solely by agency, with no external involvement or criteria for committee members	Evaluation committees must include at least three representatives, one from HR, one manager and one representative from another agency; WMS Coordinators must be from Human Resources
No training required for agency committee members or WMS Coordinators	All evaluators required to receive WMS training; ongoing training to be provided by DOP
No external auditing	Results of a DOP prescribed agency self-audit submitted to DOP; periodic targeted audits completed by DOP and/or external representatives
Same evaluation (JVAC) tool and handbook used to evaluate Exempt and WMS jobs	Separate evaluation tools proposed for WMS positions (one for traditional managers and a separate one for individual contributors)
Same Position Description form for both Exempt and WMS jobs	Separate Position Description forms for WMS and Exempt
Lack of position information; difficult to determine and compare like positions in WMS	DOP established fifteen career categories (e.g., IT, HR, Finance, Engineering) and agencies coded positions in HRMS; DOP can centrally run data to determine usage of WMS

For further analysis, see DOP's WMS_Background_Status_October2011.docx