Civil service rules adopted

July 27, 2004

No matter how you look at it, the rule-writing team at the Department of Personnel (DOP) has cause to celebrate. On July 29, sixteen new chapters of rules will be put up for adoption by DOP director Gene Matt. The new rules support a modern, flexible personnel system.

“This has been such a great experience,” said Sandi Stewart, rules manager. “We have had the opportunity to redesign the look and feel of the civil service rules, many of which have been in place for decades, as well as make the format more usable for the average employee.”

To get to this point has taken two years of hard work, including a lot of research, extensive revisions and stakeholder involvement. As a result of usability tests on the initial draft, Stewart and her team changed to a more easily understood, question-and-answer format for the rules.

Still more to be done

“Even though we’ll be taking a little breather,” Stewart said, “we have plenty more to do this fall. We’ll be looking for feedback from the HR professionals as they write their new internal policies to follow these rules and develop their implementation strategies. There may be some adjustments that need to be made.”

Rules for Washington Management Service, leave and Combined Fund Drive will be drafted this fall and are scheduled for adoption in spring 2005, so they can be implemented along with the other sixteen chapters on July 1, 2005.

Thanks for your feedback…

Thanks to everyone who took the time to provide comments on the draft rules. Many revisions were made as a result of the feedback received.

To find out more about how the rules were developed, go to http://hr.dop.wa.gov/hrreform/rules.htm