S. 1580 would amend federal law with the goal of expediting the federal hiring process by allowing agencies to share their assessments of job applicants with one another. Under this legislation, an agency that has compiled a list of candidates based on a rating system to fill a vacancy could share that information with other agencies.
Based on information from the Office of Personnel Management, CBO expects that without a formal and structured human resources process to share assessments between agencies few managers would use this authority. Because the bill would not establish such a mechanism, CBO estimates that any implementation costs or savings would be insignificant.
Enacting S. 1580 could affect direct spending by some agencies (such as the Tennessee Valley Authority) because they are authorized to use receipts from the sale of goods, fees, and other collections to cover their operating costs. Therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. Because most of those agencies can make adjustments to the amounts collected as operating costs change, CBO estimates that any net changes in direct spending by those agencies would be negligible. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.
CBO estimates that enacting S. 1580 would not increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits by more than $5 billion in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2026.
S. 1580 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments.
On July 13, 2015, CBO transmitted a cost estimate for S. 1580 as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on June 24, 2015. The two versions of the legislation are identical, and the estimated budgetary effects are the same.
