Detailing Appointees Outside the Agency

From time to time, an agency will need someone from outside their agency to work with them for a brief period of time. This could be done for a couple of reasons, one of which  is if there is an immediate personnel need to fill at an agency, because detailing someone already within the executive branch is much faster than hiring someone outside of the executive branch, due to the paperwork processes for new hires described earlier in the lesson.

Another reason may be if another agency needs an individual with a specific skill set for a short period of time. In cases like these, a temporary detail to another agency can rapidly fill the need, and the detailed employee can solve the issue or offer new insight as to how the agencies can work together. 

For a detail to another agency, it must be decided if the appointee’s salary of will be reimbursed by the home agency. If it reimbursed, separate paperwork must be filed which explains how much the appointee will earn during the detail. Once the appointee is detailed to another agency, the home agency would still pay the appointee’s salary from their budget. Upon conclusion of the detail, the receiving agency would reimburse the cost of the salary to the home agency. For a non-reimbursable detail, no additional paperwork is necessary, because the home agency would still pay the salary of the appointee and the receiving agency will not have to worry about using funds from their budget.

Details can last up to a year or be as short as three months. For a detail to last a year, it must be renewed in six months. At that point, the receiving agency can return the appointee to their home agency, or extend the detail another three to six months. Once a detail has lasted a year, the appointee must be returned to the home agency. However, the receiving agency my hire the appointee to be a part of their agency.

All details outside of the agency MUST be approved by PPO and paperwork must be signed off by PPO before the appointee’s detail in another agency can begin.