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Major personnel management objectives are dictated largely by the requirements of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 as they are applicable to the Institution's civil service employees and as similar changes are appropriate for the Smithsonian's trust fund employees. Among the significant new or expanded programs that must be developed and installed are those covering performance appraisal for the highly diverse workforce, merit pay for supervisors and managers at certain grade levels, the management of executive resources, special minority recruitment in coordination with the Office of Equal Opportunity, and labor-management relations. Action has been completed on establishing policy and procedures for a probationary period for new supervisors and managers and a plan has been developed for appraising the performance of senior executives. By mid-1981, other new programs are expected to be in effect. Other program objectives for the planning period include the development of a personnel system and procedures for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute consistent with treaty-implementing legislation, implementation of the Factor Evaluation System in job classification, participation in the development of the new computerized personnel/payroll system, and the continued development of policies and procedures for the civil service and trust personnel handbooks. While most of this extraordinary workload will be accomplished with current staff, it will be important to sustain and build upon the improvements that have been made to meet recruitment, classification, placement, and training in a prompt and responsive manner. A goal is to reduce the present ratio of personnel staff to employees served from 1:100 to about 1:80 (the federal government's ratio is about 1:65).

Equal employment opportunity and civil rights programs will be strengthened through a minority recruitment program, an expanded upward mobility program, and, now under active development, by a cooperative education (study/work) program in collaboration with colleges and universities. Programs for women, Hispanics, and the handicapped will be continued. Civil rights efforts will emphasize contractors' compliance with laws, regulations, practices, and procedures and with program and facility accessibility by the handicapped visitor to the Institution.

Plans for photographic services through FY 1985 call for increased support for collections management, exhibitions, research, and publications. Efforts will be made to contract for routine processing whenever possible to save staff resources for assignment to special work. In support of collections management, photodocumentation of the collections will be stepped up to coincide with the inventory process, particularly in collections of high intrinsic value. Improvements to color printing capability for exhibitions are planned. Another basic objective is to offer greater photographic assistance to researchers, including field photography. There will be continued development of a negative catalogue and retrieval system. A special effort will be made to eliminate hazardous nitrate negatives from photographic collections throughout the Institution. The program for the development and sale of slide programs