Given the stereotypes about government employees, it’s easy to assume that federal worker protections have led to a vast army of aging-in-place bureaucrats who simply can’t be removed. But organizational experts and former federal human resource managers say the problem is more complicated than that, and more troubling for good governance. They see an ineffective hiring system that is decades out of date. They have spent years warning policymakers that rules and laws were inhibiting their ability to hire and train new employees. The aging of the federal workforce, they say, is a symptom of Washington’s inability to keep up with modern-day management practices and to plan for the future—as well as a system hamstrung by rigid federal employment directives, some of which, ironically, were aimed at freshening up the workforce.

“It’s not so much a matter that old people are stupid and young people are smart,” said Don Kettl, a professor at the University of Maryland who has written extensively on government management. “It’s that smart agencies develop a plan for a pipeline. The federal government’s biggest problem is it’s not very good at pipeline planning.”