There is increasing interest in achieving quality through effective management and use of human resources in public administration. What is the appropriate personnel policy that will assure this quality in government operations? This essay compares two human resource administration approaches and their quality potential. The first, characterized as the Traditional Model, is intensely bureaucratic and dominant in most public organizations. It is seen as antiquated, more suited for the mass production requirements of America's early industrialization period. The second, called the Learning Support Model, responds to the challenges of postindustrial workers by developing their problem-solving capacities. This essay focuses on the federal government and argues that the Traditional Model is giving way to the new design.