SES reform effort winds down with minor changes

Two years after the Office of Personnel Management proposed sweeping changes to the Senior Executive Service, OPM Thursday issued final regulations making only minor adjustments to the rules that govern Uncle Sam's career leadership cadre.

The final regulations order agencies to make executive leadership the most important skill requirement for SES applicants.

"In many agencies, the selection criteria focus mainly on candidates' professional or technical qualifications, and therefore consideration of executive qualifications is not getting the full attention intended by SES legislation," OPM said in a May 25 Federal Register notice.

The new regs also permit more short-term appointments for SESers and require agencies to certify that new senior executives are meeting high performance standards. At the end of executives' one-year probationary period, their bosses must complete the performance certification. During the probationary period, agencies must provide executives with executive development activities, OPM said.

"Stakeholders had serious concerns about the lack of attention paid to performance during probation," OPM said.

The changes are among only a handful of proposals for revamping the SES that have been approved since OPM began considering SES reform in 1998. One idea left on the cutting room floor was splitting the SES in two, with one half comprised of high-level professionals such as engineers, attorneys and scientists, and the other made up of management executives.

A host of other ideas were also dropped or watered down, including proposals to increase executive movement among agencies; create more special appointment authorities; extend the SES probation period; make it easier to remove executives; restructure performance evaluations; give agencies more authority to choose SES candidates by delegating the administration of Qualifications Review Boards (QRBs) to agencies; and de-link SES pay from congressional pay.

"Our view was always, first, if it isn't broke, don't fix it," said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association. The association opposed many of the original SES reform ideas. "There is plenty of flexibility in the SES system-in the statute and in the regulations. Agencies seldom use the flexibility they've got."

Several ideas in the original SES reform package have been implemented separately, including increases in bonuses for executives and an ongoing Clinton administration effort to tie executive compensation to three performance measures: customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and business results.

Bonosaro said she was pleased that the final regulations do not delegate QRB authority to agencies. That idea was part of a movement to give agencies freedom from governmentwide rules-a trend the Senior Executives Association would like to see curbed. Agencies frequently ask for such freedom to improve their ability to recruit and retain executives, and then fail to use it, Bonosaro said.

"It's almost like a teen-ager saying, 'I can't wait until I'm out of my parents' house,' and then when it happens saying, 'Gee, now I've got to pay the rent,' " she said.