Despite criticism of Trump’s SES reforms, senior executives group backs recent updates to training program

The Office of Personnel Management on June 25 issued a final rule to overhaul a Senior Executive Service preparation program in order to “enhance training and development for aspiring SES and accelerate the development of well-prepared leaders to ensure leadership continuity.”

The Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program helps agencies identify and prepare federal employees who wish to join the cadre of the highest-ranking career staffers. Qualifying graduates of the program can receive an SES appointment without further competition. 

Some of the changes that the new rule makes to the program include: 

• Authorize OPM to create a governmentwide SESCDP. 
• Specify that an agency SESCDP must last between 12 to 24 months and increase the number of executive training hours from 80 to 100. 
• Require a minimum of 10 hours each for coaching and mentoring as well as a continuous 180-day assignment outside of the scope of the candidate’s “position of record.” 

OPM officials argued in the rule that these changes are necessary to promote standardization across agency SESCDPs. 

“Inconsistencies among SESCDPs have yielded mixed results across participating agencies. That variability has resulted in different training and development experiences for SESCDP participants and leads to some programs that are more effective than others in preparing their leaders,” they wrote. “This causes fluctuating levels of candidate placement rates and creates challenges in supporting governmentwide succession planning efforts.” 

While the Senior Executives Association has criticized several of the reforms that the Trump administration has made to the SES, the professional organization backed the training updates. 

“The Senior Executives Association welcomes OPM’s final rule on SES Candidate Development Programs,” SEA President Mary Kate Whalen said in a statement. “Preparing the next generation of federal executives is essential work, and we appreciate OPM’s sustained attention to building a leadership corps that is capable, accountable and ready to serve.” 

The organization warned, however, that the new training requirements could lead to costs that “fall unevenly across agencies” and urged OPM to help agencies share resources. 

The Partnership for Public Service nonprofit reported recently that the number of career employees in the SES has decreased by nearly 30% since the start of Trump’s second term. 

The Trump administration has limited the number of senior executives who can receive top performance ratings, put more weight in reviews on whether the SES member is aligned with the president’s priorities and called on agencies to redesignate more of their senior positions as being open to political appointees.