OPM asks agencies to identify career positions, low-performing employees
The Office of Personnel Management released multiple memorandums this week that continue the Trump administration’s push to shift agencies away from career employees and toward more political positions across the government.
OPM asked agencies in a Wednesday memo to identify all Senior Executive Service (SES) positions and make requests to keep those people in career roles if the agency head believes the “President’s goals and priorities would be better served by keeping” the status quo.
OPM said the Trump administration received reports that agencies near the end of the Biden administration redesignated SES positions that are traditionally held by noncareer employees, labeling them as positions that can only be held by career employees under the titles “general” or “career reserved.” Another OPM memo released this week pushed to classify chief information officers as general employees.
“Positions that, in the first Trump administration, were seen as appropriately held by noncareer appointees, or by either career or noncareer appointees, should retain that status under the current administration,” the Wednesday memo stated.
Agencies have 45 days to report the positions identified in a review of all agency SES positions that were either designated as general on the last day of the first Trump administration or were general-designated SES positions then filled with political appointments “for a majority of the prior administration’s tenure.”
In a Thursday memo, OPM gave agencies until March 7 to send a report detailing employee performance metrics that specifically focus on those who have received “less than a ‘fully successful’ performance rating in the past three years,” with an individual’s name, title, pay plan, agency, and duty station included.
“OPM is developing new performance metrics for evaluating the federal workforce that aligns with the priorities and standards in the President’s recent executive orders,” the Thursday memo stated. “All agencies should submit data regarding their performance management plans and policies — including those contained in collective bargaining agreements.”
As OPM develops metrics to evaluate the federal workforce, the memo said that agencies should identify any barriers to ensuring that agency performance plans make “meaningful distinctions based on relative employee performance” and that agencies have the ability to “swiftly terminate poor performing employees who cannot or will not improve.”
The memo also asked agencies to report to OPM any existing regulations, agency policies or terms set in collective bargaining agreements that would impede performance plans from making “meaningful distinctions based on relative employee performance,” or hinder an agency’s ability to “swiftly separate low-performing employees.”
