Trump to convert some top career roles to political appointments and evaluate execs on adherence to president’s agenda

The Trump administration is reshaping the top ranks of federal agencies by making more employees politically appointed and ensuring those who remain in career roles are evaluated based on how well they implement the president’s agenda. 

The Office of Personnel Management on Monday called on all agencies to redesignate some of their Senior Executive Service employees as political appointees, rather than reserving them for career staff. On Tuesday, it announced a new performance appraisal system for career executives, which will now give the most significant weight to how well the top-level supervisors carry out the president’s policies. 

The nearly 9,000 SES employees are the top ranks of the civil service and serve as liaisons between political staff and the rest of the career workforce. On his first day in office, President Trump signed a memorandum that gave political appointees a bigger role in overseeing and evaluating career executives. It also previously converted all chief information officer roles to open them up to political appointments.  

OPM acting Director Charles Ezell directed agencies to develop new lists of SES staff, one that designates the roles that will remain “career reserved” and one that proposes to change the staff to a “general” position that can be filled by political appointees. Those lists are due to OPM by March 24. 

Ezell said some SES positions—3,571 of them—must be career reserved by law. Others are otherwise well-suited to retain that designation, he added, though many should be changed. 

“OPM believes that many of the current career reserved positions across the federal government are not the sort of technical positions appropriate for career reserved status,” Ezell said. 

SES positions with “policy” in their titles or who serve at the deputy assistant secretary level or above should be converted to general designations open to political appointees, according to OPM’s guidance. Ezell also directed agencies to convert any position that was not career reserved, but has since been designated as such, on the day before President Biden took office. 

“While agency leadership can and frequently do [sic] leverage career staff in such situations, they should have maximum flexibility in opting for non-career officials to carry out presidential priorities,” the acting OPM director said. 

Marcus Hill, president of the Senior Executives Association, said his group supports efforts to strengthen accountability within the SES and its members would work with the Trump administration. The new guidance suggests, however, that “career federal executives cannot be trusted to fulfill their responsibilities related to assisting incoming administrations with effectively implementing their agendas.”

“This simply is not true,” Hill said. “Historically, the vast majority of SES and other federal executives have honorably and faithfully served bipartisan presidential administrations.”

He added the guidance was inconsistent with federal statute governing the SES, as it would ensure any policy-related position “can only be filled by the administration's political cronies.” 

The new performance appraisal system for top career officials will “ensure that senior executives are responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the nation and otherwise is [sic] of the highest quality,” Ezell said. 

The performance reviews will create a forced curve system in which—at agencies with at least five senior executives—only 30% can receive ratings of four or five out of five. Any employee who receives a one out of five will automatically be demoted out of the SES, as will any employee who receives two scores of two in a three-year period. Only employees who receive scores of four or five will be eligible for performance-based bonuses of more than 5%. 

“Establishing governmentwide limits on rating levels will promote a high-performance culture,” Ezell said. “Only truly exceptional performers will receive the highest ratings. And poor performers will receive ratings commensurate with their performance.”