Proposals to split SES and eliminate review boards spark debate

A good government group on Thursday released proposals for revitalizing the Senior Executive Service that largely won praise from a professional group for top government leaders. But two recommendations proved contentious.

Carol Bonosaro, the president of the Senior Executives Association, said she was glad the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service and consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton focused on challenges facing the SES, and she agreed with the bulk of the report containing their suggestions. She took issue, however, with a proposal to split the service into two groups -- one of mobile managers who would rotate among agencies, and another of managers who would stay put in their respective agencies. She also criticized the report for advocating abolishing the Qualifications Review Board, which assesses candidates for admittance into the SES.

Senior executives already have the freedom to move from agency to agency, Bonosaro said. By limiting the mobility of one group, the reform could hinder agency flexibility, she said.

"The last thing we need is more splintering," she said.

Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service, said the issue wasn't flexibility, but finding a way to ensure the government uses the SES to promote interagency cooperation, as it originally was intended. "You've got to find some way to mandate it or incentivize it," he said.

The report also argued for eliminating the Qualifications Review Board, which is an independent panel staffed by SES members and used to assess certain qualifications of SES candidates. According to the report, qualifications are becoming too tied to technical abilities, and are growing excessively complex and cumbersome. The report called for the Office of Personnel Management to set the qualifications, and then conduct post-hire audits to ensure the SES is not being politicized.

But Bonosaro said post-hiring audits would be too late to guard against political influence, and that the QRB does not take up too much time.

She agreed with the rest of the report, which included recommendations to raise the SES pay ceiling above that for members of Congress; streamline the SES hiring, promotion and pay systems; tighten limits on politically appointed SES members at individual agencies; and give SES members locality pay.

Bonosaro said she especially supported another recommendation that OPM should conduct more comprehensive governmentwide tracking of senior executives after they are hired. She said too many policy and administrative decisions are based on incomplete information. "You can't make policy on the basis of anecdotes," she said.

Still another recommendation in the report appears on its way to fulfillment. OPM on Wednesday announced the establishment of a single office to oversee the SES, which the groups had advocated.

Stier said the report showed the SES was falling short on goals envisioned in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that created it, and the program must be reformed to meet today's demands.

During a panel discussion on Thursday, Booz Allen Hamilton Vice President Mike McConnell and former NASA Director Sean O'Keefe, who is now a vice president at GE Aviation, argued that a mandate was necessary to force agencies to cooperate on personnel matters.

McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, noted the military branches were engaged in bitter turf wars prior to passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which required them to cooperate. It is human nature to stick with a group unless forced to do otherwise, he said.

"We optimize with the unit we're in," McConnell said.