The Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget have issued a final rule that lets the personnel office limit how many of the government's senior experts and scientists can receive top performance ratings, lifting a regulatory ban on the forced, or standardized, distribution of ratings for that workforce. The rule is set to appear in Monday's Federal Register and takes effect Nov. 18.
It applies to senior-level and scientific or professional employees, two groups OPM refers to together as senior professionals. Their positions are classified above GS-15 and just below the Senior Executive Service, and they are expected to bring a high level of expertise and independent judgment to agency missions, according to the rule. More than 60 agencies, from cabinet departments to small independent offices, employ them, and OPM put the average salary across the two pay plans at $204,735 as of September 2024.
OPM's case rests on the ratings themselves. In fiscal 2023 and 2024, about 90 percent of senior professionals were rated at Level 4 or Level 5, the two highest marks, and fewer than half of one percent landed below Level 3, or "Fully Successful," the rule's preamble says. The office wrote that the pattern comes nowhere close to a normal bell curve and "suggests there is inflation of senior professional ratings and poor performing employees are likely not being identified or held accountable through a rigorous appraisal process." It also cited the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, in which just 47 percent of federal employees agreed that differences in performance in their work unit are recognized in a meaningful way, the weakest positive response to any question on the survey.
The regulation gives senior professionals their own section of OPM's performance rules, modeled more closely on the appraisal system for senior executives. It eliminates the separate appraisal programs that agencies had to set up on top of their appraisal systems, an arrangement OPM called burdensome, and it calls for progress reviews at least once a quarter and a minimum appraisal period of 90 days. Agencies with 10 or more senior professionals will use their Performance Review Boards for centralized review of ratings, and every senior professional will be able to ask for a higher-level review of an initial rating, whatever the level.
Once the rule takes effect, OPM may set, and later refine, a distribution for some or all rating levels that agencies must apply. Senior professionals appointed under Schedule C or Schedule G in the excepted service may be left out, an exclusion the office said eliminates even the perception that the limits could be used to favor political appointees over career employees. OPM said it intends any limits to be applied at an aggregate level rather than by supervisors within their own teams, and only after each employee has been assessed against established performance standards. Nothing in the rule requires ratings to fit a bell curve. Under the appraisal system OPM has already issued for this workforce, the President may waive the distribution for an agency by certifying that its senior professionals' performance was outstanding.
The rule follows a broader push on ratings across the civil service. In a Sept. 21 memo, OPM told agencies to cap the combined share of the two highest ratings at 40 percent for the current review cycle, and the cap covers career senior professionals as well as General Schedule employees and career senior executives, Federal News Network reported. OPM called the limit "a ceiling, not a target" and said a smaller pool of top-rated employees should mean bigger bonuses for those at the top. The office removed the forced-distribution ban for the General Schedule in July, after earlier making similar changes for career senior executives.
Few people weighed in on the senior professional rule, and they split. OPM received 12 comments during a 30-day window after it proposed the rule in February. One supporter wrote that "for too long, 'leniency bias' has led to rating inflation." Another commenter called the rule "a step in the wrong direction to ensure high level performers necessary for these positions are willing to become civil servants." Two commenters urged OPM to try the changes as a demonstration project before applying them governmentwide, warning of risks to morale, retention and organizational effectiveness. Another argued that ratings now carry higher stakes because OPM's reduction-in-force rule puts them ahead of length of service when agencies decide whom to keep.
Two commenters also asked OPM to withdraw the rule, arguing that other recent personnel actions had destabilized the federal workforce. OPM said those objections were aimed at policies outside the rulemaking and noted that its ratings data largely predate the events the commenters described. It also rejected the argument that the limits would sap senior professionals' motivation. Because their ratings are bunched at the top and awards budgets are limited, the office wrote, performance awards have shrunk, along with the link between ratings and rewards. With fewer employees earning the highest marks, it said, "those ratings will carry greater meaning and warrant more significant recognition and reward."
Unions are already fighting the wider overhaul. A coalition of federal unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees has sued over OPM's performance management changes, alleging that they violate the Civil Service Reform Act and exceed the agency's statutory authority, Federal News Network reported. The senior professional rule includes a severability clause: if the standardized distribution were ever held unenforceable, OPM wrote, the rest of the rule would remain in effect.