PAY FOR PERFORMANCE: Agencies slow to get the word out on plans for SES pay

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June 2005; Vol. 1 No. 2

PAY FOR PERFORMANCE: Agencies slow to get the word out on plans for SES pay

By Richard W. Walker

Bush administration officials expect the new pay-for-performance system for members of the Senior Executive Service to help drive President’s Management Agenda goals on high performance in the federal government.

In recent testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Marta Brito Perez, the Office of Personnel Management’s associate director for human capital leadership, described the new SES system as “an emerging success story” in the administration’s effort to make high performance a way of life in federal service.

But senior executives are taking a more circumspect view of the program for now.

“I think the jury is out,” said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, citing a lack of transparency in the program.

Bonosaro said agencies have done a pretty good job of putting together SES pay-for-performance plans, as required by OPM, but have fallen short in getting those plans to senior executives.

“From the anecdotal evidence we’ve seen, there aren’t too many senior executives who are aware of what their agency’s pay-forperformance plan is,” she said.

“One of our members asked [his agency’s] personnel office for a copy of the plan and was told to file a Freedom of Information Act request. That got straightened out, but the point is that shouldn’t have happened.”

Perez told the Senate subcommittee on oversight of government management in April that 45 agencies had received full or provisional certification to date for their SES performance management plans.

The new system was established under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2004 and took effect last year.

It abolished six levels of SES pay, replacing them with an open pay range and basing all adjustments in compensation on performance and results.

Bonosaro said SEA plans to encourage hearings on what senior executives see as troublesome issues, including the lack of locality pay, which was eliminated under the new system.

“The program was adopted without any hearings whatsoever,” she said. “It was just attached to the DOD act, and there was no opportunity to think about what was being done, especially because pay for performance is clearly the wave of the future.”