Nearly 90 percent of the federal government’s top career civil service executives received top ratings for their work in 2013, making them eligible for lucrative annual bonuses but raising questions about whether the evaluation system is a credible measure of job performance.
More than 85 percent of top-ranking career government officials received one of the top two categories of their agencies performance reviews from 2010 to 2013, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The highly rated executives received $42 million in bonus awards in 2013 alone.
Less than half of one percent of the executives rated government-wide received either of the two lowest ratings. Only five agencies issued the lowest rating to any of its executives.
The government’s performance evaluation rating system for the 7,900 members of the Senior Executive Service is the main accountability tool for measuring the work of the highest level of career federal civil service bosses. But the ratings are not made available to the public and critics question whether the system is credible when so many high ratings are routinely given.
Senior executives working at 24 of the federal government’s largest departments and independent agencies face performance reviews by their superiors based on an Office of Personnel Management-approved five-level rating system, according to the accountability office. Officials rated with a five are considered “outstanding,” while those rated four are above average and three are fully satisfactory. The three top level ratings qualify an SES manager for a variety of financial and non-financial incentive bonuses and awards.
A rating of five “represents a level of rare, high-quality performance.” However, “some agencies are not appropriately applying these performance standards,” the accountability office said.
“The bottom line is that senior executives lead the federal workforce and administer nearly every government activity — the success or failure of an agency’s mission generally begins and ends with them,” said the General Accountability Office Director of Strategic Issues Robert Goldenkoff. “Our work has shown that … more can be done to ensure agencies are making meaningful distinctions in executives’ performance ratings …”
Other experts interviewed by the Washington Examiner were less diplomatic.
“There’s been enormous grade inflation within the five-scale grading system,” said New York University, Wagner Professor of Public Service Paul Light. “If everyone gets the top two categories, it’s a joke. It’s not a serious process for helping employees understand where they can do better.” Light, who is also a Brookings Institution fellow, is an authority on the federal civil service.
“There is no incentive whatsoever for a federal manager or supervisor to be truthful in these evaluations,” Light said. “If there’s no penalty at all for giving someone a real grade, then you’re going to see inflation.”
The government’s performance evaluation system is similar to those often found in the corporate world and that may also be part of the problem.
“It looks pretty typical to me,” said University of Pennsylvania associate professor of management Matthew Bidwell, comparing the accountability office’s findings to the private-sector. “There are debates going on in private firms for the use of these systems, anyway.”
Conversely, there may be incentive to avoid issuing low ratings.
“It may actually make them feel undervalued and work less,” Bidwell said.
Although Office of Personnel Management officials said they agreed with the accountability office’s findings, they challenged its recommendation that managers not to be allowed to rate top officials as outstanding more frequently than any other rating.
“Imposing such a criterion would lead to arbitrary manipulation of the final ratings rather than appropriate comparison of performance standards,” the officials said. “This situation is ripe for forced distribution of the ratings… The more appropriate action is to continue emphasizing the importance of setting appropriate, rigorous performance requirements and standards that logically support meaningful distinctions in performance.”
The personnel office officials also disputed the value of making individual managers’ ratings more transparent to the public.
“OPM is just cowardly on this issue,” Light said. “It doesn’t have the guts to recommend a real performance appraisal system.”
Light said a forced distribution would be an effective tool, so long as supervisors were trained to grade fairly. He compared the current system to a university graduating substandard medical doctors by inflating students’ grades.
Bidwell agreed that a forced distribution would provide more accurate ratings, but said there is no process in place to do it. “It’s a trade-off,” he said. With the government’s system “you probably get less conflict and less tension within the organization.”
Some agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Agency for International Development gave more than 70 percent of executives the highest possible rating, while the State Department reviewed more than 95 percent as outstanding.
“The department utilizes a certified performance management system that by definition is required to make meaningful distinctions in performance,” a State Department official told the Examiner.
“Agency officials offered varied explanations for the high concentration of performance ratings at the top two rating levels,” the accountability office said. Some admitted it was too high, while others said they were justified.
“They are reinforced by an agency culture where executives may not view a rating of three as acknowledgement of a fully successful performance,” the accountability office said.
For example, a Department of Health and Human Services official told investigators that “it is difficult to convince executives who have traditionally received higher ratings that this rating reflects successful performance,” the report said.
“At the end of the day, no one wants to bring an employee in and say ‘you just didn’t do a good job this year,’” Light said.
