When an evaluation returns a Soviet-style result, it’s clear that the system is broken. Unfortunately, in this case, the federal government deludes itself about the effectiveness of federal workers.
A Government Accountability Office report found that 99 percent of federal workers, almost 1.2 million of them, earned a “fully successful” rating in their evaluations, according to The Washington Post.
As if the approval ratings weren’t laughable enough, only 0.3 percent earned a “minimally successful” evaluation, and an almost non-existent 0.1 percent were found to be “unacceptable.”
The evaluations make the Russian invasion of Crimea look honest.
The GAO reviewed ratings from 2013. “Developing modern, credible and effective employee performance management systems has been a long-standing challenge for federal agencies,” the report dryly noted.
Efforts have been made to improve performance evaluations since at least 2003, but success has been limited. Changing workplace culture, within government or without, tends to be difficult.
The exuberant level of evaluations “strains credibility,” Joe Davidson wrote for The Post.
“It diminishes the truly successful and could deny the less successful the assistance they need to improve. The report gives a boost to those who seek to overhaul the civil service system, which critics say is short on employee accountability,” Davidson wrote.
Rather than evaluating federal workers in the realm of reality, the rubberstamping hinders effective governance. If supervisors are unwilling or unable to frankly evaluate workers, crucial functions of governments aren’t done well. Whether it’s a failure of management, of law, or a success in blocking reform is immaterial. The federal government isn’t doing its job of remaining accountable to its citizens.
“Candid and constructive performance conversations that are timely, specific, and actionable help individuals maximize their contribution and potential for understanding and realizing the goals and objectives of an organization,” the report noted. A failure of that conversation is a failure of responsible governance.
Of the 99 percent of employees who were rated “fully successful,” 61 percent were rated as “outstanding” or “exceeds fully successful.”
Were the government a private business, they would be the most successful company in history, based on their self-evaluations.
The nonsense never ends, though the American people have a much more cynical view of the federal government. Only 19 percent of Americans trust the government “most of the time,” according to the Pew Research Center. Until the government is more honest with itself, skepticism might be the only realistic reaction.
