Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO presented information on the Senior Executive Service (SES), focusing on: (1) career members' perceptions of the extent and usefulness of their training and development experiences before and after SES appointment; and (2) how the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) fulfilled its executive development roles and responsibilities.
GAO found that: (1) about 13 percent of the executives appointed after 1982 stated that they had not participated in any training or development activity designed to prepare them to become executives during the 5 years prior to their appointment, about 23 percent of all executives stated that they had received no training or development since their appointment, and more than half had not participated in a formal training or development activity in at least 5 years; (2) the reasons for SES nonparticipation included work and training experiences already obtained and lack of available time; (3) about 80 percent considered the training and development experiences they received before and after appointment useful in their jobs; (4) the mechanisms for ensuring that SES members obtained appropriate training and development, formal needs assessments, and advisors did not work as intended; (5) although the Commission on the Public Service recommended that OPM require regular training for all professional federal employees, only 21 percent of the SES members surveyed who received appointments after the candidate development program (CDP) began entered from CDP; (6) a much larger proportion of executives from small agencies did not receive pre-appointment training and development, considered the training they received less helpful, and cited cost as a reason for nonparticipation after appointment; and (7) OPM recently began a reexamination of its executive training and development responsibilities and planned to issue guidance on expectations from federal executives and the types of experiences that could assist them in meeting those expectations.
