Summary: Beginning in 1997, the Government Performance and Results Act requires federal agencies to identify their missions and strategic goals, to measure their progress in meeting those goals, and to focus their resources--whether budgetary, technical, or human--on achieving results. A key questions is whether, under the current civil service system, agencies will have the flexibility to shape their human resource management systems to meet these new needs. As of June 1996, 52 percent of the civil service was in the "competitive service." Most of the remaining federal employees were in the "excepted service," where many jobs are covered by alternative personnel systems. One of Congress' reasons for establishing alternative personnel systems was to exempt agencies from the strict rules governing the competitive service. This report describes (1) the distribution of excepted service employees across government organizations; (2) the composition of the excepted service in terms of the various legal bases under which employees were appointed; (3) policy concerns and study focuses that have guided earlier studies; and (4) the coverage of agencies and employees, as well as data elements, in two data sources that were useful for studying the excepted service.
