Summary: The Civil Service Reform Act requires Federal agencies to develop, according to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) standards, one or more Senior Executive Service (SES) performance appraisal systems. Typical areas of performance measurement cited in the Act are productivity, quality of work, timeliness of performance, cost efficiency, and progress in meeting affirmative action goals. A GAO survey indicated that many procedures which experts agree should be employed in establishing effective performance appraisal systems were only minimally used when implementing SES performance appraisal systems. However, SES executives contacted appeared to be generally optimistic about the future of the SES performance appraisal process. GAO believes that it is still too early to determine how well agency SES performance appraisal systems are working. It is crucial, therefore, that agencies and OPM quickly develop and implement formal evaluation systems for SES performance appraisal systems to insure that they are valid, fair, and objective and that problems which surface are quickly addressed.
