On Nov. 3, voters will decide which party controls the House and Senate in the 120th Congress. The board of directors of the Senior Executives Association chose to position our policy agenda to inform the next Congress, and we are releasing it now so members and staff of both parties have it to mold their priorities.
SEA is committed to ensuring that federal personnel management laws and policies enable agencies and the federal workforce to serve the national interest with integrity, effectiveness, efficiency and impact. Our focus continues to be on a forward-looking federal workforce that is innovative, accessible and equipped to meet the challenges of serving the American people.
Career senior executives oversee much of the daily work of federal agencies. They manage financial systems, information technology, acquisition, benefit programs and the employees who deliver services to the public. Our members have served presidents of both parties. Their job is to carry out the laws passed by Congress and administration priorities in a nonpartisan manner, consistent with the rule of law and their oaths of office. They do that best when the rules governing their own positions are clear and constant.
Congress created the Senior Executive Service through the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, and few significant workforce reforms have become law since. Much of how senior executives are selected, evaluated, removed and rewarded has instead changed through executive action. Changes made by executive action can be reversed by the next administration, and agencies and employees then spend years adjusting to each new set of rules.
Our agenda starts from a basic premise. The federal civil service system is long overdue for meaningful reform to support the modern career workforce and the challenges it faces in providing essential services to the nation and the American people. Significant reforms should be written in statute, and they should be ones members of either party can support.
For the Senior Executive Service, we ask Congress to define in law which senior management positions are reserved for career executives.
Current law limits noncareer appointees to 10% of SES positions governmentwide, but it leaves agencies wide discretion over which positions are reserved for career executives. Positions responsible for financial management, human capital, information technology and oversight are the clearest candidates for permanent career classification in statute. Their designation should not shift each time the White House changes hands. Career executives should be selected, evaluated and retained on merit, and protected from loyalty tests or reclassification that would remove the protections Congress established.
We also support accountability. Current procedures make it hard for agencies to reward outstanding executives or to address poor performance and misconduct in a timely way. Removing a career executive for poor performance generally requires two unsatisfactory ratings within five years, and agencies must wait 120 days after a new agency head arrives before taking that step. Misconduct appeals can take years; the Merit Systems Protection Board lacked a quorum from 2017 to 2022 and accumulated a backlog of more than 3,000 cases. Recognizing strong performers is limited by small award budgets and the pay caps described below.
We propose a faster, clearer process that keeps the due process protecting executives from arbitrary or politically motivated removal. Managers should make a documented decision on whether to retain a new executive before the probationary period ends. Mandatory penalty tables should give way to advisory ranges. We also ask Congress to restore in statute the Douglas factors, the 12-part test the Merit Systems Protection Board used for 45 years to judge whether a penalty is reasonable. The board stopped requiring them in a rule that took effect Oct. 5. The board itself should keep its independence and its jurisdiction over appeals of adverse actions.
Senior executives also manage the broader federal workforce, so the agenda addresses the tools they have to lead it. On hiring, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act of 2024 and the Office of Personnel Management’s 2025 Merit Hiring Plan both move agencies toward skills-based assessments and reviews by subject matter experts, and away from self-rated questionnaires. That direction should continue. We recommend required training for supervisors, managers, executives and political appointees on personnel rules and performance management and renewed investment in OPM’s executive development programs. The pipeline of future senior leaders has thinned in recent years. The senior executive corps itself shrank by roughly a quarter in 18 months, from about 8,780 members in September 2024 to 6,647 in April 2026, according to OPM data cited by the Congressional Research Service.
On pay, the agenda addresses the compression that leaves many senior employees capped at the same salary regardless of responsibility or experience. Since 2004, SES pay has been capped at Executive Schedule levels. This year the SES minimum is $151,661, below the $197,200 a senior GS-15 can earn, so some executives make less than the employees they supervise. By comparison, the government reimbursed contractors for up to $671,000 a year in compensation per employee in 2025, about three times the SES maximum. The agenda also asks Congress to ensure federal employees are paid on schedule during a lapse in appropriations. Under current law, employees required to work through a shutdown receive back pay only after it ends.
Finally, we propose a nonpartisan National Commission on Government and Civil Service Modernization to examine longstanding problems that no single bill will resolve and to recommend reforms for Congress to act on. Congress could consider modeling it on the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, whose 15 members, appointed by the president and congressional leaders of both parties, issued unanimous recommendations in 2017 that Congress largely enacted in the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018. The law creating it should require committees of jurisdiction to hold hearings on its report and the administration to respond in writing.
SEA welcomes dialogue and debate on these recommendations, and we look forward to working with majority and minority members of the new Congress when it convenes in January.
Mary Kate Whalen, a retired Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration federal senior executive, is president of the Senior Executives Association.
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