Unrealized Vision: Reimagining the Senior Executive Service
Author(s): Partnership and Booz Allen Hamilton
Publication Date: 08/20/2009
Publication Topics: Leadership, Performance Management, Recruiting and Hiring, Strategic Human Capital Planning, Training and Development
Publication Type: Research Reports and Surveys
Thirty-one years ago, as part of the most sweeping civil service reforms in more than a century, Congress created the Senior Executive Service (SES) to provide a unified, government-wide cadre of federal career executives with shared values, a broad perspective and solid leadership skills. This leadership corps, reformers believed, would move across agencies, bring their expertise and strategic thinking to a range of difficult issues and problems, and operate under a uniform and performance-based pay system. Today's Senior Executive Service, however, only vaguely reflects and demonstrates this vision.
The Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton decided to study the SES, to examine to what extent it has achieved its original goals and is keeping up with the times, to see if there are impediments to its success, and to determine if changes should be made to improve the management of government.
The primary finding is that the Senior Executive Service as envisioned by reformers has fallen short of its promise. More importantly, the report found that the original vision itself is inadequate for today's needs and does not provide the blueprint to build the kind of senior government leadership required for the future.
The Partnership for Public Service is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to revitalize our federal government by inspiring a new generation to serve and by transforming the way government works.
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Unrealized Vision: Reimagining the Senior Executive Service
The federal government’s Senior Executive Service (SES), as envisioned 30 years ago by government reformers, has fallen short of its promise and is inadequate to meet today’s challenges, according to a report by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton.
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