Senior Executive Service

The federal government, as a whole, may need to replace a substantial number of career members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) who will become eligible to retire between September 1999 and September 2005. GAO's analysis of a group of nearly 6,000 career SES members showed that 71 percent will reach regular retirement eligibility as of the end of fiscal year 2005. The proportion of career SES members employed in selected agencies and job series who will be eligible to retire by the end of fiscal year 2005 varies and differs from the governmentwide rate of 71 percent. For instance, the Department of Veterans Affairs will have the highest SES regular retirement eligibility rate--82 percent--while the eligibility rates at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be among the lowest. These projected retirement trends show that the government's senior executive ranks are aging. These trends underscore the importance of SES succession planning because the SES retirements will result in a loss of leadership continuity, institutional knowledge, and expertise throughout government.

GAO noted that: (1) the proportion of career SES members employed in selected agencies and occupational series who will be eligible to retire by the end of FY 2005 varies by agency and occupational series and differs from the governmentwide rate of 71 percent; (2) the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will have the highest SES regular retirement eligibility rate of the 14 selected agencies in GAO's review; (3) VA may have to replace a large number of its career SES members because 82 percent of those members and 81 percent of SES members in health system administration, who are primarily employed at VA, will be eligible to retire by September 30, 2005; (4) health system administration will have the second highest retirement eligibility rate of the eight selected occupational series included in GAO's review--criminal investigation will have the highest; (5) conversely, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission , and attorneys will have the lowest SES retirement eligibility rates by September 30, 2005; (6) both EPA and the attorney series will experience the greatest increase in the proportion of the career SES workforce to attain retirement eligibility; (7) the SES retirement trends projected for the first few years of this decade illustrate that the SES is an aging workforce; (8) because individuals normally do not enter the SES until well into their careers, SES retirement eligibility generally is much higher than for the workforce in general, but SES retirement eligibility also is growing compared with eligibility early in the 1990s; (9) these trends highlight the importance of SES succession planning because the SES retirements will result in a loss in leadership continuity, institutional knowledge, and expertise among the SES corps with the degree of the loss varying among agencies and occupations; (10) available evidence suggests that formal SES succession planning is not being done universally; (11) SES members from more than 24 agencies said their agencies do not have a formal succession planning program for the SES; (12) Office of Personnel Management officials said most agencies will not likely have formal, comprehensive succession plans; and (13) studies by the National Academy of Public Administration in 1994 and 1997 showed that formal SES succession planning generally was not being done in the federal government.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: