Have OPM restore KSA-based civil service entrance testing

Done

Printed page 73 3. Central Personnel Agencies

“A government that is unable to select employees based on KSA-like test qualifications cannot work, and the OPM must move forward on this very basic personnel management obligation.”

What has happened

May 29, 2025 Done
Self-rating is out and tested knowledge, skills and abilities are back in. The Merit Hiring Plan bars agencies from using self-assessment questionnaires to rate and rank candidates — they may now be used only to screen minimum qualifications and eligibilities — and directs agencies to maximally adopt technical assessments, pointing them at USA Hire, which the plan's appendix shows already has validated assessments for 135 job series measuring, in its words, "the knowledge, skills and abilities" a job needs. OPM followed it with the Rule of Many final rule encouraging rigorous merit-based candidate ranking, and its 2026 reduction-in-force rule requires job-analysis-based skills assessments as well. The Mandate's charge is that OPM had abandoned the obligation to select on KSA-like test qualifications; on the public record OPM has resumed it government-wide. No single written entrance examination on the PACE model has been reinstated, which is noted rather than treated as a shortfall, because the ask names USA Hire-style testing as an alternative and that is what was delivered.
- Merit Hiring Plan, memorandum of the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Acting Director of OPM
  Primary Executive branch May 29, 2025
- OPM final rule: Reinvigorating Merit-Based Hiring Through Candidate Ranking in the Competitive and Excepted Service (Rule of Many)
  Primary Executive branch Sep 8, 2025
Jan 20, 2025 Attempted
Executive Order 14170 directed the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the OPM Director to produce a Merit Hiring Plan implementing, to the greatest extent possible, technical and alternative assessments under the Chance to Compete Act of 2024. A direction, with nothing yet changed.
- Executive Order 14170, Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service
  Primary Executive branch Jan 20, 2025

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Researched 2026-08-27.

Read the Merit Hiring Plan in full (opm.gov, 50+ pages plus appendices). The operative passages:

Agencies “must ‘maximally adopt the use of technical assessments and phase out the use of occupational questionnaires (or self-assessments)’” under the Chance to Compete Act of 2024.
“Do not use self-assessment questionnaires for rating and ranking” other than for seasonal work or where OPM grants a compelling-need exception; self-assessments may be used only for minimum qualifications and eligibilities.
Agencies are strongly encouraged to use a USA Hire assessment; Appendix 4 lists 135 job series for which USA Hire currently has validated assessments, tied to “assessments that accurately measure the knowledge, skills and abilities” — the Mandate’s KSAs, by name.
Appendix 7 is a primer on USA Hire.

Follow-on: the “Rule of Many” final rule (2025-09-08) implementing the FY2019 NDAA’s candidate-ranking authority to encourage rigorous merit-based ranking; the RIF final rule (2026-08-03) requiring job-related, job-analysis-based assessments for assignment rights and reemployment-priority selection under the Chance to Compete Act; OPM’s assessment-strategy and structured-resume-review training courses.

The one thing not restored is a single government-wide written entrance examination on the PACE model. The Recommendation’s object names “PACE/USAHire-style KSA testing”, and the USA Hire half is now the government-wide default.

Action: restore
Object: merit entrance examinations (PACE/USAHire-style KSA testing)
ID: 110