Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

3. Central Personnel Agencies · Minor

Put noncareer executives in control of SES evaluation boards

Partially done

80 3. Central Personnel Agencies

“Another evasion is the general domination by career staff on SES personnel evaluation boards, the opposite of noncareer executives dominating these critical meeting discussions as expected in the SES.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The boards were reconstituted; the noncareer majority was never written into the rules. OPM's final rule preamble records that agencies re-constituted their Performance Review Boards as the January memorandum required, and OPM says it is confident the new boards will enforce the standards. But the regulation OPM actually adopted only encourages agency heads to pick members committed to applying the SES appraisal plan; nothing in 5 CFR 430.311 requires noncareer officials to dominate a Performance Review Board, and the Executive Resources Board regulation was not amended at all. Partial: the directive was carried out on the boards' membership, and the durable rule change the Quote's grievance calls for was not made.

  2. Attempted

    The President asked for exactly what the Mandate describes. The memorandum Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives told every agency head to terminate the existing Executive Resources Board, stand up a new one, and assign senior noncareer officials to chair it and serve as a majority alongside career members — and to terminate and reconstitute Performance Review Board membership. A directive to agencies, with no board yet changed.

Research log

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

Research notes

Researched 2026-08-27.

The Quote names two bodies by their function: SES personnel evaluation boards. In the regulations these are the Executive Resources Board (5 CFR 317.501) and the Performance Review Board (5 CFR 430.311).

The memorandum of 2025-01-20 addresses both, and on the ERB it asks for exactly the domination the Quote describes:

“(d) Each agency head should terminate its existing Executive Resources Board (ERB), institute a new or interim ERB, and assign senior noncareer officials to chair and serve on the board as a majority alongside career members; (e) Each agency head should terminate its existing Performance Review Board membership and re-constitute membership with individuals committed to full enforcement of SES performance evaluations …”

OPM’s 2025-09-15 rule preamble records the follow-through — “the President’s January 20, 2025, memorandum … required agencies to re-constitute their SES Performance Review Boards (PRBs) with individuals committed to full enforcement of the SES performance standards. OPM is confident the re-constituted PRBs will provide fair and accurate recommendations” — but the regulation it actually adopted stops short of the ask. Amended 5 CFR 430.311(a)(1) reads: “Agency heads are encouraged to choose individuals for each PRB committed to applying the SES Performance Appraisal System and Performance Plan”. No noncareer majority is required by rule.

Agencies publish PRB membership in the Federal Register (MSPB 2025-06-02, OSC 2025-07-21, FLRA 2025-08-13 and others), so the composition is checkable agency by agency; no government-wide tally exists.

Action
other
Object
SES personnel evaluation boards
ID
124