OPM: The modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics. Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
OPM has recommended to agencies that any CIO positions filled by senior executives that currently are held by career SESers be opened to political appointees by redesignating the positions from SES “reserved” to those with career status to “general” positions that can be filled by either career or appointed officials.
“The role of agency CIOs has changed dramatically in recent years. No longer the station of impartial and apolitical technocrats, the modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics,” says an OPM memo on chcoc.gov.
While CIOs “require a baseline of technical knowledge necessary to understand broader issues and make decisions for the agency,” they also have authority on issues such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud and privacy policy, it says. “Each of these items standing alone and all of them taken together amount to significant political issues,” it says.
The memo is the latest of the Trump administration’s moves to give the SES cadre—which is about 90 percent career—a more political orientation. One of President Trump’s first executive orders, on hiring practices, included telling OPM and OMB to issue SES performance plans that require agencies to “reassign agency SES members to ensure their knowledge, skills, abilities, and mission assignments are optimally aligned to implement my agenda.”
It further told agencies to terminate their existing executive resources boards and “assign senior noncareer officials to chair and serve on the board as a majority alongside career members”; and terminate their existing performance review boards “and re-constitute membership with individuals committed to full enforcement of SES performance evaluations that promote and assure an SES of the highest caliber.”
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