While most development and training officials, members of the SES, federal middle managers and SES recruiting and hiring managers tend to hold individual members of the SES in high regard, many view the SES as a "compensation tool to attract and retain senior technical talent, or as a group of technical experts who do not focus on their broader leadership responsibilities," a study by the Partnership for Public Service has said.
The Partnership and Booz Allen Hamilton collaborated on a study of the SES to assess whether as a whole it embodies the purpose and principles it was created for some 30 years ago. They study said it hasn’t.
According to the study, "Unrealized Vision: Reimagining the Senior Executive Service," the SES has fallen short of a becoming a cohesive government-wide leadership corps of federal career executives with shared values and solid leadership skills. Further, that vision is obsolete because of, among other factors, a rapidly changing and more complex workplace environment and set of challenges.
The study found that most career senior executives stay in the same agencies for the duration of their careers, which was not envisioned in the 1978 law establishing the SES, and that too often senior technical personnel are lumped into the SES because it is seen as a more prestigious designation, often to the detriment of quality leadership.
It concludes that "building a consistently high-caliber, government-wide executive organization is impeded by decentralized talent development and recruitment processes, passive recruiting, an exceedingly cumbersome and lengthy hiring system, inadequate leadership training programs and a pay structure that can allow subordinates to earn more than top-level executives."
