Ratings, salary increases and bonus awards have largely stabilized in the pay-for-performance system used for SES members, a system being widely and closely watched as potential precedent for applying a similar approach more broadly throughout the government.
The SES system requires four- or five-level ratings systems that must meet certain criteria for distinguishing among levels of performance, and that substitutes performance-based pay and bonuses for across-the-board salary increases.
OPM data show that 43.4 percent of career SESers received the highest rating in fiscal 2006, the same percentage in 2005 after a steep decline from about 75 percent in 2002 and 2003, before the new system was launched; part of that decline resulted from abolishing former SES rating systems that used fewer than four levels.
In the early period of the program OPM had put an emphasis on reducing the number of execs with top ratings.
The State Department last year rated 69 percent of its career execs at the highest level, with SSA and Justice also above 60 percent, while OMB did so for just 7 percent.
