Use of the authority “requires coordination with OPM’s White House Liaison, through OPM’s Executive and Schedule C System (ESCS)." Image: ChicagoPhotographer/Shutterstock.com
Guidance on the new “Schedule G” category of political appointees stresses the political oversight from OPM and the White House that agencies are to undergo in creating or abolishing such positions.
That new category fills a “gap” in excepted service authorities since Schedule C only covers excepted service positions of a confidential or policy-determining character, OPM said in a memo at chcoc.gov. No other excepted service category “existed specifically for noncareer positions of a policy-making or policy-advocating character,” it said.
Schedule G is available to all agencies with the authority to make excepted service appointments, it added, while giving no indication of how many such positions should, or could be created.
However, it states that use of the authority “requires coordination with OPM’s White House Liaison, through OPM’s Executive and Schedule C System (ESCS). ESCS serves as the central intake and approval mechanism for the Schedule G appointing authority at the agency level.”
“In addition, approval or withdrawal of the Schedule G appointing authority requires review from the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, through the employing agency’s White House Liaison. As a matter of practice, no Schedule G appointment(s) should be advanced without coordinating with the employing agency’s White House Liaison,” it says.
That authority was created by an executive order that formally launched the Schedule Policy/Career category for shifting competitive service employees involved with making or carrying out policy into the excepted service—in the process, losing many of their civil service protections.
Rules needed to begin such conversions still are pending, as are agency-generated lists of positions to be converted.
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