Pay for Performance Systems Debated

Federal unions and Bush administration officials once again have sparred over pay for performance systems that the administration has been putting in place in many agencies, with the officials telling a Senate hearing that the systems are making progress toward their goals of tying employee responsibilities more closely to agency missions and providing stronger incentives for good performance, and unionists asserting that their warnings about potential abuses such as forced ratings patterns are coming true. Also, GAO presented preliminary results from an ongoing study of the pay for performance system in the SES, which is being watched closely as a bellwether for other systems, since it involves a relatively small pool of employees. GAO said, for example, that agencies have built safeguards and transparency into their systems, although they varied in how they go about it. But it said that agencies are having trouble identifying what measures should be used to determine whether the desired results are being achieved.