Tighter Rules on Appraisals Proposed

The chairman of the Senate federal workforce subcommittee, George Voinovich, R-Ohio, has said he will propose legislation to strengthen the federal performance appraisal system by abolishing the use of pass-fail systems, assuring that all employees are rated annually, and denying annual raises to employees whose performance is deemed unacceptable. Enactment of such provisions—and Voinovich has been largely successful in the civil service reforms he pushes—would move the government a step closer to a pay-for-performance based compensation system, and OPM has said it will support the plan on those grounds. However, enactment also would in effect be a sign that broader reforms of federal pay, such as those proposed by the Bush administration, are unlikely to be passed, at least within the foreseeable future.