Ensuring Consistent and Rigorous Standards for Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Programs

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT <CFR>5 CFR Part 412</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID: OPM-2025-0014]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3206-AO89</RIN> <SUBJECT>Ensuring Consistent and Rigorous Standards for Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Programs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Personnel Management. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposes to revise its Senior Executive Service (SES) Candidate Development Program (SESCDP) regulations to implement certain SES training and development requirements. The SES represents the Federal Government's leadership, composed of executive positions above the GS-15 level. SESCDPs serve as a crucial succession management tool for Federal agencies, designed to identify and prepare high-potential employees for future roles within the SES. These programs aim to cultivate leaders equipped with a government-wide perspective and the competencies necessary to tackle complex challenges. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 17, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by RIN number “3206-AO89” and title, using the following method: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. All submissions must include the agency name and docket number or RIN for this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document. Please arrange and identify your comments about the regulatory text by subpart and section number. If your comments relate to the <E T="02">supplementary information</E> , please reference the heading and page number in the <E T="02">supplementary</E> section. All comments must be received by the end of the comment period for them to be considered. All comments and other submissions received generally will be posted on the internet at <E T="03">https://regulations.gov</E> as they are received, without change, including any personal information provided. However, OPM retains discretion to redact personal or sensitive information, including but not limited to, personal or sensitive information pertaining to third parties. As required by 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rule may be found in the docket for this rulemaking at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nicole Wright, Deputy Associate Director, Executive Services and Workforce Development, 202-606-8046 or by email at <E T="03">SESDevelopment@opm.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Senior Executive Service (SES) is a corps of top-level Federal executives who provide leadership and oversee government operations, bridging the gap between political appointees and career civil servants. The SES was established by the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 and became effective in July 1979. The CSRA envisioned a senior executive corps with solid executive expertise, public service values, and a broad perspective of the Government. The CSRA established the SES as a distinct personnel system that applies the same executive qualifications requirements to all members. The system was designed to provide greater authority to agencies to manage their executive resources, including the flexibility for selecting and developing Federal executives within a framework that preserves the larger corporate interests of the Government. An SESCDP is a structured program designed to identify and prepare individuals who aspire to become senior executive leaders, exhibit readiness or near-readiness for executive-level responsibilities, demonstrate leadership across organizational boundaries, and show potential to manage complex, cross-agency initiatives. As a strategic succession tool, SESCDPs serve to strengthen selected candidates' leadership skills and characteristics based on current standards. Participation provides governmentwide leadership opportunities to interact with senior employees outside their department and/or agency, interagency training experiences, executive-level development assignments, mentoring, and coaching. Further, an SESCDP boosts participants' executive competencies and expands their understanding of governmentwide programs and issues beyond their individual agency and profession, broadening participants' understanding of missions, programs, core values, and management challenges. Graduates of an OPM-approved SESCDP, who are selected through civil service-wide competition and are certified by OPM's Qualifications Review Board (QRB), may receive a career SES appointment without further competition. The QRB certifies the executive qualifications of candidates for initial career SES appointments. QRB members judge the overall scope, quality, and depth of a candidate's executive qualifications and experience within the context of the Executive Core Qualifications. QRB certification does not guarantee placement in the SES, and SESCDP participation is not required for selection into the SES. On October 30, 2004, the President signed the Federal Workforce Flexibility Act of 2004 (Act), Public Law 108-411, into law. The Act made several significant changes in the law governing the training and development of Federal employees, supervisors, managers, and executives. The first change required each agency to evaluate, on a regular basis, its training programs and plans with respect to the accomplishment of its specific performance plans and strategic goals, and to modify its training plans and programs as needed to accomplish the agency's performance plans and strategic goals. The second major change the Act required was for agencies to consult with OPM to establish comprehensive succession management programs designed to provide training to employees to develop managers for the agency. It also required agencies, in consultation with OPM, to establish programs to provide training to managers regarding actions, options, and strategies a manager may use in relating to employees with unacceptable performance, mentoring employees, improving employee performance and productivity, and conducting employee performance appraisals. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum titled “Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives.” 90 FR 8481, January 30, 2025. With this Presidential Memorandum, President Trump directed agencies to “reinvigorate the SES system and prioritize accountability” to ensure proper accountability to both the President and the American people. The Presidential Memorandum further directed the Director of OPM, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to reassign agency SES members as needed to ensure alignment between their knowledge, skills, abilities, and mission assignments and the President's agenda. To advance this directive, on May 29, 2025, OPM released the memorandum, <E T="03">Hiring and Talent Development for the Senior Executive Service,</E> <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which provides policy, guidance, and timelines to agencies on SES hiring and development, to include new SESCDP certification requirements. The memorandum noted that “these changes in hiring, training, development and oversight will drive a cultural shift in the SES.” The memorandum further highlights that Federal agencies are responsible for ensuring appropriate succession planning for executive positions by building a pipeline of qualified candidates that are well-prepared to serve as Federal executives, and that “OPM is required to establish programs for the systematic development of candidates for the SES and/or assist agencies in the establishment of such programs which meet OPM prescribed criteria.” <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  OPM, <E T="03">“Hiring and Talent Development for the Senior Executive Service”</E> (May 29, 2025), <E T="03">available at https://www.chcoc.gov/content/hiring-and-talent-development-senior-executive-service.</E> </FTNT> Through the introduction of more stringent SESCDP certification requirements, OPM aims to enhance training and development for aspiring SES and accelerate the placement of well-prepared leaders to ensure leadership continuity. OPM has reviewed evaluation feedback from agencies and graduates of SESCDPs over the years, which suggest some adjustments can be made to enhance the experience for SESCDP participants and aim for better outcomes. To accomplish this transformation, OPM proposes to adjust the formal training content, adopt a more streamlined program cohort duration, and utilize developmental assignments of a longer minimum duration. In turn, agencies will have a more appropriate timeframe to conduct an SESCDP and allow for aspiring SES to learn in an environment that promotes governmentwide cohesion and prepares them to deliver results as accountable senior executives. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Changes in This Rulemaking</HD> OPM has reviewed the supervisory, management and executive development regulations governing the SESCDP and is issuing this proposed rule in response to the President's directives and pursuant to its regulatory authority in 5 U.S.C. 3396 (a) and (b). The following are the principal results sought by the proposed changes to 5 CFR part 412: ○ Agencies have effective and cost-efficient SESCDPs that will support agency succession planning and candidate development; ○ Agencies identify and select individuals that have demonstrated executive ability and further develop them professionally to step into the SES with the experiences to handle the challenges presented at the highest caliber of public service; ○ Agencies maintain a minimum placement rate of program graduates receiving OPM QR ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━