Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service

<RULE> OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT <CFR>5 CFR Parts 210, 212, 213, 302, 432, 451, 537, 575, and 752</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID: OPM-2025-0004]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3206-AO80</RIN> <SUBJECT>Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Personnel Management. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is issuing a rule to increase career employee accountability. Agency supervisors report great difficulty removing employees for poor performance or misconduct. The final rule authorizes agencies to move policy-influencing positions into Schedule Policy/Career. These positions will remain career jobs filled on a nonpartisan basis. Yet they will be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals. This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives. The rule requires agencies to establish internal policies protecting employees from prohibited personnel practices. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective March 9, 2026. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Noah Peters, Senior Advisor to the Director, by email at <E T="03">employeeaccountability@opm.gov</E> or by phone at (202) 606-293. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> OPM is issuing final regulations to strengthen employee accountability and the democratic responsiveness of American Government, while addressing longstanding performance management challenges in the Federal workforce. The final rule amends OPM's regulations in 5 CFR chapter I, subchapter B, as follows: 1. Amending 5 CFR part 213 (Excepted Service) to include Schedule Policy/Career as an excepted service schedule for career positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character (policy-influencing  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> positions), while clarifying that Schedule C appointments are exclusively for noncareer ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> political) appointments with confidential or policy responsibilities. The amended regulations further clarify that employees filling excepted service positions are in the excepted service, regardless of whether they retain competitive status, and specifies increasing accountability to the President as grounds for excepting positions from the competitive service. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Throughout this rulemaking OPM uses the term “policy-influencing” as a shorthand descriptor of the broader statutory language “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating.” <E T="03">See</E> 5 U.S.C. 7511(b)(2). </FTNT> 2. Amending 5 CFR part 212 (Competitive Service and Competitive Status) to provide that employees with competitive status whose positions are subsequently listed in the excepted service or who are moved into an excepted service position retain competitive status but do not remain in the competitive service while in the excepted position. 3. Amending 5 CFR part 752 (Adverse Actions) to remove the amendments made by the April 2024 final rule and provide that individuals whose positions are reclassified into or who are otherwise transferred into Schedule Policy/Career are not covered by chapter 75 procedural requirements or adverse action appeals. Additionally, OPM amends 5 CFR part 752 to remove language pertaining to 10 U.S.C. 1599e, which provided for a 2-year probationary period in the Department of Defense. This language has become obsolete as section 1599e was repealed, effective December 31, 2022, by Public Law 117-81, Sec. 1106(a)(1). The rule further amends 5 CFR part 432 (Performance Based Reduction in Grade and Removal Actions) to remove the amendments made by the April 2024 final rule and to exclude all policy-influencing positions in the excepted service from chapter 43 procedural requirements for performance-based removals. 4. Amending 5 CFR part 210 (Basic Concepts and Definitions (General)) to remove the amendments made by the April 2024 final rule stating that policy-influencing positions are exclusively associated with noncareer political appointments. The final rule also amends 5 CFR 213.3301, 302.101, and 451.302 to conform to the rescission of these definitions. 5. Amending 5 CFR part 302 to remove the amendments made by the April 2024 final rule imposing procedural requirements on movements of positions or employees into policy-influencing excepted service positions (including subsequent Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) appeals). The final rule also provides that moving or transferring positions into Schedule Policy/Career will not change how appointments to those positions are made. Positions moved from the competitive service will be filled using competitive hiring procedures and employees so appointed may acquire competitive status. Positions moved from the excepted service will continue to be filled using the procedures that applied to their prior excepted service schedule. 6. Amending 5 CFR part 537 to allow employees reassigned to positions in Schedule Policy/Career to continue to receive student loan repayment benefits under the terms of the applicable service agreement unless eligibility is lost as described in 5 CFR 537.108. 7. Amending 5 CFR part 575 at subparts A, B, and C to allow agencies to continue paying any outstanding recruitment, relocation, or retention incentive under the terms of existing agreements for positions moved into Schedule Policy/Career provided the employees are otherwise fulfilling the terms of their service agreements. This final rule also permits agencies to continue paying a retention incentive to an employee who is not under a service agreement at the time when their position is moved into Schedule Policy/Career. As further detailed below, this rulemaking will promote Federal employee accountability and strengthen American democracy while addressing performance management challenges and issues with misconduct within the Federal workforce. It will give agencies the practical ability to separate employees who insert partisanship into their official duties, engage in corruption, or otherwise fail to uphold merit principles. OPM may set forth policies, procedures, standards, and supplementary guidance for the implementation of this final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Digest of Public Comments</HD> In response to the proposed rule, OPM received 40,500 comments during the 45-day public comment period from a variety of individuals (including current and former civil servants, scientists, Nobel laureates, and members of Congress) and organizations such as those representing science and technology, national and local unions, and Federal agencies. Of the 40,500 comments received, 35,551 were posted, 2 were withdrawn, and 7 were not posted because they contained threats to the President and members of the Administration or contained sensitive personally identifiable information from commenters. The remaining 4,940 comments are attributed to individual commenters who indicated on their comment submission that their comment represented a specific number of submissions. For example, one commenter stated that he and 7 other people were part of a group of former Environmental Protection Agency employees submitting a comment on behalf of all 8 people. In another example, a commenter indicated that they are part of 2 organizations, the Union League Club of Chicago and the League of Women Voters of Chicago, and their comment represents 3,200 submissions. At the conclusion of the public comment period, OPM reviewed and analyzed the comments. In general, the comments ranged from ardent support of the proposed regulation to categorical rejection of it. Approximately 5 percent of the overall comments were supportive, 1 percent neutral or mixed, and 94 percent opposed the proposed regulation. In the proposed rule, OPM invited comments on whether it is appropriate to retain certain amendments to parts 302 and 752, as well as input on the costs and benefits of this rule. OPM received a wide variety of comments in response to the proposed rule and incorporated them into the relevant sections that follow. OPM found the comments helpful when explaining the purpose, scope, and impact on the Federal workforce in drafting this final rule. In the next section, we address the background for these regulatory amendments and related comments. In subsequent sections, we address the specific amendments, provide a regulatory analysis, and provide the amended regulatory text. Note that OPM received several comments that are not addressed below because they were beyond the scope of the proposed regulatory changes or else were vague or incomplete. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background and Related Comments</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. History of the Civil Service and Removal Restrictions</HD> Critical to the success of any presidency is the ability to implement an agenda endorsed by the American people free from antidemocratic, unaccountable bureaucratic resistance. “The Constitution requires that a President chosen by the entire Nation oversee the execution of the laws.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In order to execute his Article II duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, the vast expansion in the scope and complexity of Federal law has required the President to delegate such authority to thousands of career civil servants involved in policy formulation. Because in practice such delegation involves hundreds of thousands of distinct statutory provisions, it is extraordinarily difficult for the President—or agency heads appointed by the President and con ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 637k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━