ALEXANDRIA, VA (NARFE Magazine) — In October 2020, just months before he left office, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order (E.O. 13957) that created a new Schedule F excepted service category for federal employees like the one used for political appointees. The reform directed federal agencies to classify civil service positions related to policy as “excepted service” positions. As a result, this subjected those employees to more rapid appointment or termination without many of the due process protections afforded “regular” civil servants. Many experts argued that such a move could politicize an impartial, politically-neutral federal civil service. Still, its authors stated that the reforms were necessary to hold civil servants, especially senior leadership, more accountable for implementing democratically-supported policies.
The executive order directed the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and federal agency heads to set procedures to prepare lists of career positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating character” and to create exceptions from competitive civil service rules for them and share with OPM for review and approval. Many agencies prepared lists, but only two arrived at the point of sharing the lists with OPM before the Trump’s administration tenure ended on January 19, 2021. None of the lists reclassified positions, according to a September 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that analyzed the implementation of Schedule F. During the week following President Joseph Biden’s inauguration, among the new administration’s first acts was repealing the Schedule F executive order. Two successive attempts at enacting a legislative bar to any future Schedule F failed in the U.S. Congress. In response, earlier this year, OPM adopted a new rule that would impede but not bar any future administration’s efforts to impose a new Schedule F.
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