Many career federal positions in the Senior Executive Service will soon open to the possibility of becoming political appointments, according to a memo the Trump administration published Monday.
The Office of Personnel Management is giving agencies until March 24 to revise their rosters of “career reserved” SES positions within their workforces and align them with the Trump administration’s goal of turning traditionally career federal positions into political roles.
OPM’s guidance tells agencies to convert a number of “career reserved” roles — which can only be filled by career federal employees — and instead designate them as “general” SES positions — which can be filled by either a career or political SES member.
OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell said agencies should have “maximum flexibility” to opt for non-career SES roles where needed.
“To be sure, some positions throughout government are statutorily designated career reserved,” Ezell wrote in the memo. “However, OPM believes that many of the current career reserved positions across the federal government are not the sort of technical positions appropriate for career reserved status.”
The new guidance could impact thousands of current career SES members. As of August 2024 — the most recent data publicly available — there are 7,887 career SES members. The career SES workforce has grown over time, increasing by more than 800 roles over the last decade. The growth of the career SES workforce generally aligns with the broader growth of the civilian federal workforce as a whole.
Ezell, however, said the number of career reserved roles in the SES has “grown rapidly” over the past four years, “without apparent good reason.” He pointed to the size of the career SES workforce being more than double the minimum of 3,571 “career reserved” positions required by law.
“Career SES appointees throughout the federal government provide critical experience and guidance across administrations, helping to ensure that institutional knowledge is not lost,” Ezell wrote. “Yet while agency leadership can and frequently do leverage career staff in such situations, they should have maximum flexibility in opting for non-career officials to carry out presidential priorities.”
OPM’s memo is one step of the Trump administration’s larger efforts to convert career federal positions to political roles. OPM also previously issued guidance asking all agencies to convert their CIO positions to be “general” roles, potentially opening them up to political appointments.
The Trump administration has said it believes too many federal positions are career roles, limiting the administration’s ability to shape the activities of the federal workforce and push forward policies. Don Kettl, former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, however, said the risks of politicizing the career federal workforce far outweigh the rewards.
“If an administration attempts to change basic policy, and they discover there are people who are resisting what they’re trying to do, there’s tremendous frustration that develops. That’s always been the case, not only for Republicans, but also for Democrats,” Kettl said in an interview. “But it’s also important to recognize that one of the reasons why people who have careers in government point out problems, is that sometimes there are problems that need to be pointed out. Simply charging down the road toward a particular policy without thinking about how it’s going to be implemented, and what kind of problems could develop, can often be a very dangerous thing. That’s the risk of doing away with the expertise.”
OPM’s latest guidance specifically calls for agencies — at a minimum — to convert SES roles to “general” for positions at or above the level of assistant secretary, principal deputy assistant secretary or deputy assistant secretary — as well as any SES positions that were designated as “general” the day before former President Joe Biden’s inauguration. OPM also expects agencies to convert attorneys general, general counsels and program office directors to a “general” position status.
Ezell also pointed to SES positions with the word “policy” in their title, stating that those roles should not be “career reserved.” OPM’s guidance aligns with an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office to reclassify career roles that handle policy-related work to make them at-will positions.
But Kettl said many of the career SES positions the Trump administration is targeting — such as chief technology officers, chief data officers and chief financial officers — are highly technical roles that require years of expertise to be able to perform effectively.
“Some of these positions are extremely complicated. They’re technically complex. They require extraordinary skills, which people coming in from the outside of the government would have a difficult time being able to get up to speed quickly,” Kettl said. “The question is, how much friction is there going to be in government? How difficult is it going to be to be able to keep government operations going if there’s a substantial turnover in these positions?”
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