Even though the Social Security Administration's workforce has been shrinking, the number of high level managers (Senior Executive Service or SES) at the agency has been going up. This is from a GAO report on Diversity In the Federal SES And Process For Selecting New Executives:
2000
- Number of SES employees 118
- Women 35.6% %
- Minorities 33.1%
2007
- Number of SES employees 134
- Women41.8%
- Minorities 27.6%
Not much to complain about on the diversity front, but note the 14% increase in high level managers over seven years! This is at a time when other Social Security employees, including lower level managers, have been told to suck it up and just work harder and smarter as their ranks have thinned. Maybe there is a good explanation, but it does not look good. Any explanation that talks about increased responsibilities will not look good since field operations have had increased responsibilities as well.
3 comments:
SSA and the rest of the government should forget about this diversity BS and hire and promote the best people. If you want diversity, go work for the United Nations.
On the question of the increase in SES level slots, this is probably good news, Charles. When SSA went independent in 1995, the report and legislation noted that SSA was very seriously UNDER-staffed at the SES level. HHS had hogged the slots for its science community. Took a while for the imbalance to be addressed, but it looks now like it has been. OPM is parsimonious with these slots, by the way.
The commissioner is focused on bringing in more SES during his term--I dont have a problem with that but I do not feel that should be at the expense of other good programs in the agency. This past summer he took applications for the Capitol Hill Fellowship and , Development PRograms--and has done nothing else with them. He should be able to articulate his plan and discuss why he isnt sending the candidates any more information on these programs. It is the least he can do since they worked hard to get their applications together.
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