SES

Since the days of Frances Perkins, women have been joining the ranks of presidential Cabinet secretaries. Yet when it comes to the number of women career civil servants making it into executive ranks that number remains oddly low.

The retroactive-to-January increase is 1.9 percent, with 1.4 going to everybody eligible and the remaining 0.5 percent earmarked for locality pay.

Left in limbo are tens of thousands of workers at or near the top of GS-15. That cap covers GS-15 workers in steps 8, 9 and 10 in the Washington-Baltimore area and extends down to step 5 in San Francisco and San Jose.

In today’s Federal Newscast, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a federal retiree who says the state of West Virginia unfairly taxed his annuity income.

Within the next decade “nearly all” of the current senior Foreign Service members will be eligible to retire, as will 80 percent of the current Civil Service’s SES, according to the agency’s five-year Workforce and Leadership Succession Plan.

The Office of Personnel Management has also answered additional questions about the status of federal employee probationary periods, career ladder promotions and other human resources questions after the government shutdown.

In today’s Federal Newscast, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that when it comes to detention facilities contractors, Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t adequately hold them accountable for written performance standards.

A recent study from the Senior Executives Association paints a dire picture. The federal workforce is too overworked, stressed and ill-equipped to handle the next major emergency response event.

After more than a year as acting chief information officer, Christina Calvosa was named the permanent IT executive at the Federal Communications Commission.

As the federal partial shutdown drags on, much of the attention is on union employees and lower-paid people. But it’s not easy for federal senior executives, either.

On Thursday the Senior Executives Association held its annual Presidential Rank Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., to recognize “extraordinary public service of senior career professionals” in in civilian leadership. See photos of the night’s honorees.

Congress didn’t send a sweeping civil service modernization package to the president’s desk this year, but winners of this year’s Presidential Rank Awards have some ideas on where they can start on their own.

In an age of bipartisanship, a committee of policy think-tanks and good government groups, led by the Senior Executives Association, say they’ve found a consensual starting point for civil service modernization.

Few people feel the whiplash of policy changes and oversight enthusiasms more than career federal executives. Bill Valdez, president of the Senior Executives Association, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for his take.