Promoting Employee Accountability
Key claim: OPM and MSPB propose to streamline federal employee performance-based and adverse action procedures, refocus penalty review on a totality-of-circumstances test, and restrict settlement agreements that remove official misconduct documentation.
Abstract
(Proposed Rule · Personnel Management Office, Merit Systems Protection Board) The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB or Board) are issuing proposed regulations governing performance-based reduction in grade and removal actions, non-disciplinary separations, and adverse actions, along with the MSPB’s review of those actions, and proposing improved and additional training to supervisors. With this rule, OPM seeks to improve the accountability of employees for poor performance and misconduct by streamlining the administrative procedures used by agencies to take performance-based and adverse actions; and MSPB seeks to refocus its penalty review on a totality of the circumstances test rather than a rigid application of prescribed factors. The proposed rule also promotes transparency regarding employee poor performance and misconduct by restricting agencies’ ability to engage in settlement agreements that remove official documentation of performance or conduct detrimental to the efficiency of the service.
Why this matters
Federal employee accountability rules govern how ~2 million civil servants can be disciplined, removed, or exit with clean records. Streamlining adverse action procedures and barring settlement-based expungement of misconduct would shift long-standing procedural protections and change how misconduct histories travel with employees across agencies. The changes sit alongside other OPM workforce reforms (administrative leave, suitability) that collectively rework federal labor protections.