Improving Performance, Accountability & Responsiveness in the Civil Service

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a final rule implementing EO 14,171 (Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce) which created a new category of federal employee: Schedule Policy/Career (P/C). In general, civil servants are classified into separate categories, or "schedules," with each schedule having slightly different employment rights. Per the rule, Schedule P/C positions will be career jobs, but people in those jobs will be at-will employees. As background, the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) creates employment protections for most career civil servants, including a requirement that firing be only for cause. The law creates a carve-out from many of these protections for political appointees — what it describes as positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” character — to allow presidents and agencies to employ a modest number of shorter-term employees who share their policy priorities and are at-will employees who can be fired for any reason. In creating the Schedule P/C rule, OPM claimed that the CSRA allows the government to take away employment protections from any position it deems to be of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” nature. It is on that basis that it created Schedule P/C. The rule itself does not move positions into Schedule P/C. OPM has indicated it intends for a subsequent Executive Order to identify new Schedule P/C positions. The rule will take effect on March 8, 2026. This rule authorizes agencies to move employees into Schedule P/C positions, which the government determines are "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating."