The Federal Merit Framework

For a century, public office was the currency in which American campaigns settled their debts. This flagship paper traces the legal arc of merit from the Pendleton Act of 1883 through the nine merit system principles of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, then audits the distance between the law and current practice: a 101-day average hiring queue, applicant self-assessments that reward confidence over competence, and performance ratings in which 99.5 percent of employees receive the same grade. It engages the strongest objection to merit reform at full strength and closes with a three-part framework, measure, reward, remove, that defines the standard the rest of the institute’s work assumes.