A Better, More Diverse Senior Executive Service in 2050

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day college enrollment. Whites will remain overrepresented. The most notable differenceswould relate to African Americans and Asian Americans, where a graduatepopulation benchmark would likely show that African Americans were significantlyoverrepresented and Asian Americans significantly underrepresented.Our dynamic modelOur 2030 projections on the makeup of the Senior Executive Service are theresult of a dynamic model created by the Center for American Progress.Our model works by looking at the age, gender, and race profile of the existingSenior Executive Service. As existing members age and leave the federal government,they are replaced by new people drawn either from outside governmentor from more junior grades in government. The ethnic, racial, and gender compositionof joiners is different to those who leave, so the diversity of the SeniorExecutive Service changes. The model worked its way through two “generations ofpromotions” by aging the population, allowing for people who leave, and allowingfor joiners. The result is the composition of the Senior Executive Service and itsfeeder grades in 2020, and again to get to the 2030 projections.In developing our model, we have tried to be realistic in our assumptions, butwhere necessary, we have chosen assumptions that are generous. As a result, wethink we are slightly more likely to overstate the extent of likely improvement indiversity than we are to understate it.In terms of data, we relied upon the Office of Personnel Management’sFedScope system, which allows the public access to complex data about thecomposition of the federal workforce. The data did not allow gender and raceanalysis to be conducted at the same time, so we asked OPM to share with usdata that would. Our model uses data from FedScope and these new data thatOPM provided us. For workforce projections, we utilized those prepared by theBureau of Labor Statistics.Any model, of course, requires assumptions. The following guide our model:• The size of the Senior Executive Service will remain static. This assumption wasalso made by the Government Accountability Office, which created a modelin 2003 to predict the likely diversity of the Senior Executive Service by 2010.In doing so, they assumed its members would remain static. But the Senior11 Center for American Progress | A Better, More Diverse Senior Executive Service in 2050
Executive Service has grown 11 percent since 2000, and if growth were to continueat this pace, our model would likely show a slightly greater pace of changeover the coming years. But such growth is unsustainable. It is unlikely thatthe Senior Executive Service will continue to grow at this rate through 2030,especially given the likely pressure on agency budgets in the coming decades.Assuming the size of the Senior Executive Service remains static adds some realismto the model and protects it from unrestrained growth.• OPM shared with us data that show Senior Executive Service hires are splitrelatively evenly between those in the key feeder grade, GS-15, and those withno federal service. We assume that those drawn from outside government arelikely to have the same gender, ethnic, and racial profile as existing GS-15s.This assumption is somewhat generous as data on recent external hires intothe Senior Executive Service imply they are less diverse than those hired fromwithin the federal government. In 2010, for example, while 22 percent of theGS-15 pool was from communities of color —same proportion of internalrecruits into the Senior Executive Service—only 10 percent of external recruitswere from communities of color .• Our model assumes that promotion rates do not vary by gender, ethnic orracial group. Instead, it is representation at feeder grades that determines thelikelihood of reaching the next level. Data on promotion rates are not easilyaccessible. OPM does not publish data by ethnic or racial group, and data areonly available for a year at a time. OPM shared with us data for 2010 that suggestedthat the chances of being promoted from within the federal workforcedo not vary by ethnic group once representation at feeder grades is controlledfor. That is the basis of our assumption, but more detailed historic data onpromotion rates may well show that there is a lower promotion rate for GS-15minorities or women. If it does, then our model will predict a faster rate ofimprovement than is likely.• Our model assumes GS-15s are recruited in a similar way, about half from thegrades directly below within the career civil service (GS-13 and GS-14) andthe rest from outside. Again, we assume that the demographic characteristics ofnew recruits are similar to those of feeder grades and that minority and womenGS-13s and GS-14s have the same chances of promotion as those who are whitemen. There are no publicly available data on this, so this assumption may well begenerous. If it is, our model will overpredict the likely improvement in diversity.12 Center for American Progress | A Better, More Diverse Senior Executive Service in 2050
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Page 6 and 7: Moreover, for a government to effec
Page 10 and 11: We start then with a review of wher
Page 13: and ethnicity, we were unable to fi
Page 17 and 18: The case for diversityWhen the Seni
Page 19 and 20: Business leaders from different ind
Page 21 and 22: One reading of the federal governme
Page 23 and 24: Making a commitment to closing the
Page 25 and 26: Establish a sub-comittee of the Pre
Page 27 and 28: Diversity at Kaiser PermanenteThe f
Page 29 and 30: especially given the Obama administ
Page 31 and 32: esented. In implementing its strate
Page 33 and 34: AcknowledgementsThe authors are ext
Page 35: The Center for American Progress is

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