Most civilian positions in the federal government of the United States are part of the competitive service, where applicants must compete with other applicants in open competition under the merit system administered by the Office of Personnel Management. However, some positions are excluded from these provisions, and some agencies are composed entirely of excepted service positions. Agencies with excepted service positions may employ unique evaluation criteria, such as with research grade evaluation scientists, who are reviewed based on scientific output. Some agencies may use excepted service hiring authorities, such as Veterans Recruitment Appointment (VRA) or Schedule A (disability). Positions filled using these hiring authorities (and which are not always excepted service, such as attorneys) may remain in the excepted service or may convert to the competitive service after a set amount of time (usually two years).
Until the Civil Service Due Process Amendments Act of 1990 (Pub. L. No. 101-376, 104 Stat. 461), employees in the excepted service who did not have veteran's preference did not have the right to appeal adverse actions to the United States Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). These amendments made it so that most employees in the excepted service, who had completed a two-year trial period (also called a probationary period) had appeal rights. The current statute (5 U.S.C. section 7511(b)) excludes certain positions, including anyone whose appointment was made by the advice and consent of the Senate, anyone appointed by the President, anyone whose position was determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character by the President or the Office of Personnel Management, members of the Foreign Service, employees of the Central Intelligence Agency or Government Accountability Office, and many employees of the Postal Service, Postal Regulatory Commission, Panama Canal Commission, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and intelligence components of the Department of Defense. These employees have no right to external appeals.
(b) As used in other Acts of the United States Congress, “unclassified civil service” or “unclassified service” means the “excepted service”.
Hiring authorities
Schedule A: 13.8%
Schedule B: 1.3%
Schedule C: 0.2%
Schedule D: 2.5%
Executive: 0.1%
Other: 82.1%
Excepted service positions by hiring authority in 2015[1]
A hiring authority is the law, executive order, or regulation that allows an agency to hire a person into the federal civil service.[2]
Office of Personnel Management schedules
Some service positions are classified by the Office of Personnel Management into lettered categories, although not all excepted service authorities fall into this classification:
Schedule A appointments are "impracticable to examine". They are used to appoint specific position types such as attorneys, chaplains, physicians; when there is a critical hiring need or the position is in a remote location; and to hire disabled applicants. In addition to this, as of 2016, there were 122 agency-unique Schedule A hiring authorities.[1][3]
Schedule B appointments are "not practicable to hold a competitive examination". Schedule B appointees must meet the qualification standards for the job. As of 2016, there were 36 agency-unique Schedule B hiring authorities.[1][3]
Schedule D appointments are those where competitive service requirements "make impracticable the adequate recruitment of sufficient numbers". These are known as the Pathways Programs, which consist of the Internship Program, Recent Graduates Program, and Presidential Management Fellows Program.[1][3]
Schedule F appointments were a short-lived and never-implemented category designed to apply to "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions."[5]
Schedules A and B were created by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, Schedule C was created in 1956, and Schedule D was created in 2012.[1] Schedule E was created in 2018.[4] Schedule F was created in October 2020 and repealed in January 2021.[5][6]
Other hiring authorities
Several excepted service hiring authorities are not classified into the OPM schedules. Some of the more prevalent include:
The Senior Biomedical Research Service, formally the Silvio O. Conte Senior Biomedical Research and Biomedical Product Assessment Service, is for scientific and technical experts in biomedical research, clinical research evaluation, and biomedical product assessment.[10] It was created by the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990[11][12] and implemented in 1995, because the National Institutes of Health concluded that the Senior Executive Service was not ideally suited for their purposes, and a personnel system more similar to academia was needed.[12] Initially there was a cap of 500 individuals in the Service,[12][13] but the 21st Century Cures Act increased this to 2000 individuals in 2016.[13]
Principal excepted agencies
The following are selected excepted service agencies:[14]
