A new report released today by the Partnership for Public Service provides fresh perspective on the long standing failure of the federal government to take advantage of its Senior Executive Service and a cadre of more than 7,800 senior leaders many of whom find themselves trapped in the agencies they work for.

The report, “Mission-Driven Mobility,” outlines barriers that SES members face in being able to move from one agency to another, and even within agencies, as intended when the SES was created by Congress in 1978 as a way to spread the experience of senior executives to improve the broader management of government.

“In recent years, the need for executives to work across agencies and sectors to fulfill critical missions has become increasingly apparent,” the report’s authors noted.

The report, prepared with the help of McKinsey & Company, interviewed 90 individuals from 39 agencies and organizations to identify the barriers to mobility and ways the federal government could begin to realize the original vision intended for the SES.

Among the major barriers to senior executive mobility the report identified:

There is no centralized government-wide system to facilitate mobility. While the Office of Personnel Management, which was originally charged with creating the SES and continues manage certain functions, such as oversight of performance appraisals, there is no single entity which oversees or is responsible for improving the quality of the government’s career leadership corps and for aligning critical talent with the most critical needs.

Agencies feel mobility’s costs and risks outweigh its benefits. That has led to talent hoarding and the tendency to hire leaders whose technical expertise is considered more important than the leadership skills for which they were hired.

Many executives also see negatives in mobility. Mobility is generally unrewarded. Executives often feel marginalized and see neither consistent standards nor adequate financial assistance for geographic relocation.

The report concluded that while these and other barriers are not trivial, they are surmountable, and offered five options for improving the mobility of senior executives:

• Build mobility into the SES selection criteria
• Test a variety of mobility program designs, including programs that don’t require geographic relocation
• Create incentives and reduce disincentives for executive mobility
• Invest in early-tenure mobility programs for SES members
• Centralize the management of executive mobility in the government

Among more specific suggestions, the report suggested OPM and the Office of Management and Budget develop and track which agencies are the biggest importers and exporters of senior talent and reward the more progressive agencies with additional SES allocations.