Strengthening Probationary Periods in the Federal Service : The White House , April 24 , 2025
Strengthening Probationary Periods in the Federal Service : The White House , April 24 , 2025
From the document: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 3301 and 3302 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. The American people deserve a Federal workforce that is high-quality, efficient, dedicated to the public interest, and no larger than necessary. Probationary periods (for employees in the competitive service) and trial periods (for employees in the excepted service) have provided a longstanding critical tool to assess the fitness of newly hired Federal employees before finalizing their appointments to Federal service.
The Government Accountability Office has documented, however, that agencies have not been using probationary and trial periods as effectively as they could to remove appointees whose continued employment is not in the public interest. As a result of this failure to remove poor performers, agencies have often retained and given tenure to underperforming employees who should have been screened out during their probationary period.
Conditions of good administration require that agency approval should be required before probationary employees become tenured Federal employees. As the Merit Systems Protection Board recommended in its 2005 report The Probationary Period: A Critical Assessment Opportunity, there should be “procedures so that a probationer does not automatically become an employee in the absence of agency action.” And in the absence of agency certification that the probationer will be an asset to the Government, “the probationer’s employment should automatically terminate upon the expiration of the probationary period.” This order directs this commonsense change."
Authors - Trump, Donald J.
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