https://crsreports.congress.gov
Updated February 15, 2022
Defense Primer: Department of Defense Civilian Employees
Background
Federal employment evolved into a civil service system in
the late 1800s. It replaced a spoils system that allowed each
presidential administration to appoint its political supporters
as federal employees. Congress established the current
federal civil service system with the Civil Service Reform
Act of 1978 (P.L. 95-454). Its primary features are merit-
based hiring and merit system principles.
Civil Service
The civil service consists of three subservices: competitive,
excepted, and senior executive. The competitive service is
the largest and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
administers it. The excepted service is distinguishable by its
agency-level administration and selection procedures. The
senior executive service (SES) is less than one percent of
the civil service. OPM centrally manages SES selections
with its merit staffing procedure and qualifications review
board (QRB). The QRB must verify and certify an SES
aspirant’s executive core qualifications (ECQs). While
OPM generally oversees the civil service, the following
entities have specific oversight responsibilities:
Office of Special Counsel (OSC);
Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB); and
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Just under a third of the civil service is in, or represented
by, a union. Managers, supervisors, and servicemembers
are excluded from unions, as are certain workforces. The
Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) oversees
dealings between unions and federal employers.
Civil Service Data
There are two common ways to enumerate civil servants:
the full-time equivalent (FTE) and the on-board personnel
(OBP) methods. Federal agencies typically use FTE for
budget data and OBP for employment data. An FTE unit is
a 2,080 hour work year; an OBP unit is one employee. FTE
quantifies employment as the number of hours worked at
the end of a fiscal year (FY), irrespective of the number of
employees. OBP quantifies employment as the number of
employees working on the last day of a FY quarter. An FTE
count can be less than an OBP count as more than one OBP
unit can equal one FTE unit, such as part-time employees.
Defense Civilians
Civilians are employed as civil servants in the Department
of Defense (DOD) consistent with its annual appropriations
for direct hire employees. Around 80% of them are in the
competitive service and all of them fill positions that do not
require military personnel. Servicemembers and other
defense civilians may supervise civilians. Likewise, defense
civilians may supervise servicemembers when authorized.
DOD’s defense civilian OBP data are in Table 1.
Table 1. Estimated Defense Civilian OBP
Source: DOD, Defense Manpower Profile Report – Fiscal Year 2022,
July 2021, p. 2.
Notes: Air Force includes Space Force civilians.
Defense Civilian Management
The Secretary of Defense must establish policies and
procedures for determining the most appropriate and cost
efficient categories of personnel to perform DOD’s mission.
These category determinations must prioritize the
attainment of DOD’s missions over considerations of costs
(10 U.S.C. §129a).
The Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and
Readiness (USD(P&R)) is the principal DOD official with
responsibility for defense civilian policy and programs. The
USD(P&R) also is the federal government’s statutorily
designated Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) for DOD.
All DOD managers and supervisors of civilians must adhere
to the federal civil service merit system principles and are
prohibited from engaging in certain personnel practices (5
U.S.C. §§2301, 2302).
DOD may not reduce the projected FTE of the civilian
workforce without conducting all required analyses of how
the reduction will affect its “workload, military force
structure, lethality, readiness, operational effectiveness,
stress on the military force, and fully burdened costs” (10
U.S.C. §129a) (Table 2).
The legal framework governing defense civilians is
included in Titles 5, 10, and 29 of the U.S. Code, as well as
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These laws are
implemented in general federal regulations and in specific
DOD directives, regulations, and instructions that are to be
issued only when necessary to meet DOD-unique needs or
to supplement federal civil service policy. DOD policies,
procedures, and programs for managing defense civilians
apply to all DOD components.
