The SES was established by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. As of September 30, 1999, the SES had 6,871 members. The majority (6,205) of the SES members were in the career SES as of that date; the remaining 666 were in the noncareer SES. Career SES members are individuals with civil service status who are appointed competitively to SES positions that are below the top political appointees in the federal executive branch. The noncareer SES members are individuals who receive noncompetitive appointments to SES positions that usually involve advocating, formulating, and directing the programs and policies of the administration. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 also states that the policy of the federal government is to ensure equal employment opportunity in the workforce. To carry out this policy, the act calls for implementation of agency action through a continuing minority recruitment program designed to “eliminate underrepresentation of minorities in the various categories of civil service employment.” It further requires that EEOC establish guidelines for use by executive agencies in complying with this statutory requirement. According to EEOC’s October 6, 1987, directive, issued under this provision to aid agencies in their affirmative employment activities, women and minorities are fully represented when their percentage representation in the workforce at an agency equals or exceeds their percentage representation in an RCLF. An RCLF consists of the pool of individuals in the CLF that have the necessary skills and qualifications to perform the duties of the particular job or occupation. According to EEOC, it advises agencies to first compare their workforces with established broad occupational categories, such as administrative, technical and clerical, within the CLF. Then, agencies are to compare specific significant occupations within their overall workforce with the same broad CLF occupational categories to identify areas of possible underrepresentation for further analysis. For professional occupations that require advanced degrees and/or licenses, such as engineers, doctors, or attorneys, EEOC advises agencies to compare each of the professional occupations in their agencies with the corresponding occupations in the CLF. EEOC also said it advises agencies, in determining whether underrepresentation of minorities exists in the various levels of the workforce, to follow the guidance contained in the Department of Justice’s February 29, 1996, memorandum on affirmative action in federal employment. Among other things, that memorandum gives examples of comparative labor forces that agencies can use to determine whether minority groups are underrepresented in particular jobs. For example, the memorandum states that an agency would determine whether minorities were underrepresented in its workforce by comparing minority representation in the job at issue to the relevant or qualified labor pool in the CLF, rather than to the national CLF. The memorandum also indicates that where the job at issue cannot be precisely matched to a job in the CLF, an agency should use the qualified labor force that most closely matches its qualifications for the job at issue. For example, the memorandum states that an agency would determine whether minorities were underrepresented in its SES workforce by comparing the number of minority GS-15 employees it employs, and others with similar qualifications, to the number of minority SES members it employs. Comparisons with other labor forces are an important part of determining what further actions agencies need to take. However, even if women and minorities are not as well represented in the career SES when compared with other selected labor forces, this information alone would not be sufficient evidence to conclude that discrimination had occurred. In addition, it should not be concluded that affirmative employment efforts are no longer needed to further improve the representation of women and minorities in the career SES if the comparisons show they are as well or better represented in the SES as in other selected labor forces. To assess change in the career SES composition during the 1990s, we analyzed data obtained from OPM’s CPDF on the female and minority makeup of the career SES from fiscal year-end 1990 through 1999. We analyzed the data, by race/ethnicity and gender, to identify trends in the percentages of women and minorities employed in the career SES governmentwide and in each of 24 CFO agencies over the 10-year period. We did not independently verify the CPDF data on the SES for the years we reviewed. However, we reported in 1998 that governmentwide data from the CPDF for the key variables in this study (gender, race/ethnicity, GS-grade, pay plan, occupation, career status, agency, and personnel action) were 97 percent or more accurate. For the first part of our second objective, to determine the proportion of women and minorities appointed to the career SES annually over this 10- year period, we obtained and analyzed data from the CPDF for each fiscal year from 1990 through 1999. We excluded career SES appointments that were reinstatements into the career SES and transfers of career SES individuals from one agency to another (about 1 percent combined). For the second part of our second objective, to determine whether career SES appointments reflected the SES pipeline from which most new SES members were generally appointed, we obtained and analyzed data from the CPDF for each of 3 years (1990, 1995, and 1999). The 3 years represented the beginning, middle, and end of our overall review period. We compared the diversity of the career SES appointees with the diversity of the pipeline. Because data were not readily available on who actually applied for SES vacancies and because we could not clearly determine the workforces from which all career SES appointees came, we limited the pipeline analysis to career SES appointments of career GS-15 and equivalent employees from within the appointing agency. Over 90 percent of those appointed to the career SES from within an agency were career GS-15 and equivalent employees the year prior to their appointment and about 83 percent of all career SES appointments were from within an agency. Although we recognized that all GS-15 employees were not in managerial or supervisory positions, we selected the GS-15 workforce and its equivalent as the SES pipeline because we found that 25 percent of the GS-15 workforce appointed to the SES in fiscal year 1999 were not managers or supervisors in fiscal year 1998. To look at representation in the career SES compared with other labor forces, we calculated the proportions of women and minorities in the career SES, as of September 30, 1999, and compared the result with similarly calculated proportions of women and minorities in the six labor forces. The labor forces, which varied in the extent to which they were similar to the career SES in terms of occupation and salary, were the national CLF, excluding federal employees; an RCLF, excluding federal employees, that we developed; the federal executive branch career workforce as a whole; career federal employees in professional and administrative occupations; the GS-15 career workforce; and the Postal Service career executive corps. To provide data on the composition of and appointments to the noncareer SES, we obtained and analyzed governmentwide and agency-specific data from OPM’s CPDF. Data were obtained for each fiscal year from 1990 through 1999. We did our work in Washington, D.C., from January 2000 through January 2001 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. A more detailed description of the scope and methodology used to answer each of the objectives is provided in appendix II. The proportion of women and minorities in the career SES generally increased both governmentwide and in the 24 CFO agencies during the 1990 through 1999 period. The percentage of white women increased substantially while the percentage of white men declined. From fiscal years 1990 through 1999, the career SES varied in size from a high of 7,583 in 1992 to a low of 6,183 in 1998. While the number of career SES employees overall decreased, the number of women and minorities steadily increased over this 10-year period, as shown in figure 1. The number of women in the career SES governmentwide more than doubled from 626 in 1990 to 1,352 in 1999, while the number of men declined. The number of minorities increased from 487 as of September 30, 1990, to 807 by the end of fiscal year 1999. Figure 1 also shows that the number of white and male career SES members declined over the 10-year period but continued to make up the majority of the career SES workforce. Governmentwide, women and minorities became a greater proportion of the career SES workforce over the 1990 through 1999 period. The amount of growth that minorities experienced as a group was more modest than that of women. As shown in figure 2, the proportion of women in the career SES grew to 21.8 percent as of the end of fiscal year 1999, up 12 percentage points from the fiscal year-end 1990 rate of 9.5 percent. Minorities grew from 7.4 percent of the career SES as of September 30, 1990, to 13 percent as of September 30, 1999. The annual rate of increase for women and minorities in the career SES over the 10-year period was generally less than 1 percent. The highest annual rate of increase for women (2.4 percent) and minorities (1.1 percent) occurred between 1993 and 1994. The number of women and minorities in the career SES each fiscal year from 1990 through 1999 is shown in table III.1 of appendix III. Figure 3 shows the growth trends among the four minority groups— African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans— over the 1990 through 1999 period. African Americans increased from 4.6 percent as of September 30, 1990, to 7.8 percent as of September 30, 1999—a 3.2 percentage point increase over the 10-year period. The proportion of Native Americans in the career SES was 0.6 percent as of September 30, 1990, and from fiscal year 1991 through fiscal year 1997, they consistently made up 0.8 percent of the career SES. By the end of fiscal year 1999, the proportion of Native Americans in the career SES had increased to 1.1 percent, resulting in a 0.5 percentage point increase over the 1990 through 1999 period.