The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of the U.S. people and providing essential human services. Its motto is "Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America". Before the separate federal Department of Education was created in 1979, it was called the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).
In the United States government, independent agencies are agencies that exist outside the federal executive departments and the Executive Office of the President. In a narrower sense, the term refers only to those independent agencies that, while considered part of the executive branch, have regulatory or rulemaking authority and are insulated from presidential control, usually because the president's power to dismiss the agency head or a member is limited.
The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is an independent agency of the United States government that manages the United States federal civil service. The agency provides federal human resources policy, oversight, and support, and tends to healthcare (FEHB), life insurance (FEGLI), and retirement benefits for federal government employees, retirees, and their dependents.
In the United States, Office of Inspector General (OIG) is a generic term for the oversight division of a federal or state agency aimed at preventing inefficient or unlawful operations within their parent agency. Such offices are attached to many federal executive departments, independent federal agencies, as well as state and local governments. Each office includes an inspector general and employees charged with identifying, auditing, and investigating fraud, waste, abuse, embezzlement and mismanagement of any kind within the executive department.
The competitive service is a part of the United States federal government civil service. Applicants for jobs in the competitive civil service must compete with other applicants in open competition under the merit system administered by the Office of Personnel Management, unlike applicants in the excepted service and Senior Executive Service. There are several hiring authorities for the competitive service, including "traditional" competitive examining, as well as expedited procedures such as Direct Hire Authority and the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act.
The Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) is a federal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Defense charged with protecting and safeguarding the occupants, visitors, and infrastructure of The Pentagon, the Mark Center Building, the Defense Health Agency headquarters, the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and other assigned DoD-occupied leased facilities within the National Capitol Region. As of 2004, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency employed 482 police officers.
The Senior Executive Service (SES) is a position classification in the United States federal civil service equivalent to general officer or flag officer rank in the U.S. Armed Forces. It was created in 1979 when the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 went into effect under President Jimmy Carter.
The General Schedule (GS) is the predominant pay scale within the United States civil service. The GS includes the majority of white collar personnel positions. As of September 2004, 71 percent of federal civilian employees were paid under the GS. The GG pay rates are identical to published GS pay rates.
The United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871. U.S. state and local government entities often have comparable civil service systems that are modeled on the national system to varying degrees.
Executive Order 13087 was signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on May 28, 1998, amending Executive Order 11478 to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the competitive service of the federal civilian workforce. The order also applies to employees of the government of the District of Columbia, and the United States Postal Service. However, it does not apply to positions and agencies in the excepted service, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Executive Schedule is the system of salaries given to the highest-ranked appointed officials in the executive branch of the U.S. government. The president of the United States appoints individuals to these positions, most with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. They include members of the president's Cabinet, several top-ranking officials of each executive department, the directors of some of the more prominent departmental and independent agencies, and several members of the Executive Office of the President.
The Pathways Programs are a series of programs of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management geared toward inviting talented students and recent graduates into federal employment. The programs were instituted as a result of an executive order signed in 2010, which incorporated both preexisting and new programs.
The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 is a United States federal statute establishing the procedure for filling vacancies in an appointed office of an executive agency of the government before the appointment of a permanent replacement.
According to the United States Office of Government Ethics, a political appointee is "any employee who is appointed by the President, the Vice President, or agency head". As of 2016, there were around 4,000 political appointment positions which an incoming administration needs to review, and fill or confirm, of which about 1,200 require Senate confirmation. The White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is one of the offices most responsible for political appointees and for assessing candidates to work at or for the White House.
A Schedule C appointment is a type of political appointment in the United States for confidential or policy roles immediately subordinate to other appointees. As of 2016, there were 1,403 Schedule C appointees. Most of these are confidential assistants, policy experts, special counsels, and schedulers, although about 500 of them are non-policy support roles. Schedule C appointments were created in 1956 and are part of the excepted service.
The 2017 United States federal hiring freeze was instituted by the Presidential Memorandum signed by President Donald Trump on January 23, 2017. Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney ordered the hiring freeze lifted on April 12, 2017.
A Title 42 appointment is an excepted service employment category in the United States federal civil service. It allows scientists and special consultants to be hired as part of the Public Health Service or Environmental Protection Agency under a streamlined process "without regard to the civil-service laws". Courts have ruled that, although Title 42 appointments are exempt from hiring and compensation provisions of civil service laws, they are still entitled to protections relating to termination, including appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
A Schedule F appointment was a job classification in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service that existed briefly at the end of the Trump administration during 2020 and 2021. It would have contained policy-related positions, removing their civil service protections and making them easy to dismiss. It was never fully implemented, and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration.
