Executive Order 14284: Strengthening Probationary Periods in the Federal Service

What the order contains

Section headings exactly as they appear in the official text.

• Sec. 1. Purpose
• Sec. 3. Civil Service Rule XI
• Sec. 4. Modifications to the Civil Service Regulations
• Sec. 5. Review During Probationary and Trial Periods
• Sec. 6. Effective Date
• Sec. 7. General Provisions

Section 1, quoted from the order

Verbatim text from the signed document. These are the words of the document, not SaveYourState’s.

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. […]