In an attempt to shift more responsibility and increase the pay and prestige of career members of the Senior Executive Service (SES), the Department of Defense (DoD) will convert 100-200 leadership posts currently held by military generals and admirals for career civilian executives in the coming months.

A DoD directive signed last year by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England is finally being implemented that formally gives the top tier of senior career executives authority comparable to some of the military's three-star generals, admirals and political appointees. 

"Positions will include logistics and other non-war-fighting operations...They'll occupy positions that have real scope of authority and responsibility for major portions of the organization," said Patricia Bradshaw, the deputy undersecretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy.

In her own admission, the Defense department's 1,300 "senior executives have been underutilized since the SES program was created in 1979," Bradshaw said while putting the blame on a hierarchy that favored the military over SESers.

The policy shift appears not to be a result of a deliberate and strategic thinking, but instead stems from necessity.  The need to have military officer's on the front lines to support the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq versus have left administrative gaps in the "rear with the gear" that SESers can fill.

The new directive carves out a cadre of top senior executives to serve in so-called enterprise, or leadership positions for up to six years.  For example, the U.S. Africa Command, or AfriCom, will now employ civilians in 10 senior posts.  The policy also requires employees who want to become DoD senior executives to have experience working with other federal, state and local government agencies.

With the daunting requirements and a workforce where approximately 60 percent of the government's 1.6 million white-collar employees and 90 percent of federal executives will be eligible for retirement over the next 10 years, filling these positions with qualified career executives might soon become more difficult.  One solution on the horizon is to replace the retiring leaders with retired generals, who step out of retirement as a band-aid fix to the ensuing federal brain drain.

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