DISCUSSION OF AD HOC COMMITTEE TERMS OF REFERENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00452R000100060019-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 16, 2006
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: September 9, 1999
• Content Type: REPORT

is charged with the responsibility for
personnel actions in several areas. This charge is spelled
out in
the members
In carrying out these responsibilities
of the Panel are expected to inform themselves
adequately with respect to the salient characteristics of
each person considered by the Panel and, further, to apply
their knowledge of the employees in ways that satisfy the
criteria of fairness, equity, and considerations of the
needs of the Agency.. In recognition of the fact that these
criteria are more adequately me t by the use of systematic,
organized approaches than by informal, impressionistic
applications of Panel members' hunches and feelings, the
Executive Committee has directed that each Career Service
devise a statement of Panel procedure which will spell out
in some detail the procedural methods whereby that Panel
will analyze information about employees and further how the
results of such analysis will be used to arrive at recommend-
ations for personnel actions. The Executive Committee is
specific ;in stating that each Career Service will design a
"Work Sheet" to be used in the deliberations of the Panels.
The specific 'characteristics for this work sheet are left to
the discretion of the individual career services in recognition
of the fact that each has different kinds of problems to
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DISCUSSION OF AD HOC COMMITTEE TERMS OF REFERENCE
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address in personnel evaluation. While general performance
criteria are mandated by the Executive Committee, the
specific application and interpretation of these criteria
are left to the Career Services (subject, of course, to
.appropriate approval).'
The task posed to the committee making the recommendations
given below was to apply the general mandates of the Executive
Committee to the RR Career Service. We have been directed
.to recommend a work sheet for use by ORD Sub-Group Panels
and procedures for its use. In doing this we have been
instructed to take into consideration the unique. problems of
personnel appraisal in the research environment. Further,
we have been directed to address the process of personnel
appraisal at all GS levels for which the Career Service Panel
procedures are appropriate under existing Agency regulations.
Lastly, we have been mandated to apply, to the degree possible,
the philosophy of "evaluation against objective criteria;"
this in keeping with management desires in the area of the
reduction of subjectiveness in personnel evaluation.
The recommendations-represent the result of our attempts
to reconcile often conflicting (and sometimes. mutually
exclusive) desiderata into a practical, useful, and
acceptable methodology which, we believe, incorporates the
letter and spirit of the Executive Committee's mandates.
Preliminary exposure to both assessors and assessees suggests
that acceptance will be forthcoming. We hope that ORD
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management will find these recommendations workable, fair,
and responsive to the desires of the Executive Committee.
Desirable Characteristics
Standardization. Any procedures proposed for use by
Sub-Group Panels should be such as to make explicit the
methods by which the decisions of the panel are reached.
The principal purpose of such standardization is to make,
insofar.as possible, the decisions of any panel independent
of the particular individuals comprising that panel. In
other words, standardization would have been achieved when
it. could be demonstrated that several differently constituted
panels would reach the same conclusions, given the same data
about the employees to be appraised. It is highly unlikely
that decisions can be totally independent of panel membership,
but the criterion of procedural. standardization should be a
goal toward which to strive.
Objectivity. The current interest shown by management
in the philosophy of objectivity in assessment should be
reflected in any recommendations for panel procedures. The
key concept is that of verifiability. As applied to the
area of personnel appraisal, this means (as is. stated in
several personnel management guides) that there should be an
explicit understanding by both the employee and management
subsequently, rewards or adverse action.
about exactly what actions, duties, behavior, and outcomes
are expected. The degree to which these standards are or
are not met will then form the basis for appraisals and
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I
th
b
n
e process o app aLisal
y the Sub-Group ranel,
differences are frequently so slight as to-make discriminatio
very difficult, panel procedures should, by their nature,
guide panel members toward objectivity in their decisions.
Further, since panel members must make judgments where
this objective approach should be adopted insofar as possible
.-Criteria. The criteria by which Sub-Group Panels appraise
employees have been stated, in the general sense, by
the Executive Committee. However, the elaboration of these
criteria is left to each career service. In this way a
degree of uniformity will exist across career services, but
the system in its totality will not be excessively Procrustean
The characteristics which must be considered by the RR
Career Service must be concerned with the fact that the
outcome of research activities is not a "product" in the
usual sense of the word. Further, it is the nature of the
research process that it deals, to a. great extent, with
activities whose outcomes are not only initially, undefined
but often undefinable in principle. It is .a truism to state
that if the answer is known before the project. starts there
is no need to do the research.
This setting in which research personnel work provides,
then, the basis for explication of the fundamental appraisal
criteria as provided by the Executive Committee. These
criteria should be expanded in such a way as to recognize
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STAT
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that research personnel work in domains of somewhat greater
ambiguity than many other workers. Indeed, one of the
principal criteria against which they should be judged is
the facility with which they handle this ambiguity so as to
reduce it for others.
Research workers must also maintain unusually high
level of technical knowledge in a variety of areas and must
simultaneously function in the administrative world of
contract management. These considerations, then, should
guide an attempt to expand the Executive Committee's criteria
as they apply in the RR Career Service.
Flexibility. A career Service Panel work sheet (and
the procedures for.its use) must not impose undue restrictions
on the actions of the Panel. The function of such things as
work sheets is to standardize the process of applying human'
judgment, not to control it. The element of judgment must
be paramount; the rules and procedures should be enabling
not constricting. This implies that final outcomes of the
panels' deliberations should be the direct result of the
application of judgment. The methods, work sheets, and
rules should have helped, guided, and generated an audit
trail leading to the panels' decisions. Such aids must
never be of such a nature as to generate the decisions
"automatically" thus relieving the panel members of either
the ability or the responsibility for making the final
decisions.
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Acceptability. Procedural aids in personnel appraisal
must be acceptable both to the appraisers and the appraisees.
The absence of the former will result in the circumvention
of the "aids" because they are not seen as helpful. Acceptance
by the appraisees is necessary because without it morale
and, therefore, performance will suffer. This is not to say
that universal acceptance of any method is necessary (or
even possible), but substantial acceptance is certainly a
characteristic which should be high on the list of anyone
designing personnel appraisal methods or aids.
Validity. After the management, administrative, and
humanistic requirements for a performance appraisal aid have
been met, there still stands the need to make any such
methodology scientifically and statistically sound. In
meeting this requirement the designer must take into con-
sideration what has been demonstrated in research in the field of
the assessment of people and the appraisal of performance on
the job. In considering this body of literature the designer
must take into consideration such things as the reliability
of the methods. proposed. By this is meant the degree to
which consistency is present; consistency across appraisers
and across time by the same appraiser. Additionally, attention
must be paid to validity. That is, "Do the methods generate
results that coincide with reality?" Obviously, a method
can have reliability without validity but the reverse is not
true. Only a knowledge of the field of performance appraisal
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