The Plum Book

For John, BLUF:  The Gov't Printing Office has a lot of information on line.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Plum being the cover color.

While we often talk about a lack of transparency on the part of the Government (at all levels) sometimes there is information available, like the Federal Government's Plum Book, which is described below:

Every four years, just after the Presidential election, the ‘‘United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions,’’ commonly known as the Plum Book, is published, alternately, by the Senate Committee on Home- land Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Over- sight and Government Reform.

This publication contains data (as of June 30, 2012) on over 8,000 Federal civil service leadership and support positions in the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject to noncompetitive appointment (e.g., positions such as agency heads and their immediate subordinates, policy executives and advisors, and aides who report to these officials). The duties of many such positions may involve advocacy of Admin- istration policies and programs and the incumbents usually have a close and confidential working relationship with the agency head or other key officials.

Following are the major categories of positions listed:

• Executive Schedule and salary-equivalent positions paid at the rates established for levels I through V of the Executive Schedule;
• Senior Executive Service (SES) ‘‘General’’ positions;
• Senior Foreign Service positions;
• Schedule C positions excepted from the competitive service by the Presi- dent, or by the Director, Office of Personnel Management, because of the confidential or policy-determining nature of the position duties; and
• Other positions at the GS–14 and above level excepted from the com- petitive civil service by law because of the confidential or policy-deter- mining nature of the position duties.

See Appendix 2 for more details on SES appointments and Appendix 3 for more details on Schedule C appointments. Additional information on the positions listed and the Federal salary schedules under which they are paid is provided in the appendices.

In many cases the names are out of date by this point.  The Secretary of Defense is listed as Leon Panetta, who was replaced by Chuck Hagel, who is about to be replaced by Ashton Carter. But, the book gives a good sense of the structure of our Federal Government.

And, there are other interesting publications from the Government Printing Office, including this almost three thousand page (on-line) analysis of the US Constitution, including the Amendments, the Amendments proposed and not incorporated and laws passed by Congress and ruled unconstitutional.

Regards  —  Cliff