What is the Presidential Rank Award process and which Obama-era officials received it in 2015?
Executive summary
The Presidential Rank Awards are a competitive, statutorily created program that recognizes a small fraction of career Senior Executive Service and senior professionals for “sustained extraordinary” or “sustained accomplishments,” using a nomination, independent review, and presidential approval process; the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published the government-wide 2015 winners and agencies like DHS, the Army and ICE announced their honorees (including Thomas D. Homan at ICE) [1] [2] [3]. In 2015 the program returned to broader use after a short pause and the year’s winners were publicly listed by OPM and highlighted in agency press releases and trade reporting that also noted larger totals than in the immediately preceding years [4] [5] [2].
1. What the Presidential Rank Award is and how candidates are chosen
Created under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the Rank Awards program recognizes career senior executives and senior-level professionals for long-term excellence; agencies nominate career officials, nomination packages are evaluated by review boards that include private citizens, and the approved slate is announced with the President’s concurrence—operationally the White House Office of Management and Budget and OPM coordinate the final announcement [2] [6] [1].
2. The categories, limits and compensation that accompany the honors
The awards come in two primary categories—Distinguished rank for leaders judged to have achieved sustained extraordinary results and Meritorious rank for those with sustained accomplishments—with Distinguished awardees receiving a cash award equal to 35 percent of basic pay and Meritorious recipients receiving 20 percent of basic pay, plus a framed certificate and pin; statutory and program rules also constrain the percentages of the eligible corps that may receive each degree in a given year [6] [5] [7] [8].
3. The 2015 winners: totals, agency lists and named examples
OPM published the 2015 Presidential Rank Awards full list on its website and in a downloadable PDF listing all recipients across government [2] [1], and contemporary reporting showed that the number of Distinguished recipients rose substantially compared with 2014—Government Executive reported thirty-eight Distinguished executives on OPM’s list and another piece cited 43 Distinguished honorees being celebrated at an association event—numbers that reflected a restoration of the awards after modest retrenchment earlier in the Obama administration [5] [4]. Several agencies issued their own roll calls: the Department of Homeland Security named nine DHS career employees among the 2015 recipients in a departmental release [6], the Army public affairs office listed eight Army civilian executives who received awards that year and described the cash-plus-pin awards they received [7], and ICE has publicly noted that Thomas D. Homan was a 2015 Distinguished recipient for his career leadership at Enforcement and Removal Operations [3]. For a complete roster of names, OPM’s official 2015 list is the primary source [2].
4. Context, controversy and transparency around the 2015 awards
The program’s reinstatement and the larger 2015 slate drew attention because earlier years had seen fewer awards and quieter publicity amid concerns about bonus optics and federal pay politics; some senior executives and associations suggested the White House had encouraged muted publicity to avoid political scrutiny, even as OPM guidance continued to set nomination and evaluation dates and criteria [9] [10] [4]. Trade reporting and agency releases together provide the official record of who was honored, while critics and observers have used counts and disclosure practices to question whether the awards received appropriate public explanation given their cash value and prestige [5] [9].
5. Where the definitive record and further details live
The authoritative, government-published record of the 2015 recipients is OPM’s Presidential Rank Awards 2015 page and the PDF list of winners; agency press releases (for example DHS, Army and ICE) cite individual recipients and describe agency-level winners and award categories, while coverage in Government Executive aggregates counts and contextual commentary about program size and publicity choices in 2015 [2] [1] [6] [7] [5].