Report - Government Executive

changed and by whom. 149 This appears to result from the way the process is implemented, rather
than a function of how DCIPS was designed.
More troubling are the widespread perceptions of why ratings are changed. Dozens of
individuals, representing at least four different intelligence components, reported through the
Academy online dialogue, open forums, and interviews that rating quotas or bell curves were
enforced in their agencies. Such practices are prohibited by DoD Instruction 150 and OUSD(I)
and ODNI have communicated that they are not permissible. 151 Nonetheless, the perception is
that such practices occur.
DCIPS employees are being told by their supervisors, correctly or not, that their ratings have
changed due to the office being required to fit a bell curve or achieve an agency-wide bell curve.
In addition, supervisors reported that they are told to follow a bell curve when rating their
employees. Nine different “idea threads” from the online dialogue, each with multiple examples,
indicate that the practice is perceived as widespread across agencies and condoned by
management. Representative comments from supervisors:
I was shocked when I was instructed to fit my ratings distribution to the
predetermined curve (50% “3”, 35% “4” and 15% “5”).
As a supervisor I was told there were no quotas and to rate my employees how I feel
they performed. Yet there was pressure from above and “guidance” given, that if my
ratings didn’t adhere to the general quota distribution that my agency was aiming for,
my own performance rating would suffer.
Some raters, including myself, were repeatedly told that we have to adhere to an
office “bell-curve” so that ratings are equally distributed across the agency. We also
had to submit proposed ratings for employees before appraisals were prepared to
ensure that we were within our “bell-curve boundaries.”
Ratings data provided by OUSD(I) 152 do not support, nor do they dispel, the claims that bell
curves are enforced. Among the agencies from which data were examined, many more
employees rated as 4s than 2s, resulting in a skewed distribution. Approximately 82 percent of
employees in the six agencies received a rating of 3. Only .06 percent of all employees received
a rating of 5.
Some employees have asserted that manipulation of ratings exists, and is proof that DCIPS has
been designed to keep payroll costs down. Others have blamed perceived rating quotas for
149 Academy online dialogue and open forum participants.
150 DCIPS Performance Management Instruction (DoDI 1400.25-V2011).
151 See DCIPS, Prohibition of Forced Distribution of Ratings Fact Sheet, Aug. 2009.
http://dcips.dtic.mil/documents/Prohibition_of_Forced_Distribution.pdf; and Memorandum for Heads of
Intelligence Community, All Intelligence Community Employees, Implementing Performance-Based Pay in the
Intelligence Community, June 12, 2009
(http://www.dami.army.pentagon.mil/site/dcips/documents/Memos/DNI/DNI%20Letter%20to%20%20IC%20Work
force%20regarding%20DCIPS%20status.pdf).
152 Ratings data were available for six components: DIA, Navy, NGA, NSA, OUSD(I), and USMC.
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