The Efficiency Report
1913 · Clerical Measurement · Work 547 of 1,871
A printed form ruled into columns, the columns filled with small handwritten figures, a single handwritten line at the head, a total ringed in red ink at the foot, a red pencil lying across the sheet, behind it an open drawer of identical forms stacked in a steel cabinet, a brass inkwell and a wire tray beside, the desk beneath a tall window on the left, an electric bulb in a green glass shade hanging above, flat desks and filing cabinets running back into the dim office with dark unlit figures at the far desks.
- What it was used for
- The efficiency report was the rating form on which supervisors in the United States federal service recorded the performance of their officials and clerks. In 1912 Congress directed the Civil Service Commission to set up a uniform efficiency rating system for all federal agencies, and on 25 March 1913 the Commission established a Division of Efficiency for the purpose. An act of 28 February 1916 turned it into the independent Bureau of Efficiency. In 1940 the Ramspeck Act created boards of review for the ratings; the uniform efficiency rating system that resulted stayed in force until 1950, when the Performance Rating Act replaced it with three grades: outstanding, satisfactory, unsatisfactory.
- What was new
- What was new was not rating people but the claim that rating could be made uniform: one mark meant to mean the same thing in every agency. Congress issued that mandate in 1912, and the office set up to carry it out was itself a product of the efficiency movement. The barb: the agency created to hunt down waste was abolished by the Government Agencies Reorganization Act of 3 March 1933, effective 3 June 1933.
What the sources leave open: Dates and statutory citations come from the National Archives guide to federal records, the run to 1950 from a National Research Council volume. The layout of the form, and whether the marks governed promotion, were not examined.