The seven-day clock that once marked the window for career officials to be removed under the administration's schedule policy has become a paperwork pipeline. Career officials are departing faster than replacements can be confirmed, converting what was designed as a performance-review mechanism into a removal-records archive.

The pattern is cumulative. Each edition that tracks this thread adds new departures to a growing roster of institutional knowledge walking out the door. The schedule policy's original framing — that underperforming career officials could be identified and replaced within a seven-day review window — has produced the opposite effect: a steady attrition of experienced personnel whose departures outpace the confirmation of successors.

The record matters because it documents the structural transformation of the federal workforce in real time. What began as a policy announcement has become an operational reality, and the gap between the two is the story this paper tracks.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington

Sources: []