About this story
This project is being published in collaboration with the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group, which together produce the annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings.
During the past 23 years, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service has been dedicated to building a better government and a stronger democracy. We work across administrations to help transform the way government works by providing agencies with the data insights they need to succeed, developing effective leaders, inspiring the next generation to public service, facilitating smooth presidential transitions and recognizing exceptional federal employees. Visit ourpublicservice.org, follow us @PublicService and subscribe today to get the latest federal news, information on upcoming Partnership programs and events, and more.
The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings, produced by the Partnership for Public Service and BCG, offer the most comprehensive assessment of how federal public servants view their jobs and workplaces, providing employee perspectives on leadership, pay, innovation, work-life balance and other issues. The rankings are based on the Best Places to Work employee engagement and satisfaction score, and calculated using a proprietary model developed in 2003 when the rankings began. The employee engagement and satisfaction score is derived from a subset of questions in OPM’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and additional individual agency surveys. The 2023 rankings include 532 federal agencies and subcomponents, the most in the history of Best Places to Work. This is the 18th edition of the rankings.
BCG is a global management consulting firm dedicated to advising clients in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. We partner with our clients to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their challenges and transform their enterprises so that they achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations and secure lasting results. In our work with the federal government, BCG is recognized for bringing commercial insights and best practices to our public sector clients. To learn more, visit bcg.com.
Large agencies are those organizations with 15,000 or more employees. Agencies with 1,000 to 14,999 employees are included in the midsize category. Small agencies are those with at least 100 but fewer than 1,000 employees. Subcomponents—the subagencies, bureaus, divisions, centers, and offices within agencies— need to have at least 100 employees and 30 survey responses to be included in the rankings.
Using a combination of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and FedScope data, the Partnership determines which agencies and subcomponents meet the 100-person criteria for inclusion. In some cases, the employee count is unavailable from either the FEVS or FedScope. When this occurs, the Partnership makes informed inferences on the likely employee count at a subcomponent using the Office of Personnel Management’s average response rate for agencies with 100-999 employees.
At times, a lack of data may result in a subcomponent being included in the rankings that falls short of the 100-person threshold. The Partnership does not attempt to recreate the rankings in these situations but it does document them for further review during future Best Places to Work rankings.
Reporting and picture editing by Bronwen Latimer. Additional reporting by Jakob Bowen. Copy editing by Jordan Melendrez and Anne Kenderdine.
Design by Shikha Subramaniam and Talia Trackim. Design editing by Matt Callahan, Chloe Meister and Brian Gross. Audience engagement by Maite Fernandez. Project editing by Marian Chia-Ming Liu.
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