Executive Order 14170: Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service

What does Executive Order 14170 do?

Directed the development of a federal hiring plan focused on merit, skills, efficiency and shortened hiring times, while restricting the use of race, sex or religion and certain ideological criteria.

Later primary evidence reviewed September 24, 2026: A later presidential hiring order identified the Merit Hiring Plan issued in May 2025 pursuant to this order. Official source. The cited steps do not establish every downstream effect.

Reading the operative provisions of Executive Order 14170

EO 14170 assigns OPM and OMB a 120-day planning task, not a one-day replacement of every agency hiring process. The plan was to improve recruitment, assessment, and hiring speed while focusing on skills and merit. Agencies then had to use the plan and OPM’s later guidance to change their own vacancy announcements, assessments, and procedures. That makes the May 2025 Merit Hiring Plan an important implementation record: it shows how the government translated a broad executive direction into hiring-system instructions.

The order also directs agencies to review how they evaluate applicants and to avoid unlawful use of race, sex, religion, or ideological criteria. Existing civil-service statutes, veterans’ preference, collective-bargaining obligations, and appropriations remain relevant. “Merit” in the order is a policy direction, while a particular applicant’s selection still depends on the published qualification criteria, scoring method, agency record, and appeal rights that apply to that vacancy.

Later orders may amend hiring priorities or adjust the plan. A successor instrument that references the Merit Hiring Plan does not make every detail of EO 14170 permanent, and it does not retroactively decide a past hiring action. Readers comparing the two should identify whether the later order changes the plan itself, gives agencies a new deadline, or simply builds on its existing framework. Read Executive Order 14170 in the Federal Register.

For applicants, the plan’s effects appear through a sequence: an agency defines the job, announces the required skills, assesses candidates against those skills, and documents its selection. Faster hiring is a goal for the process, not permission to skip qualifications or merit-system safeguards. A job announcement and its assessment materials are the best evidence of how the plan was applied in a particular competition. The EO’s policy against specified criteria also does not eliminate legally required preferences or authorize discrimination on another protected basis.