# USCIS Faces Performance Rating Challenge

A whistleblower alleges that USCIS’s National Records Center used an unofficial forced-distribution approach in its 2025 employee performance reviews, limiting top ratings and influencing employee award allocations before formal agency-wide requirements took effect. The reported dispute raises workforce-management and compliance concerns, including possible challenges to ratings and their potential use in future reductions in force. The signal identifies no contract, vendor action, or procurement opportunity, so the direct relevance to acquisition teams is limited to understanding USCIS workforce and administrative risks—not a change in contracting demand or requirements.

- The issue concerns federal employee performance ratings and awards, not contract awards; procurement teams should keep the two separate when assessing the story’s implications.
- USCIS contractors and other stakeholders supporting agency operations may find the allegations relevant as workforce-management context, but the signal does not identify any resulting solicitation, contract change, or required vendor action.
- The reported possibility of rating challenges and future RIF use points to potential workforce-planning uncertainty at the National Records Center; no specific procurement response or timeline is provided.

**Jurisdictions:** federal
**Published:** October 21, 2026

### Government Entities
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
- Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
- Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)

### Key Quotes
> Reducing performance management to a forced distribution scale creates this disincentive to be further engaged as an employee. You have less agency in defining your own career path, while also being more at risk for future RIF efforts. It’s just antithetical to why we do performance management to begin with.
> — Ray Limon, former member, Merit Systems Protection Board

### Sources
- [‘It’s The Price is Right’: How USCIS artificially deflated employee ratings under forced distribution mandate - Government Executive](https://www.govexec.com/management/2026/10/its-price-right-how-uscis-artificially-deflated-employee-ratings-under-forced-distribution-mandate/416728) - GovExec.com