Federal workforce modernization has been a long-time aim on the Workplace of Personnel Administration — and that doesn’t seem like altering anytime quickly.
In its fiscal 2027 congressional finances justification, revealed earlier this month, OPM outlined plans to prioritize spending on overhauling the federal government’s HR IT techniques, bringing federal hiring into the fashionable period, and additional digitizing the retirement course of.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration’s topline request of $375 million in discretionary spending for OPM represents a lower from the company’s at present enacted spending ranges. It’s additionally $43 million beneath the Home Appropriations Committee’s proposed $418 million for OPM’s finances.
A part of OPM’s proposed spending lower seems to come back from a big loss in personnel in 2025. Greater than 1,000 OPM staff have left their jobs since President Donald Trump took workplace, accounting for one-third of the company’s whole workforce.
Reflecting the company’s present headcount, OPM’s proposed finances for 2027 would assist roughly 2,074 full-time-equivalents (FTEs).
“Personnel compensation and benefits have decreased by approximately $12.1 million, reflecting the conclusion of residual personnel costs resulting from the agency restructuring efforts conducted in FY 2025 and extending into FY 2026,” OPM wrote.
The federal government’s fiscal 2027 spending ranges are nonetheless removed from finalized, however companies’ congressional finances justifications usually present extra perception into their precedence spending areas for the upcoming finances cycle. OPM’s newest finances doc reveals the place it might be heading for the subsequent few years, because the company seeks to ramp up modernization efforts, now with a a lot smaller workforce.
Overhauling federal hiring
Because it opens up extra hiring initiatives, OPM described plans to develop alternatives for pooled recruitment and shared certificates. These methods goal to streamline hiring and scale back HR workloads by letting a number of companies pull from a single pool of certified job candidates when recruiting for a similar place.
There are already a couple of latest pooled hiring actions underway, together with one for venture managers, and others for know-how consultants by way of the Tech Pressure program. OPM mentioned pooled hiring efforts and shared certificates “increase the efficiency of hiring and improve the applicant experience.”
The company additionally mentioned it could proceed working towards implementing skills-based hiring by “replacing outdated degree-based hiring models with equitable, skills-first approaches.”
OPM lately up to date the 2210 federal job sequence for IT managers to ease strict schooling necessities and as an alternative concentrate on hands-on {qualifications}. In fiscal 2027, OPM mentioned it could make related updates “across all 22 occupational families,” to align them with skills-based recruitment practices.
OPM additionally plans to extend the provision of skills-based and technical assessments for federal job candidates, whereas phasing out applicant self-assessments.
The administration’s 2027 finances request consists of $10 million to “establish a centralized, standardized HR training and certification program,” and one other $2.5 million to work on skills-based hiring initiatives.
Consolidating HR IT techniques
One other upcoming “major milestone,” OPM mentioned, can be to modernize and consolidate the federal government’s human capital administration (HCM) techniques.
Throughout fiscal 2027, OPM plans to finalize the primary wave of companies which have agreed to transition to the upcoming HCM system, which it’s calling “Core HCM.” OPM additionally intends to begin transitioning “wave two” companies.
“The system will support personnel action processing, employee records, employee and manager self-service, analytics and dashboards, time and attendance, and learning modules,” OPM wrote. “Core HCM will streamline HR operations, improve transparency through near real-time data, reduce friction in policy implementation, strengthen governmentwide data management, improve employee experience and generate savings on a governmentwide basis.”
OPM has lately laid out plans to consolidate the greater than 100 disparate HR IT techniques at present in use throughout authorities. In 2025, OPM issued a request for proposals (RFP), looking for a 10-year contract that could possibly be price greater than $1 billion to perform that aim.
OPM’s Human Sources Options (HRS) workplace, which is tasked with managing the HR modernization initiative, is requesting an general finances of about $520 million for 2027. That may be a rise of $218 million over at present enacted spending ranges, which accounts for the 2025 consolidation of different OPM parts into the HRS workplace.
Going ahead, OPM mentioned the HRS workplace will proceed to “draw down its workforce as it gains efficiencies.”
Modernizing retirement processing
Modernization efforts in OPM’s Retirement Companies (RS) workplace are additionally anticipated to proceed. OPM requested $147.1 million for its RS division, a rise of $3.4 million over present spending ranges. The funding would go towards “enhancing case processing, system integration, call center modernization and self-service expansion,” OPM mentioned.
In June 2025, after a number of years within the making, OPM launched the On-line Retirement Software (ORA) system to start processing federal retirement claims digitally. Regardless of latest retirement delays because of an inflow of purposes, OPM officers have mentioned the brand new system accelerates retirement processing, minimizes software errors and reduces guide rework.
For fiscal 2027, OPM outlined plans to develop ORA to have the ability to course of extra varieties of retirement instances, particularly incapacity and deferred retirements.
“This investment will mean more retirement applications enter interim pay faster and more applications move to final approval sooner,” OPM wrote.
Going ahead, OPM is seeking to create a consolidated platform for the Digital File System. DFS manages retirement information, nevertheless it’s at present a fragmented platform involving a number of legacy techniques. The JANUS retirement calculator would additionally get an overhaul, in keeping with OPM’s finances justification.
Funding for the RS workplace would even be put towards automating some name heart operations and increasing “self-service” choices, in an try to cut back name volumes and wait instances in OPM’s customer support heart.
“Annuitants will be able to access real-time information, track case status and resolve common issues without direct intervention from call center staff,” OPM wrote, including that the updates would additionally permit customer support representatives to concentrate on extra advanced requests.
Updating medical health insurance techniques
Additional modernization efforts at OPM would concentrate on techniques concerned within the Federal Workers Well being Advantages (FEHB) and Postal Service Well being Advantages (PSHB) applications.
OPM is requesting a finances according to present spending ranges for its healthcare and insurance coverage workplace, which oversees the FEHB and PSHB applications, in addition to dental, imaginative and prescient and life insurance coverage applications.
Inside that finances, OPM proposed utilizing $1.2 million for “Carrier Connect,” the company’s platform for managing service purposes to affix the FEHB and PSHB applications. With that funding, OPM mentioned it could be capable to consolidate and standardize the info right into a single system, and take away guide processes.
One other requested $1.8 million would go towards the event of a brand new “decision support tool” — the system that program members use to overview plan choices and replace their enrollments. OPM described plans so as to add search capabilities for enrollees to kind by way of lined suppliers, medicines and companies.
The know-how upgrades will “increase the accuracy, speed and user experience” of the federal government’s insurance coverage applications, OPM mentioned.
OPM additionally plans to do a “comprehensive” audit of enrollment eligibility in each FEHB and PSHB, as required by the 2025 FEHB Safety Act, to confirm or in any other case take away ineligible members from the insurance coverage applications.
Scrutiny over FEHB ineligibility prices arose after a 2022 Authorities Accountability Workplace report discovered that OPM was paying as much as $1 billion yearly on enrollees who usually are not technically eligible for protection.
If you want to contact this reporter about latest modifications within the federal authorities, please e mail drew.friedman@federalnewsnetwork.com or attain out on Sign at drewfriedman.11
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