In the event of a war, one expert suggests the British Army could be incapable of fighting effectively on land within weeks, once committed - though 'much depends on the form of the conflict'.
Terry Gerton Congratulations on being a newly elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. What does that honor mean to you?
Jamie Morin Well gosh, the number of folks that I have admired over the years who are fellows of the Academy is pretty impressive. And so it was it was humbling, but really a wonderful recognition. I was I was deeply honored.
Terry Gerton Well, it reflects a lifetime of service. Tell us about what motivated you to begin public service in the first place.
Jamie Morin I take it back to family influence, for one. I was raised with a really strong tradition of making the community stronger. My mother’s a school teacher, has worked with autistic children for most of her career, still working in that field. And both my parents just had a really strong commitment to the community. So it starts with that, right? And then for me I grew up in the late Cold War, and that built in me a really strong interest in national security. And so I was struck that a meaningful way to serve and to strengthen the nation was to work in a career in national security. And it’s been just enormously rewarding and fulfilling.
Terry Gerton As you think back across that career — you served in the Air Force, you served at DoD level. What stands out as one of your most meaningful accomplishments in the public administration space?
Jamie Morin Well, you said accomplishments, but let me start with a moment. You know, I guess this will sound hopelessly naive in these cynical days, but the first chance I had to take the oath to uphold the Constitution — when as a graduate student, I guess I was 22 or 23 years old, I was offered the chance to work in the Pentagon on requirements and plans — to be pulled into something much bigger than yourself, to be pulled into incredibly consequential matters, and to do it with a devotion to those principles in the Constitution. Just being in that moment as a young person was a tremendously shaping experience for me. So that that’s where I would have to start. I’ve probably taken that oath personally six or seven times since. I’ve administered it dozens of times. I had the privilege of presiding at a graduation ceremony from basic military training with hundreds of young people starting a career in military service. But you keep coming back to: We are offered an opportunity in this nation to uphold a constitution that’s bigger than any of us, bigger than the politics of the moment. And that that’s a great starting point. You know, to the accomplishments, I’ve worked mostly in resource management, in making smart decisions with the taxpayers’ money. Chief Financial Officer for the Air Force, Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation for the Department of Defense as a whole. So the biggest opportunities for impact in roles like that are when you can get something started on the right foot. And the things we do in national security, particularly in developing technology — it takes time. We’re trying to do really hard things. But I had the opportunity with both the Air Force and working for the Secretary of Defense to get a few really consequential and major programs started, thinking about the B-21 bomber for the Air Force, for example. It’d been a long time since the U.S. Air Force had been able to buy a bomber on something approaching planned cost and planned schedule. And it looks like we’re on a path to be pretty darn close to that on that program. And so that’s a tremendous thing to be able to look back and say, “hey, we’ve been working on this, it’s a big deal, billions of taxpayer dollars, critical to the success of the joint force. And I was able to have my fingers all over that at the outset.” So that’s a significant one. Moments of crisis. We’ve recently gone through a government shutdown. I had the challenge of operating through a few of those as Air Force CFO and working in OSD, and some close calls as well as actual shutdowns. Those are searing moments where leaders have to make tough decisions — again, with the Constitution first and foremost in our mind. Our system isn’t always perfect, but it is ours and it’s our responsibility to operate within it and to make it better. And then finally, I guess I would highlight people, in that the public service is an important calling. It demands things of people that are different than what we ask of people in the private sector. And because it’s sometimes hard for people to get their feet under them in the complexity of an organization like the Department of Defense or many of the other federal agencies, we have to make long-term investments in our people. So being able to be involved in hiring and developing talent and giving people an opportunity to really accomplish their potential and then to also send them forth to go do bigger and better things, whether in government or outside, those have been just tremendously rewarding for me.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Jamie Morin. He’s Vice President of Defense Strategic Space at the Aerospace Corporation and a newly elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Jamie, you told some great stories there, but early in that last response, you mentioned the oath of office and allegiance to the Constitution. You’ve seen in your service firsthand how trust in government can be tested in times of fiscal uncertainty and strategic transition, and we’re certainly in that right now. How do you view the current state of public administration and what can it do to help increase public trust in government?
Jamie Morin I think approaching public administration as an exercise in continuous improvement is really important. We have to always be willing to question the “how” of how we get things done. Take advantage of new technology, take advantage of new concepts and approaches. We have to do that, still, with an eye to the core principles, right? Public service is a public trust. We have to conduct ourselves in public administration in such a way that there is no question about the integrity with which people work and that they are doing things with the right ends in mind. We’re talking about a nation approaching its 250th birthday. So the timelines and the time horizon that the public administration has to think about is different than what we as individual humans have to think about, or what even, you know, long-lived companies have to think about. We have to take that long-term perspective for the betterment of the nation. But again, you’ve got to balance that with responsiveness to changing needs. The needs that the public administration meets in a time are shaped by the time. They’re shaped by the technology, they’re shaped by the psychology of the citizens, they’re shaped by the external environment that we operate in. So continuous improvement, willingness to adapt, but founded on those core principles of what government is about and the constitution we uphold. I think that’s the bottom line for me.
Terry Gerton Well, and you also mentioned the importance of people. If you were speaking to someone just starting out in public service, perhaps in defense analysis or budgeting, what advice would you give them about building a career that really makes a difference?
Jamie Morin I would start with coming in for the right reasons. Every once in a while I run into people who are entering public service with a plan to sort of hop, skip and jump their way through it. I’m not sure that’s the right approach. I think that there are certainly great opportunities for people to come and depart from government service and have careers that cross those boundaries. I think that’s very useful. But, you know, it really should be about the mission of the agency and the national interest, not so much the personal interest. So I find that people that come in with that perspective generally do better. If you’re thinking about, how can I accomplish things for the citizens, how can I deliver on the promises of government? Those people are more likely to both enjoy themselves and have a positive impact than those who are, you know, kind of climbing their way up a ladder. But the other piece I would suggest is that reputation matters. People’s ability to get things done in complex environments, whether big bureaucracies or just very difficult missions with lots of factors that have to come together. It depends on credibility. It depends on creativity. It depends on being seen as a team player. Someone who’s willing to make sacrifices to get the right things done. And that’s a hard-earned reputation — and it’s one that’s also easy to lose if you make bad choices. As someone who is an adjunct professor at Georgetown now and teaches students who are really interested in public service, these are conversations I have all the time. I encourage people to look at the career and I encourage them to look at it from a mission accomplishment perspective, because that’s how it’s going to be most rewarding for them and for the mission that they’re trying to actually support.
The IRS is setting new limits on telework for employees who are facing a variety of temporary hardships.
The agency said in an internal memo Monday that hardship-based requests for full-time telework that employees submitted, but were still awaiting approval, will be “closed,” effective immediately.
The memo, obtained by Federal News Network, cites the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate for federal employees as the reason for the policy change.
“As a result of return to office, the current hardship program process and approvals will be adjusted to ensure compliance,” the memo states.
According to the memo, IRS employees are generally limited to five days of telework per calendar year.
Employees can still submit hardship-based telework requests, but approvals must come from the agency’s leadership or its human capital office, which is inundated with paperwork from employees retiring under the deferred resignation program.
The IRS lost more than a quarter of its employees this year through voluntary separation incentives.
Several IRS employees told Federal News Network that the IRS in the past has granted hardship-based telework to accommodate a range of emergencies, including employees facing domestic violence or employees who are immunocompromised following organ transplants.
It’s not clear how long employees will wait for hardship approvals under this policy change. Federal News Network has reached out to the IRS and the Treasury Department for comment.
The memo states that requests for short-term telework arrangements lasting fewer than 90 days will still be reviewed and considered on a case-by-case basis.
Short-term telework arrangements for less than 30 days must get approval from the agency’s human capital office. Hardship requests for more than 30 days of telework will require approval from the agency’s chief operating officer.
The new IRS policy comes as other agencies are setting restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.
The Department of Health and Human Services rolled out a new reasonable accommodation policy last week that required all telework, remote work, or reassignment requests to be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official — a decision that is likely to slow the approval process.
Meanwhile, IRS employees have been under scrutiny from an agency watchdog to ensure they are complying with the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate.
Federal News Network reported in August that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration conducted an audit, at the request of the Treasury Department, to see if IRS employees were reporting to the office as often as they claimed.
The Trump administration, more broadly, has required agencies to collect data, including badge swipes into office buildings, to determine if federal employees are following the return-to-office mandate.
According to the National Treasury Employees Union’s 2022 national agreement with the IRS, when an employee is experiencing a temporary hardship, the agency “will make every reasonable effort to approve a temporary telework location,” including moving the employee to another office location.
Under this labor agreement, the IRS can approve a permanent hardship in cases where an employee or an immediate family member faces a “significant hardship” that threatens their life or livelihood. Examples include seeking specialized care for serious medical conditions that affect major life functions, a spouse faced with relocation or the loss of their job, or employees facing domestic violence or other similar “threats to life or limb.”
Temporary hardship requests are granted on a broader basis than permanent hardship requests. NTEU and the IRS included temporary hardship requests in their labor contract, based on discussions around medical issues impacting an employee’s immediate family members.
The 2022 agreement states the IRS may approve a temporary hardship for up to a year, depending on the circumstances of the hardship and “subject to staffing and workload needs.” Management can further extend a temporary hardship for a maximum of one more year.
IRS denials of hardship requests are supposed to be resolved through the union’s grievance procedure. The IRS, however, no longer recognizes NTEU, given the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights across the federal workforce.
NTEU is leading a lawsuit challenging those executive orders targeting federal employee unions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments in the case next Monday.
The IRS memo states that the agency will still grant requests for “situational” telework for “unforeseen, non-recurring emergencies.”
Those include an employee dealing with an illness or medical appointment that would normally require sick leave, an employee needing to stay home to meet with a service provider for urgent home repairs, or a school or caregiving facility closure with less than 24 hours’ notice.
The memo states that IRS managers can provide up to 90 days of telework as an interim accommodation for employees waiting for the agency to process their request for reasonable accommodation.
Federal agencies are required under the Rehabilitation Act to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, as long as that accommodation does not result in an “undue hardship” for agencies.
“Treasury recognizes the role that limited telework can play to support achieving the mission and employees’ work-life balance,” the IRS memo states.
However, Tax Notes reported last week that the IRS faces a growing backlog of more than 8,000 reasonable accommodation requests.
Despite its popularity and broad bipartisan support, right-to-repair provisions that would have given service members the ability to fix their own equipment in the field were stripped from the compromise version of the 2026 defense policy bill after industry pushback.
The House’s Data-as-a-Service Solutions for Weapon System Contracts provision, which would have required DoD to negotiate access to technical data and necessary software before signing a contract, was removed from the final text of the annual legislation released over the weekend. The Senate’s provision requiring contractors to provide the military with detailed repair and maintenance instructions was dropped from the bill as well.
Instead, the legislation requires the Defense Department to develop a digital system that would track and manage all technical data and verify whether contractors and subcontractors comply with contract requirements related to technical data. The compromise version of the bill also requires DoD to review all existing contracts to determine what contractors were required to deliver and what data DoD can access.
“It’s almost completely meaningless relative to ‘right to repair.’ It only addresses cases in which the contractors have failed to deliver or make available the data that is already in their contracts. It doesn’t address in any way whether the contracts themselves are sufficient to support service members’ right to repair,” Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told Federal News Network.
While this is not the first time Congress has stripped right-to-repair language from the National Defense Authorization Act, the 2026 defense policy bill is likely the most high-profile attempt to block the reform — this year, the proposal had gained momentum and wide support from the Trump administration, the House and Senate, and senior DoD leaders.
But defense lobbyists pushed back against the reform during the conference process. The National Defense Industrial Association, for example, said these bipartisan efforts would “hamper innovation and DoD’s access to cutting-edge technologies by deterring companies from contracting with the DoD.”
Eric Fanning, former secretary of the Army and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, said the right to repair provisions would “cripple the very innovation on which our warfighters rely.”
“Given that we had support in the House and the Senate on a bipartisan basis, and we had the support of the Trump administration and the secretary of Defense, I don’t know how to interpret this, other than to say that industry prevailed in their influence over Congress, and the NDAA now reflects the interests of the business community instead of the American taxpayers and service members,” Williams said.
For years, the military has struggled with contract-imposed restrictions on repairing and maintaining its own equipment and weapons, forcing it to rely on original manufacturers to conduct necessary fixes in the field, which is costly and time-consuming.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, for example, has become an outspoken critic of large defense companies — he previously said that defense contractors have “conned the American people and the Pentagon and the Army.” Driscoll recently highlighted a Lockheed Martin Black Hawk helicopter part that costs the Army $47,000 to replace because the manufacturer refuses to fix a control knob the Army could make for $15.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mt.) said in a statement they “support the Pentagon using the full extent of its existing authorities to insist on right to repair protections when it purchases equipment from contractors.”
Williams said while this is the chance for the Pentagon to exercise its existing authorities, without legislation that enforces consistency, it’s very unlikely that contracting officers will be able to effectively implement right to repair across thousands of contracts.
“I don’t want to let the Pentagon off the hook either. I believe that if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made this a high priority, he could ensure that we acquire adequate data. But he would have to make sure that every contract officer on every contract was way more diligent than they have been up to this point,” Williams said.
For now, the right-to-repair effort is likely stalled until next year. Lawmakers will vote on the NDAA one more time before it is sent to President Donald Trump for his signature.
“We will keep fighting for a common-sense, bipartisan law to address this unnecessary problem,” Warren and Sheehy said.
The 8(a) small business contracting program is in a fight for its life.
From Capitol Hill to the courts to now the executive branch, the 47-year-old program is facing questions about its legitimacy and challenges to its true impact like never before.
Over the course of the last two weeks, the 8(a) program and firms taking part in the socioeconomic program have seen:
The Center for Individual Rights, a conservative public interest organization, and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in mid-November seeking to “force the repeal of an unconstitutional racial preference regulation that has been incorporated into many federal contract, loan, investment, and grant programs. “
The Small Business Administration send a letter to more than 4,300 8(a) firms seeking 13 different data, ranging from a list of the company’s employees to bank statements for the last three fiscal years to a copy of all 8(a) contracts, as part of its ongoing audit of the program.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the chairwoman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, wrote a letter to 22 agencies yesterday calling on them to “to halt new 8(a) sole-source contract awards.” Ernst’s request comes after she introduced legislation that would suspend all 8(a) sole source contracts until SBA completes its audit.
Each of these on their own would be enough to put the 8(a) program under pressure, but taken altogether, experts say the program is under such an attack that it could mean the end of what many believe has been a successful contracting program.
“The administration has been targeting this program and wanting to shut it down since taking office,” said one former SBA executive, who requested anonymity in order to talk about the program. “They presume it is handouts and a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) program.”
Ernst has been leading the charge over the past several months to address what she believes is wide-spread fraud in the 8(a) program. Her concerns come from two specific recent cases. In June, a U.S. Agency for International Development contracting officer and three owners of companies pled guilty for their roles in a decade-long bribery scheme involving at least 14 prime contracts under the 8(a) program worth over $550 million.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is the chairwoman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Ernst highlighted these two cases and what she called the Biden administration’s “indifference toward the 8(a) program integrity” as the reasons for the need for agencies to review and Asuspend sole source contracts.
“The SBA’s 8(a) program is the largest set-aside program at the agency, which dished out $40-plus billion in contract awards during fiscal 2024 alone. Yet decades of Government Accountability Office (GAO), SBA’s Office of Inspector General, and Justice Department probes expose the same rot,” Ernst wrote to agencies. “Sloppy oversight and weak enforcement measures allow 8(a) participants to act as pass-through entities, snagging unlimited no-bid deals with little transparency. Every loophole guts public trust and rigs the system against honest competitors.”
Ernst is asking agencies to respond by Dec. 22 as to whether they plan to suspend 8(a) sole source contracting. She also wants agencies to review all sole source and set-aside contracts they awarded since 2020.
On Wednesday, Ernst will take a deeper look at the 8(a) program, holding a hearing with witnesses ranging from the Project on Government Oversight to the Government Accountability Office to Open The Books, a non-profit government watchdog organization, to a reporter from the Daily Wire.
Ernst’s letter and hearing comes on the heels of the SBA requiring all 8(a) firms to submit 13 data sets as part of its ongoing audit of the program.
By Jan. 5, 8(a) vendors must send to SBA:
General ledger for the last three full fiscal years (CSV files only)
Trial balance as of the last day for each of the last three fiscal year-ends (CSV files only)
IRS Form 4506 covering the last three full fiscal years (PDF files only)
Bank statements as of the last day for each of the last three fiscal year-ends (PDF files only)
Bank reconciliations as of the last day for each of the last three fiscal year-ends (PDF files only)
Payroll register and reconciliation (including any distributions to any owner) monthly for the last three full fiscal years (PDF files only)
List of all employees, broken out by contracts those employees are servicing, for the last three full fiscal years (PDF files only)
List of all vendors (as well as all joint ventures) for the last three full fiscal years (PDF files only)
Copy of all 8(a) contracts on which the firm is currently working for the last three full fiscal years (PDF files only)
Subcontracting agreements related to the contracts in item 9 (for the last three full fiscal years) (PDF files only)
Financial statements which include, at a minimum, the year-end balance sheet, YTD P&L, cash flow statement, and the statement of equity for each of the last three fiscal years (CSV files only)
Financial statement reconciliation to the year-end Trial Balance for the last three fiscal years (CSV files only), and
For each of the last three full fiscal years, a sub-ledger schedule tying to the year-end trial balance accounts for: all accounts receivable accounts, all accounts payable accounts and all P&L accounts (CSV files only)
“To the extent that your firm submitted any particular information in routine annual reporting, that particular information need not be submitted again,” wrote Wendell Davis, SBA’s general counsel, in the letter, which Federal News Network obtained. “Failure to respond to the SBA’s inquiry may result in a determination that your firm is not eligible for continued participation in the 8(a) Program and may result in further investigative or additional remedial action.”
Emails to SBA seeking more details on the audit were not returned.
Contracting experts say the fact the letter came from the General Counsel’s Office and not just the Office of Government Contracting and Business Development means that this is now a legal and compliance investigation, not an administrative refresh.
“By shifting the audit to SBA legal, SBA can look far beyond whether firms filed the right paperwork to get 8(a) certified. They can analyze contract execution, where most fraud occurs, and trace how money, control, and influence move between partners — including patterns involving [program managers, contracting officers, business opportunity specialists] and others,” wrote Robb Wong, a former associate administrator in SBA’s Office of Government Contracting and Business Development, on LinkedIn. “In short, they’re looking for tails that wag the dog: money flowing indirectly to parties who couldn’t receive it directly under the rules. If this sounds foreign to you, you’re probably fine. If it hits close to home — slow down, re-examine your documents, and make sure the story they tell still supports 8(a) ownership, control, and eligibility.”
Wong, who is now managing executive at Deep Water Point & Associates, offered some guidance for companies:
File on time. Miss the deadline and you’re out.
Ensure your documents support ownership, control and continued eligibility.
Verify your teaming agreements comply with limitations on subcontracting and actual workshare.
Confirm your performance documentation matches what you proposed — and what you certified.
Be thorough. The burden of compliance is on you; SBA can draw negative inferences from gaps in information and evidence.
The third piece of this probe is the lawsuit filed by the Center for Individual Rights in November. CIR isn’t new to challenging the 8(a) program, bringing the Ultima lawsuit to court in 2023 and eventually winning the case, which led to SBA requiring companies to provide a narrative as to why they are socially and/or economically disadvantaged.
CIR says this challenge is different because than the Ultima case.
“In Ultima, the SBA was harming our client, so we just addressed the SBA’s use of the rule. Now, the Center for Individual Rights, together with our colleagues at Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, represent clients who were harmed by other agencies applying the SBA’s rule. Because the SBA’s rule is woven throughout other race-based government programs, we are now challenging the rule itself,” said Mike Petrino, the organization’s lead attorney. “This case challenges the regulation issued by the Small Business Administration — because the SBA, not Congress, created the legal presumption that every individual who is a member of certain races and ethnicities is ‘socially disadvantaged.’ This case is also different [from previous challenges] because it addresses unlawful discrimination by more than one agency. The SBA’s rule is at the heart of numerous race-based programs administered by different agencies. Instead of challenging each-and-every instance where an agency, applying the SBA’s rule, discriminates against someone, this lawsuit targets the source of the unlawful discrimination by addressing the rule itself.”
Petrino said CIR and the Wisconsin Institute don’t want to end the 8(a) program, but just remove any racial preferences that they say SBA inserted into the law.
“Section 8(a) as passed by Congress would still be in effect, and the SBA could try again to create a program that comports with the Constitution and Section 8(a),” he said.
The government’s dispersed systems for managing human resources for the federal workforce are on the verge of a major transformation, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
By January, OPM said it expects to award a federal contract that will eventually result in a cohesive HR system for all agencies to use. But in the short term, creating a governmentwide HR entity will mean working to consolidate the more than 100 systems agencies currently use for workforce management.
It’s not the first time OPM has attempted to merge the disparate HR IT systems across government. But Dianna Saxman, OPM’s associate director of HR Solutions, said the effort currently underway is “different.”
“We’re really leveraging the collective wisdom of the entire federal community,” Saxman said Tuesday during a public meeting of the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council. “We’ve already brought experts from many different agencies into a steering committee that is helping us to set the strategy up front.”
Along with employing a steering committee at OPM, Saxman said many federal human capital leaders have started collaborating internally with other agency executives, like chief information officers and chief data officers, to plan the integration of the upcoming HR system.
“What we’re seeing in these agency engagements is a lot of enthusiasm and support for the overall effort,” Saxman said.
Once implemented, the new system will be the source for agencies, HR offices and federal employees to manage personnel records, payroll systems and performance data, while also having the capability to provide federal workforce analytics.
After OPM awards the HR IT contract in January, the agency will spend the next several months implementing the core HR system by the end of April. From there, OPM plans to work one-on-one with agencies to configure the platform to meet their unique needs.
All told, OPM’s end goal is to have the HR IT system fully adopted governmentwide by September 2027.
The value of the anticipated contract award in January is not yet clear. But it comes after OPM released a request for proposals (RFP) in October, detailing a specific plan of action to modernize and centralize the more than 100 current federal HR systems.
In May, OPM had previously released its initial RFP through the General Services Administration schedules program, which emphasized the need for interoperability in governmentwide human capital systems. The May RFP came just weeks after OPM initially announced a sole source award to Workday in early May, but then quickly canceled that award.
The expected timing for awarding the HR IT contract also “aligns beautifully” with the Trump administration’s newly released President’s Management Agenda, Saxman said. She highlighted three key goals in the new agenda that dovetail with the HR IT consolidation effort.
For one, a centralized HR IT platform would underly the administration’s goal of fostering a “merit-based” federal workforce, Saxman explained.
“As we look to foster greater merit, we’re able to do that by having an end-to-end HR IT capability that allows us really to see what’s happening with the federal workforce, with skillsets we have available [and] how people are being promoted and evaluated,” Saxman said. “This gives us that visibility.”
The Trump administration’s goal of making “buying power” more efficient calls for consolidated contract opportunities that are “smarter, faster, cheaper,” according to another component of the new PMA.
“A lot of the contracting processes in government are really decentralized, and there’s a lot of repetitive action there,” Saxman said. “This effort seeks to centralize the purchasing of a private sector core human capital capability at OPM — we would have one entity buying it on behalf of the entire federal government.”
On top of that, Saxman noted that OPM’s effort aligns with the goal of leveraging technology, as the PMA seeks to “consolidate and standardize systems,” while also incorporating “digital-first” government services and eliminating data siloes.
“We’re going to be consolidating over 100 systems into one, reducing the number of system integrations that are required and the complexity of managing all of these systems,” she said.
Saxman outlined what she said will eventually be an array of benefits for agencies, HR offices, federal employees and external stakeholders, once legacy HR systems are decommissioned and the new system is fully implemented.
“There are many manual data requests that come out from OPM, many different stakeholder groups,” she said. “But we’ll have an opportunity where the data will be readily available in dashboards, so we can have a real view of what’s happening with the federal workforce at any point in time.”
OPM also hopes to ease the workload for HR employees by eventually moving all personnel records to single files, even when employees transition between multiple agencies throughout their career. Currently many federal employees have personnel records that span across multiple different HR systems.
“Our goal here is to have one system that they can manage their employee record,” Saxman said.
For signs of success, Saxman said OPM will be measuring and looking for improvements in employee experience, cost savings and better data overall.
“A lot of our HR professionals are working with outdated, disparate technologies that are not serving them well, that are not serving our employees well,” Saxman said. “As a federal community, this is something that we have wanted to do for a long time.”
Leaders from the U.S. Air Force, partnering nations and community members gathered for a traditional "push ceremony," marking the official beginning of Operation Christmas Drop 2025 at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.
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