You just left a high-level meeting with agency leadership. You and your colleagues have been informed that Congress passed new legislation, and your agency is expected to implement the new law with your existing budget and staff. The lead program office replied, “We can make this work.” The agency head is pleased to hear this, but has reservations. How?

Another situation: The president just announced a new priority and has assigned it to your agency. Again, there is no new funding for the effort. Your agency head assigns the priority to your program with the expectation for success. How do you proceed?

Today, given the recent reductions in force (RIFs), people voluntarily leaving government, and structural reorganizations that have taken place and will likely continue, answering the question “How to proceed?” is even more difficult. There is a real need to “know” with a level of certainty whether there are sufficient resources to effectively deliver and sustain new programs or in some cases even the larger agency mission.

Members of the Management Advisory Group — a voluntary group of former appointees under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump — and I believe the answer to these and other questions around an organization’s capabilities and capacity to perform can be found by employing the Operational Readiness and Resiliency Index (ORRI). ORRI is a domestic equivalent of the military readiness model. It is structured into four categories:

• Workforce
• Performance
• Culture
• Health

Composed of approximately 50 data elements and populated by existing systems of record, including payroll, learning management systems, finance, budget and programmatic/functional work systems, ORRI links capabilities/capacity with performance, informed by culture and health to provide agency heads and executives with an objective assessment of their organization’s current and future performance.

In the past, dynamic budgeting and incrementalism meant that risk was low and performance at some levels predictable. We have all managed some increases or cuts to budgets. Those days are gone. Government is changing now at a speed and degree of transformation that has not been witnessed before. Relying on traditional budgeting methods and employee surveys cannot provide insights needed to assess whether current resources provide the capabilities or capacity for future performance of an agency — at any level.

So how does it work?

As is evident with the illustration above, ORRI pulls mainly from existing systems of record. Many of these systems are outside of traditional human resources (HR) departments to include budget, finance and work-systems. Traditionally, HR departments relied on personnel data alone. These systems told you what staff were paid to do, not what they could do. It is focused on classification and pay, not skills, capacity or performance.

Over the years, we have made many efforts to better measure performance. The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) as amended, the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), category management and other efforts have attempted to better account for performance. These tools — along with improvements in budgeting to include zero-based budgeting, planning, programming and budgeting systems, and enterprise risk management — have continued to advance our thinking along systems lines. These past efforts, however, failed to produce an integrated model that runs in near real-time or sets objective performance targets using best-in-class benchmarks. Linking capabilities/capacity to performance provides the ability to ask new questions and conduct comparative performance assessments. ORRI can answer such questions as:

• Are our staffing plans ready for the next mission priority? Can we adapt? Are we resilient?
• Do we have the right numbers with the right skills assigned to our top priorities?
• Are we over-staffed in uncritical areas?
• Given related functions, where are the performance outliers — good and bad?
• Given our skill shortages, where do I have those skills that are at the right level available now? Should we recruit, train or reassign to make sure we have the right skills? What is in the best interest of the agency/taxpayer?
• Is our performance comparable — in named activity, to the best — regardless of sector?
• What does our data/evidence tell us about our culture? Do we represent excellence in whatever we do? Compared to whom?
• Where are we excelling and why?
• Where can we invest to demonstrate impact faster?

Focusing on workforce and performance are critical. However, if you believe that culture eats strategy every time, workforce and performance needs to be informed by culture. Hence ORRI includes culture as a category. Culture in this model concentrates on having a team of executives that drive and sustain the culture, evidenced by cycles of learning, change management success and employee engagement. Health is also a key driver for sustained higher performance. In this regard, ORRI tracks both positive and negative indicators of health, as is evident in the illustration. Again, targets are set and measured to drive performance and increase organizational health. Targets are set by industry best in class standards and strategic performance targets necessary for mission achievement.

Governmentwide, ORRI can provide the Office of Management and Budget with real-time comparative performance around key legislative and presidential priorities and cross-agency thematic initiatives. For the Office of Personnel Management, it can provide strategic intelligence on talent, such as enterprise risk management based on an objective assessment: data driven, on critical skills, numbers, competitive environment and performance.

ORRI represents the first phase of an expanded notion of talent assessment. It concentrates on human talent: federal employees.

Phase two of this model will expand the notion of operating capabilities to include AI agents and robotics. As the AI revolution gains speed and acceptance, we can see that agencies will move toward increased use of these tools to increase productivity and reduce transactional cost of government services. Government customer service and adjudication processes will be assigned to AI agents. Like Amazon, more and more warehouse functions will be assigned to physical robots. Talent will need to include machine capabilities, and the total capabilities/capacity reflect the new performance curve — optimizing talent from various sources. This new reality will require a reset in the way government plans, budgets, deploys talent, and assesses overall performance. Phase three will encompass the government’s formalized external supply chains which represent the non-governmental delivery systems — essentially government by other means. For example, the rise of public/private partnerships is fundamentally changing the nature of federated government; think of NASA and its dependence on Space X, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others. ORRI will need to expand to accurately capture these alternative delivery systems to overall government performance. As the role of the federal government continues to evolve, so too do our models for planning, managing talent and assessing performance. ORRI provides that framework.

John Mullins served on the Trump 45 Transition Team and later as the senior advisor to the director at OPM. Most recently Mullins served as strategy and business development executive for IBM supporting NASA, the General Services Administration and OPM.

Mark Forman was the first administrator for E-Government and Information Technology (Federal CIO). He most recently served as chief strategy officer at Amida Technology Solutions.

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Clearer numbers on the federal workforce are coming into view, after the Office of Personnel Management launched a major update to one of its largest data assets on Thursday.

A new federal workforce data website from OPM aims to deliver information on the federal workforce faster, with more transparency and more frequent updates, than its predecessor, FedScope.

“This is a major step forward for accountability and data-driven decision-making across government,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said Thursday in a press release.

OPM’s new platform also reaffirms the significant reshaping the federal workforce experienced over the last year. The latest workforce data, now publicly available up to November 2025, shows governmentwide staffing levels at a decade low. According to OPM’s numbers, the government shed well over 300,000 federal employees last year, impacting virtually all executive branch agencies. When accounting for hiring numbers, there has been a net loss of nearly 220,000 federal employees since January 2025.

Data on federal employees’ bargaining unit status has also shifted significantly under the Trump administration. OPM’s new data platform shows that the share of the federal workforce represented by unions dropped from about 56% to about 38% over the last year, as a result of President Donald Trump’s orders to end collective bargaining at most agencies.

And agencies reported a 75% decrease in telework hours between January and October 2025, due to Trump’s on-site requirements for the federal workforce, which the president initiated on his first day in office.

The new website is the result of a major update to OPM’s legacy data asset, FedScope, which had been in need of significant modernization for years. In a report from 2016, the Government Accountability Office recommended that OPM update the FedScope platform and improve the availability of workforce data.

Users of OPM’s new public-facing website can filter the workforce data by geographic location, agency, age, education level, bargaining unit status — and much more.

Additional data that was not accessible on the legacy FedScope platform is also now readily available, including information on retirement eligibility, telework levels, performance ratings and hiring activities for the federal workforce.

Information on race and ethnicity across the federal workforce, however, is not featured on OPM’s new platform. That’s due to Trump’s executive order last year to eliminate diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) across government.

OPM had been working to update several of its workforce data assets since at least the end of the Biden administration. Federal News Network reported in early January 2025 that the agency was already in the process of building out its data management capabilities for FedScope and the Enterprise Human Resources Integration system (EHRI).

OPM, under the Trump administration, then announced plans last July to relaunch FedScope with “immediate enhancements.”

“OPM will continue releasing new data, visuals and features on the site each month and will iterate on the platform as user feedback is received,” OPM said in its press release Thursday. “This launch represents just the beginning, with regular updates and new enhancements planned on an ongoing basis.”

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A few thoughts on the year about to close.

Driving on the Donald J. Trump George Washington Memorial Parkway the other day, I was impressed by the progress in the reconstruction of this vital artery. The contractors and the Trump National Park Service planned well, and the road has remained reasonably passable over the past couple of years. Now the trip to the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has gotten easier. Ditto for trips to the Donald J. Trump Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

I’ve always liked where the Parkway runs close to the Trump Potomac River. You can see across to Trump Washington Monument and the Trump Tidal Basin. But, stately as the nation’s capital appears, change and lots of chaos have marked the calendar year about to end.

But seriously, looking at the D.C. skyline, one wonders about the real state of the republic.

If you search “trump timeline,” you’ll find timelines from many interest groups, most of whom feel aggrieved by the second Trump administration. The release of the Epstein files, “undermining elections,” deportation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, reversing energy policies, legal tangling with Harvard University, military activity against Venezuela — Trump activities make for compelling observation. A lot of this is press-induced, and the Trump style eggs it on. Yet norms have stretched.

I would add that only some of what Trump has done is completely original. But he does things, let’s say, in highly original ways. The result is we have two branches of government in contention with one another. The third branch, and the one detailed first in the Constitution, has rendered itself into an observant chorus with no say over the score.

For federal employees, 2025 will rank as the oddest year many have ever endured. It started with the DOGE swarms, slashing their way to and fro. Then came the deferred resignation program and layoffs. Mass return to the office. Cancellation of collective bargaining agreements at several agencies. Difficulties in settling retirement benefits.

So much news, it almost made me regret retiring. The workforce reductions and changes of conditions may all fall within an administration’s discretionary powers. But rough treatment of persons falls outside of decency. Let’s hope it stops in 2026. I remember a time when a new president of a company I worked for brought in a gaggle of MBAs to do cost cutting. The attitudes felt worse than the cuts, and the company eventually disappeared anyhow.

One thing 2025 has taught me: Keep things in perspective. The worst job situations I remember? I can chuckle about them now. That’s what time does. I once secretly flew to New Jersey and back for a job interview — all in a really extended lunch hour. To be honest, the new job seemed dull, and I never got the offer. Luckily, the situation I was seeking to leave changed overnight for the better, the way better. While you are going through cavalier and high-handed treatment, it’s no fun.

And what about the nation you serve? The absence of any serious debate about what the Government Accountability Office politely calls fiscal unsustainability strikes me as the worst quality in Congress and executive branch policy makers.

It’s not as if no one knows that next year alone the federal deficit will add $2 trillion to the $30 trillion national debt. That Social Security outlays increasingly surpass revenues for as far as the eye can see. That healthcare programs exceed the $3 trillion mark. That interest payments on public debt have passed the $1 trillion mark. The absolute numbers are big, and they are worsening when expressed as a percentage of the nation’s economic output.

So my wish for the nation in the year ahead is fact-facing and rationality, especially on the part of so-called lawmakers.

Beyond thinking of any possible policy and programmatic fixes, the government must resolve to become a better steward of the money it does print and spend.

I’m thinking of Minnesota. The federal prosecutor on the Minnesota Medicare fraud scheme described it as “staggering industrial-scale fraud.” As Trump would say, and McDonald’s used to say, billions and billions. The theft — and it is simple, naked theft — is both heartbreaking and maddening. At an estimated $9 billion, it makes the worst armed robbery seem like child’s play. One almost thinks the perpetrators deserve hanging, such is the extent and callous shrewdness of the crimes. But it also evidences a near total breakdown in program planning, execution and oversight — mainly at the state level, but there’s federal responsibility too. Did anyone notice or care that this was going on?

The staff cuts and turmoil have affected constituent service. People I speak to seem amusedly resigned to how places like the IRS, Social Security and the Postal Service operate. Line employees mostly want to serve effectively, but what kind of backing do they get?

The week before Christmas, I stopped in at my local Postal Service office. It’s busy, a beehive of a facility. I recently became president of a very small non-profit foundation, and we needed to move the P.O. box from Virginia to Maryland so I could easily get the incoming donation checks.

On a Thursday morning, only one employee manned the four-bay counter. Efficiently as she worked, still the line kept stretching to nine, then a dozen, people deep. For a reason I only dimly comprehended, I couldn’t complete the transfer because of a mismatch in phone numbers. I straightened it out a couple of days later, when I had the right information. Two clerks were then on duty, and they kept the lines short.

The post My wish for 2026: Rationality in the Trump era first appeared on Federal News Network.