Although Congress still hasn’t passed the 2024 appropriations for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the independent agency of the United States government that manages the federal civil service is still very much focused on its multi-year “transformation journey” that called for stabilizing the agency while delivering on Biden-Harris Administration priorities and driving modernization.
For Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) that will mean even greater emphasis on delivering the ambitious set of objectives of its Strategic Plan, including customer experience, data leadership, and modernization to support the policy objectives required to build a strong federal workforce. The agency – which provides federal human resources policy, oversight, and support for federal government employees, retirees, and their dependents – submitted a budget request of $465,800,000 in discretionary resources for FY 2025.
This budget will further build on resources appropriated under the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2024.
Digital-First and Data-Driven
OPM has identified and prioritized artificial intelligence (AI) use-cases to improve government-wide human resource (HR) processes and internal agency operations. In its budget request, OPM suggested this will allow the agency to continue to improve customer experience and become a digital-first, data-driven agency that can lead the workforce into the future.
The FY25 budget will also build on OPM’s past success in helping Bipartisan Infrastructure Law agencies fill 100% of their surge hiring positions. The agency stated that it intends to leverage its surge hiring partnerships to help agencies hire AI technical talent and will do so by developing comprehensive in-person and online training and curriculum on pooled hiring actions, upgrading its talent acquisition automation tools to source and screen candidates more effectively – while also building web enhancements that will enable candidates to be considered for multiple opportunities and for hiring actions to yield multiple offers.
Pooled Resources
OPM also called for greater use of pooled hiring, which could include expanding the agencies’ use of USAJobs talent portal’s talent pool feature, and which will support pooled hiring actions to drive a tech talent surge in AI, AI-enabling roles, cyber, data, and other technology and associated enabling roles; and further promote the robust sharing of certificates and cross-agency coordination on hiring.
The budget would see investment in these improvements to the Federal Government’s hiring experience (HX) by expanding pooled hiring through the Competitive Service Act, OPM further suggested in its budget overview. As part of the adjustments to discretionary request – an increase of $51.8 million of which $22.8 million (44%) would provide for pay adjustments, and other adjustments necessary to maintain current services – there will be an increase of $5 million in S&E to invest in OPM HX capacity to expand pooled hiring.
OPM will also seek to identify additional promising hiring practices that can be scaled to address mission critical skills gaps and deploy new features in talent acquisition systems to improve HR and hiring managers’ experience. This could serve as a pilot for government-wide HR internship program and develop a prototype skills/career exploration tool.
As reported by the Federal News Network, pooled hiring has been a recruitment strategy available to agencies for the better part of a decade, yet, up to this point, agencies haven’t used it to its full extent. That could change, as by this September, OPM is planning to either lead or help facilitate a combined 28 pooled hiring efforts for agencies, ideally yielding 700 new federal hires.
Strengthening the HR Workforce
As part of its FY25 budget request, OPM said it will identify additional promising hiring practices that can be scaled to address mission critical skills gaps and deploy new features in talent acquisition systems to improve HR and hiring managers’ experience. OPM will also pilot a Government-wide HR internship program and develop a prototype skills/career exploration tool.
The White House also called for a strengthening of the HR workforce in the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), suggesting it was essential to unlocking the full value of PMA and other workforce initiatives.
“The Government’s 47,000 HR professionals are the ‘gateway to public service,’ and a strong, effective, and strategically-oriented HR workforce is essential to meeting all other workforce goals. The Budget supports investments in the HR workforce and in OPM to realize this critical strategy to embed the work of the PMA across the Government for years to come,” the White House stated.
It further warned that inattention to HR workforce development and resources is reflected in low satisfaction scores from HR customers; while OPM has suggested that with improved support of HR employees could result in the improvement of government hiring across the board.
