Human resources standardization project moves forward

The Office of Personnel Management is moving forward with a plan to consolidate agencies' human resources functions, officials announced Tuesday.

In the next month and a half, five government business centers will go through a final validation process to ensure that they are capable of fulfilling agencies' human resources needs. In the future, OPM could allow private companies to market human resources services to agencies.

The human resources business centers are based in the Defense, Treasury and Health and Human Services departments, the Agriculture Department's National Finance Center and the Interior Department's National Business Center. The project, which would include standardizing core human resources functions such as application and forms processing, is expected to save the government $1 billion over the next 10 years.

The Office of Management and Budget has approved the human resources business centers and an evaluation panel of human resources specialists from 11 agencies will verify the centers' ability to satisfy agencies' HR needs. A task force of HR specialists from 23 agencies will be assembled within the next two weeks to provide guidance for the initiative. The task force will evolve into a type of governing body for the human resources initiative, according to OPM.

If an agency were facing a major upgrade in its HR system, it would be encouraged to contract its human resources needs out to one of the business centers rather than spend the money to upgrade its system. Agencies with small human resources staffs would be able to get HR services more efficiently from the fee-based business centers that would compete against each other for agencies' business.

The business centers have to convince agencies that they can provide the best service and there is no strict deadline for changing from agency-run human resources systems to the business centers, according to Norman Enger, OPM's e-government director.

Under the human resources initiative, 30 years' worth of personnel data for 1.8 million federal employees will be collected and stored in a data warehouse. The data will help to identify workers with critical skills and could be used in the event of a terrorist attack, Enger said.

Also, federal workers' personnel folders will be made available through an online centralized system. For now, paper folders on employees will remain mandatory, but Enger said OPM is looking into eliminating that requirement.

Enger said the human resources project has been the most successful of the "lines of business" identified by OMB, which also include health, financial management, grants and case management.

OMB is expected to announce a cybersecurity standardization initiative this month.

Tim Young, OMB's associate administrator for e-government and information technology, said at a seminar Tuesday that the human resources initiative will rely heavily on the private sector and the risk will be shared between the government and contractors.