Tag Archives: OPM

The White House sent a bill to Congress to authorize the transition of the Office of Personnel Management to the General Services Administration, Government Executive reported Thursday. Russell Vought, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) saying the proposal seeks to move OPM’s functions and resources to GSA, including information technology, human resources, health and insurance services.

Margaret Weichert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said the White House is introducing a measure to authorize the move of OPM to the General Services Administration on Friday, FCW reported Tuesday. OPM will run as a third service division within GSA under the proposed reorganization, which comes as OPM faces a budget deficit of $70 million as a result of the National Background Investigations Bureau’s transfer to the Pentagon as well as issues concerning legacy information technology systems.

The Office of Personnel Management found that the age-gap ratio of federal information technology workers has slightly decreased over the past year, Nextgov reported Thursday. Data from the OPM shows that federal agencies hired around 4.4 IT experts over the age of 60 for every individual below 30 years old, as of September 2018. The results represent a drop from the 4.5 figure recorded in 2017 and does not cover the recent government shutdown.

The Office of Personnel Management signed an agreement with the Department of Defense enabling DoD personnel to access OPM’s cloud-based USALearning education platform, OPM said Friday. The move comes as part of the DoD Reform Management Group’s initiative to use the USALearning ecosystem to streamline acquisition and technical support for the department’s training and education programs.

President Trump officially transferred the federal government’s security clearance and background investigations to a Department of Defense office through an executive order, Nextgov reported Wednesday. The EO renames the Defense Security Service as Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which will assume all investigations-related work by the end of September.

The Merit Systems Protection Board filed a bypass request with Congress seeking $46.8M in funds for 2020, reflecting a $4.6M increase from the president’s proposed budget. MSPB said in its congressional budget justification the president’s budget request of $42.3M represents a 10 percent cut to the board’s current funding level and would result in a workforce reduction if enacted.

The Office of Personnel Management released a final rule implementing direct-hire authority for mission-critical information technology positions. OPM said in the document published Wednesday that the authority will allow agency leaders to bypass select steps in hiring new personnel to address the shortage of applicants in critical IT roles. 

Margaret Weichert, deputy director of management for the Office of Management and Budget, said at the FedScoop IT Modernization Summit that agency leaders will have direct-hire authority for information technology talent soon, FedScoop reported Thuirsday.

Margaret Weichert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, told Federal Times in an interview published Tuesday about the role of workforce in technology change initiatives and the agency’s plan to focus on performance management. “Performance management is an area where we’re looking very closely at things that are in the regulatory realm: areas where there are perhaps artificial barriers to rewarding people, limits imposed on how much they could be given a bonus — or how bonuses are distributed between, let’s say, SES and our senior technical leaders, the SL cadre of folks,” Weichert said.

Following the launch of a federal initiative to provide workers with new skills in information technology, cyber security and law enforcement, the Trump administration is rethinking its compensation and performance management to help in workforce modernization, Federal News Network reported Thursday.