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While Congress still has not passed 2024 appropriations for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the independent U.S. government agency that manages the federal civil service remains laser-focused on its multi-year “transformation journey” of stabilizing the agency while achieving the Biden-Harris government priorities and drive modernization.
For fiscal year 2025 (FY25), this will mean an increased focus on achieving the ambitious goals in its strategic plan, including customer experience, data leadership and modernization to support policy goals needed to build a strong federal workforce. The agency, which provides federal human resources policy, oversight and support to federal employees, retirees and their families, submitted a budget request of $465.8 million in discretionary resources for fiscal year 2025.
The budget will further build on resources appropriated in 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 resources (HR) processes and internal agency operations. This will allow the agency to continue improving the customer experience and become a digital-first, data-driven agency capable of leading employees into the future, OPM said in the budget request.
The Fiscal Year 2025 budget will also build on OPM’s past success in helping bipartisan infrastructure law agencies fill 100% of their surge hiring positions. The agency said it intends to leverage its surge in recruiting partnerships to help agencies hire AI talent and will upgrade its talent acquisition automation tools to source and screen by developing comprehensive in-person and online training and joint recruiting action courses. candidates to achieve this goal. More effectively – while also building network enhancements that allow candidates to be considered for multiple opportunities and recruited into recruiting operations to generate multiple offers.
Pool resources
OPM is also calling for greater use of pooled recruiting, which may include expanding agencies’ use of the USAJobs Talent Portal talent pool feature, and will support pooled recruiting initiatives to advance technical talent in artificial intelligence, AI support roles, networking, data Surge, as well as other technical and related support roles; further facilitates robust sharing of credentials and cross-agency coordination on recruitment.
OPM further recommends in its budget overview that the budget will invest in improvements to the federal hiring experience (HX) by expanding centralized hiring through the Competitive Services Act. As part of the discretionary request adjustments – an increase of $51.8 million, of which $22.8 million (44%) will be for salary adjustments and other adjustments needed to maintain current services – S&E Investments will increase by $5 million to expand joint recruiting for OPM HX ability.
OPM will also seek to identify additional promising recruiting practices that can be expanded to address mission-critical skills gaps and deploy new capabilities in talent acquisition systems to improve the experience for HR and hiring managers. This could serve as a pilot for a government-wide HR internship program and develop prototype skills/career exploration tools.
According to Federal News Network, group recruiting has been a recruiting tactic used by agencies for nearly a decade, but so far, agencies have not taken full advantage of it. That may change, as by September of this year, OPM plans to lead or help facilitate a joint hiring effort across 28 agencies that will ideally bring in 700 new federal employees.
Strengthen human resources team
As part of the FY25 budget request, OPM said it will identify additional promising recruiting practices that can be expanded to address mission-critical skills gaps and deploy new capabilities in talent acquisition systems to improve the experience for HR and hiring managers. . OPM will also pilot a government-wide human resources internship program and develop a prototype skills/career exploration tool.
The White House has also called for strengthening human resources team building in the Presidential Management Agenda (PMA), indicating that this is critical to realizing the full value of PMA and other workforce programs.
“Government’s 47,000 HR professionals are the ‘gateway to the public service’ and a strong, efficient and strategic HR workforce is critical to achieving all other workforce goals. The budget supports investments in HR teams and OPM , to achieve this critical strategy and embed PMA’s work across the government in the coming years,” the White House said.
It further warned that neglect of HR workforce development and resources is reflected in lower satisfaction among HR customers; while OPM said that through enhanced support for HR employees, overall improvements in government hiring could be achieved.
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