Methodology

The approach in developing this IT Strategic Plan was based upon the close alignment of improving delivery of OPM’s core services by enhancing the customer experience across all program offices. The plan’s foundation is OCIO’s strategic vision and mission statement, along with its guiding principles. With these key building blocks in place, OCIO solicited input from various stakeholders, including extensive discussions with senior members of the OPM program offices. OCIO also reviewed existing and evolving guidance from Congress, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Government Accountability Office (GAO), the OPM Inspector General (IG), and external independent assessments, incorporating valuable recommendations to improve OPM’s IT services.

Those discussions revealed the need for:

• More innovation and more collaboration on appropriate use of emerging technologies
• Improvements and better visibility into service performance
• Better communication from OCIO about its plans
• More participation from OCIO customers in defining critical requirements

This plan incorporates the use of industry best practices and standards for IT planning, to deliver IT effectively and efficiently for its customers. The plan is structured on the Technology Business Management (TBM) value management framework. TBM defines the tools, processes, data, and people needed to manage the business of technology. Using TBM and other leading industry frameworks, OCIO developed aspirational strategic goals along with supporting strategic objectives that are the foundational changes required for OCIO to become a leading IT organization.

Finally, to address cross-agency priority goals in the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010[1], OPM has established six Agency Priority Goals (APGs) that reflect the top performance improvement priorities of OPM leadership and the Administration. This Strategic Plan also incorporates and describes the OCIO’s critical role in supporting the agency’s delivery of those APGs.

Vision, Mission, and Guiding Principles

In FY 2021, the OCIO developed its vision, mission, and guiding principles to provide a strategic direction for the organization. OCIO provides IT services to all OPM operations. OCIO supports OPM’s mission to lead federal agencies in workforce policies, programs, and benefits in service to the American people. The team also provides IT services to other agencies, including maintaining the integrity of the Electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF), which protects the information, rights, benefits, and entitlements of federal employees while maintaining statistical information about the federal civilian workforce. In FY 2021, the OCIO executive team created and published vision and mission statements:

• Vision: To deliver the best customer experience for OPM employees and customers.
• Mission: We lead with innovative digital and data-driven solutions that empower OPM to guide employees through their federal careers.

OCIO will realize its vision through the application of its guiding principles.

• Invest in Our Workforce: OCIO encourages and supports formal training and obtaining technical certifications as well as coaching, mentoring, and leadership development. OCIO is offering online technical courses for all employees. OCIO implemented a program encouraging employees to dedicate time each month for training to focus on continued advancement of technology products and practices to continually meet today’s challenges.
• Put the Customer First: Design services, devices, and channels around the customer experience, while ensuring customers feel informed, prepared, and in control. OCIO is committed to building “products” not “projects,” and designing systems “with” not “for” customers.
• Security is Everyone’s Responsibility: Commit to protect data confidentiality, integrity, and availability to comply with security policies, audit and control procedures, privacy, and required regulations. Through the guidance of Zero Trust principles, OCIO integrates security requirements into all platforms and services.
• Deploy Enterprise Solutions: As spelled out in Objective 2.5, driving enterprise solutions is a key tenet of the OPM Strategic Plan. The IT Strategic Plan will pursue innovation through leading-edge technologies, open standards, and novel methods, while adhering to government and agency guidelines and regulations. To the degree possible, OCIO will not develop custom or in-house applications, and instead leverage enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) or shared services.
• Leverage Data as a Strategic Asset: Use data to understand customer needs and drive successful outcomes. Improve information access through the integration of systems, application programming interfaces (APIs), data analytics, enterprise dashboards and reporting, enterprise search, and knowledge management.
• Be agile, and Agile: Build and deploy services using adaptive and iterative processes, as well as customer research. Leverage modern automation to release new features rapidly and minimize risk. OCIO believes that services never stop improving.
• Cloud First: Improve the customer experience, operations, and supportability of OPM’s enterprise solutions by maximizing cloud usage by 2025 via cloud-hosting options, including federal shared services and public cloud as a service.
• Get Current, Stay Current: Continually improve the stability and cybersecurity protections of all OPM systems by updating or replacing all end-of-life and unsupported hardware and software. This will also provide enhanced capabilities and functionality.

Key Terms and Definitions

This IT Strategic Plan is structured to include goals, objectives, and initiatives so OCIO can better manage and measure its alignment to and performance against this Strategic Plan.

Strategic Goals

Strategic goals are aspirational and convey how OCIO will transform its ability to better serve its customers through effective IT management disciplines and the incorporation of new technologies and service solutions. The IT Strategic Plan has six strategic goals that align with OPM’s Strategic Plan, demonstrating how OCIO will contribute to OPM in executing its mission.

Strategic Objectives

Within each IT strategic goal are several strategic objectives that provide direction and focus supporting the strategic goal, OCIO customers, and OPM program offices. In total, there are 25 strategic objectives, each of which has timelines and performance measures that OCIO will monitor to gauge progress.

Initiatives

Initiatives are the concrete actions OCIO will take to advance the strategic objectives. These initiatives include the specific projects and activities that will be delivered over the timeframe of this Strategic Plan.

Performance Measures

Performance measures are data-based and used to track incremental achievements and performance standards at the strategic objective and initiative level.