Washington, D.C – The U.S. Office of Personnel Management today released the following record of accomplishment achieved under the Biden-Harris Administration.

When the Biden-Harris Administration began in January 2021, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management was facing unprecedented challenges. In the years prior, an effort had been made to break up the agency, leading to poor morale and a loss of agency people, resources, and expertise as well as a perception that unified workforce strategy was no longer needed for the federal enterprise. OPM’s capacity to provide quality customer service to the American people and support agencies in their own delivery of services had been severely diminished. OPM’s value to the American people had been fundamentally called into question.

Over the last four years, the agency has demonstrated in numerous ways that a strong, well-run OPM is essential to a well-functioning government that effectively serves the American people. The federal government works better because OPM is stronger. Thanks to a forward leaning vision for workforce management and a lot of effort and teamwork from the agency’s career leaders, OPM was ranked as the #1 agency in customer satisfaction by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The agency was ranked one of the top mid-sized agencies to work for in 2023. And OPM’ Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey government-wide results have reached all-time highs. All the while, OPM has improved pay fairness for over one hundred thousand federal workers; drove an influx of new early career and diverse talent into government; expanded access to health care benefits; modernized dozens of IT systems and products; launched a new federal health benefits program for Postal Service employees and annuitants and their family members; and issued historic personnel policies and regulations to protect the nonpartisan, merit-based nature of federal employment. These actions all support agencies in delivering on their missions to the American people, and they have worked, as evidenced by government-wide customer service scores that reached a seven year high in 2024, and the largest four-year gain ever.

Today, OPM is a strong, healthy, well-run organization that has reestablished its essential role in a well-functioning government and is primed to build on that success. Though there is more work to do, the agency has the right people and plans in place to continue the forward momentum. Supporting this momentum is critical to supporting the federal workforce and delivering for the American people.

Here is what OPM did.

Key OPM Accomplishments

Delivering for Federal Employees

• Championed civil service protections, reinforcing the importance of a strong, non-partisan civil service. OPM issued a final rule reinforcing and clarifying civil service protections for the nonpartisan career civil service. This rule, based on an extensive administrative record and thousands of supportive comments from a diverse array of stakeholders, makes clear that preserving the country’s 140-year legacy of a career federal workforce that can carry out their duties for the American people without fear of reprisal is both the best policy and the best reading of the laws on the books.
• Played a central role in the government-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic and helped agencies effectively transition to a hybrid work environment. OPM provided leadership and support to agencies as they transitioned from their pre-pandemic status quo to maximum telework to reentry to the workplace during the once-in-a-century COVID-19 pandemic. OPM co-chaired the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force. OPM issued policy guidance to ensure federal employees were safe during the pandemic and launched a special COVID paid leave program under the American Rescue Plan. OPM supported agencies as they brought employees back to the worksite, including training more than 23,000 federal employees on how to manage and lead in a hybrid environment and issuing a Workforce of the Future Playbook that provided guidance and tools to help agencies make strategic, data-driven workforce decisions based on organizational health and performance. Finally, OPM updated its Telework Guide for the first time in over a decade and issued guidance on remote work, highlighting how it can be used strategically to support organizational performance.
• Increased pay fairness and competitiveness for federal workers. OPM’s actions increased pay for more than one hundred thousand low wage federal employees. For example, OPM issued guidance to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour for all federal employees, raising wages for more than 70,000 employees. OPM also implemented provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) that increased pay for wildland firefighters by up to $20,000 per year. In addition, OPM promoted and granted expanded agency use of special pay authorities and flexibilities (such as approving 200+ Special Salary Rates, and 8 waivers of the normal Relocation and Retention Incentive payment limitations in FY 2024) to help address federal sector recruitment and retention challenges. The agency is currently finalizing a rule to create parity between the GS and FWS pay systems, increasing pay for 14,500 blue collar workers. In addition, OPM addressed inequity in setting federal pay by issuing a final rule prohibiting the use of previous non-federal salary history in setting pay for federal employment offers. Salary history bans can close inequitable pay gaps that disadvantage women and workers of color. By helping to close gender and racial pay gaps, federal agencies will be better able to attract and retain a qualified, effective workforce drawn from the full diversity of America, and the federal government will lead the way as a model employer with respect to pay equity.

• Launched a new healthcare marketplace for Postal Service Employees, Annuitants, and their Families. OPM built and implemented an entirely new health insurance program covering almost two million Postal Service employees, annuitants, and their family members. The Postal Service Health Benefits Program (PSHBP) is larger than any of the state-based marketplaces launched to implement the Affordable Care Act and incorporates PSHB health insurance carriers offering 69 plan options in the inaugural PSHB plan year. The new program provides a modern user experience with a central enrollment process and a decision support tool that enables enrollees to make smarter choices by providing access to detailed information on doctor availability, premiums, and cost sharing. The first Open Season was a huge success with 1.7 million Postal employees, annuitants, and their eligible family members successfully auto-enrolled in health insurance and an estimated 500,000 total users who accessed the system. The PSHB system had zero unplanned outages and over 200,000 customer calls were answered by OPM and agency partners. Moving forward, the success of this program allows OPM to model a central enrollment system that promotes program integrity, strengthen service delivery, and scale and use it to drive improvements in other programs, including the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program.

• Enhanced and expanded benefits for all federal employees and their families. OPM has made significant strides in expanding health care coverage through FEHB. For example, OPM expanded fertility services to cover artificial insemination and to offer all 8.2 million enrollees a choice of comprehensive IVF services. The agency also strengthened maternal health by reimbursing for nurse home visits, incorporating more nurse midwives in health plan provider networks, covering birthing centers and doulas, and covering mental health screening and treatment in postpartum care. Ahead of the majority of large employers, OPM introduced coverage of GLP-1 medications for weight loss, which are associated with better management of diabetes and lower risk of cardiovascular disease. OPM also required coverage of gender affirming care with no categorical exclusions consistent with guidance from leading medical standard-setting bodies and extended the cost-lowering impacts (e.g., $35 per month insulin maximum) of the Inflation Reduction Act to FEHB enrollees.

• Issued guidance on caring for employees and families. The agency issued guidance directing agencies to maximize access to leave for any employee seeking safety or recovering from domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and related forms of harassment and refreshed the Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking Handbook. OPM also issued guidance to agencies on newly established paid parental leave for bereavement purposes, designed to help families at a time of need. Finally, in support of federal employees starting or expanding their families, OPM issued a revised handbook and fact sheet highlighting new paid parental leave benefits, as well as guidance on childcare subsidies.

Supporting Retirees and their families

• Reduced new retirement case processing times and new case inventory. OPM improved the processing of new retirement claims. The agency achieved a 9-year low in pending retirement inventory at the end of 2024, a 60 percent decrease from the FY 2022 peak. OPM similarly reduced processing times for new retirement cases, decreasing the average processing time by almost 25 percent, from 73 days (October 2023) to 58 days (December 2024). OPM also improved its Retirement Services customer service, decreasing average wait times at its call center by 63 percent (from 45 minutes to 16 minutes) in FY24.
• Developed and began executing a multi-year Retirement Services Transformation Strategy. OPM has made significant progress on a multi-year effort to transform and modernize the retirement experience including a modernization roadmap that charts a path to digitize what has long been a paper-centric retirement application process. OPM’s multi-year plan focuses on both modernizing legacy systems while developing a user-friendly, digital way to apply for retirement and allow OPM staff to process cases digitally. In FY23 and FY24, OPM successfully developed and launched a pilot of the Online Retirement Application that allowed agency HR officials to complete a digital retirement application for the first time. OPM also began work on an initial build of the Digital File System, the backbone of the strategy that will allow OPM to store and process new retirement cases entirely digitally. Finally, OPM received approval from the Technology Modernization Fund to modernize legacy mainframe code into a modern coding language, a foundational element in OPM’s ability to modernize and support retirement services for decades to come. The expected outcomes of this modernization effort include faster processing times, increased customer satisfaction, increased transparency, and less time needed – from annuitants, agencies, and OPM staff – to complete a case.

Delivering for Federal Agencies

• Supported hiring at scale for critical needs. To support implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, OPM served as a strategic workforce partner for seven federal agencies and supported surge hiring of more than 8,000 targeted positions, including engineers, scientists, project managers, IT and HR specialists, construction managers, and many more. OPM also developed surge hiring tools such as a Talent Surge Executive Playbook containing information on flexibilities, authorities, and actions that agencies can use to strategically plan, recruit, and hire staff. In addition, OPM launched government-wide recruitment portals on USAJOBS® to improve the job seeker experience, including a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law page, Federal Tech Portal, STEM Jobs Portal, and a National Security and Foreign Jobs Portal. OPM developed government-wide talent surge hiring dashboards for internal agency use to track announcements, hiring targets, and time-to-hire metrics, and encouraged agency use of hiring flexibilities, including temporary appointments, to address discrete agency critical hiring needs.
  
  
• Launched an AI Talent Surge and hosted Tech to Gov hiring events reaching more than 10,000 prospective federal employees. In response to tech sector layoffs and the rapid emergence of AI, OPM launched 5 National Tech to Gov Virtual Hiring Forums and Job Fairs in partnership with the Tech to Gov Working Group and external partners, attracting over 10,000 prospective federal employees. To expedite AI hiring, OPM granted flexible hiring authorities, established an AI recruitment portal on USAJOBS®, and hosted an AI-focused Tech-to-Gov hiring event, enabling more than 700 AI professionals to be hired into public service roles. OPM also developed and delivered an AI Fundamentals learning series to nearly 18,000 employees, supervisors, and senior executives across more than 100 agencies, providing a foundational understanding of AI and preparing them to engage in informed discussions and effectively implement approved AI tools.
• Advanced Skill-Based Hiring. OPM supported the transformation of federal hiring to be more skills-based. A skills-based hiring approach prioritizes a candidate's specific skills and competencies over traditional qualifications such as formal degrees, job titles, and years of work experience. Announcing a policy of eliminating unnecessary degree requirements is the easy part; actually implementing that policy in a valid way that results in skilled workers landing in federal jobs requires substantial commitment and resources. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, OPM has put its might behind this initiative. In 2024, OPM launched a new skills-based hiring pilot initiative that will transition approximately 100,000 IT positions to be fully skills-based. OPM also increased the number of jobs using skills-based assessments by 250% between 2020 and 2023. Finally, OPM released additional guidance supporting the adoption of skills-based approaches, including the Skills-Based Hiring Guidance and Competency Model for Artificial Intelligence Positions, which assists agencies in identifying the key skills and competencies needed for AI professionals. For the first time, there is real momentum behind these reforms which, when implemented, will transform federal hiring.
• Created policy and tools to enable enterprise hiring across the federal government. OPM stood up a new Hiring Experience Team at OPM to drive innovation in hiring, including supporting agency talent teams focused on data-driven hiring improvements and expanding the use of hiring best practices such as rigorous assessment use, applicant sharing, and pooled hiring. These approaches enable federal agencies to work together to hire at scale by making multiple hires from one hiring action. OPM conducted 18 pooled cross-government actions for 16 occupations and 28 Competitive Services Act actions for 24 occupations. To facilitate this enterprise hiring approach, OPM launched new technology capabilities to support sharing hiring certificates. The agency implemented a new Talent Pool feature in the USAJOBS® Agency Talent Portal, enabling agencies to view candidates available on certificates shared across government via the Competitive Service Act and OPM-led cross-government hiring actions. Finally, OPM implemented the Candidate Inventory feature in USA Staffing®, allowing agency hiring managers direct access to search for available candidates without the need to complete a new recruitment process. Furthermore, OPM issued a joint memo with OMB memorializing three years of data-driven, innovative efforts, with a call to action for agencies to take them to scale.
• Launched the most significant early career talent initiative in a generation. OPM leveraged all of the tools at its disposal to reverse a years-long decline in early career talent entering the federal government. OPM issued a final rule in 2024 making significant changes to the Pathways Program, the primary government-wide mechanism for hiring early career talent into federal jobs. These changes included expanding eligibility by focusing on skills-based hiring and training programs, raising starting salaries, and making it easier for interns and recent graduates to find permanent jobs. In addition, OPM and OMB issued guidance to agencies in 2023 encouraging agencies to focus on increasing paid internships as a way to grow a diverse talent pipeline. OPM also launched several USAJOBS® pages focused on early career talent, including a new Federal Internship Portal, a one-stop shop for prospective interns to find opportunities and apply for internships in the federal government, a Recent Graduate Portal, a new early career talent page, and a career explorer tool to help job seekers find opportunities. The agency hosted a series of Level Up to Public Service events to increase awareness of, and interest in, public service careers, and launched a new Intern Experience Program to provide support and developmental opportunities for interns serving in agencies across the government. Data from early 2024 shows these efforts are making a difference. Since the start of the Biden-Harris Administration, the share of the federal workforce under the age of 30 has increased by 13%. Between fiscal 2022 and 2023, the number of federal interns also increased by 33%.
• Simplified background investigation processes for improved workforce mobility. OPM continued to streamline personnel vetting policies for more responsive and consistent operations, making it faster to onboard appointees and easier for federal workers to move between agencies. Working with interagency partners, OPM established and issued a reformed policy framework for personnel vetting, aligning standards for background investigations and suitability, fitness, and national security determinations and facilitating the iterative move of the executive branch from periodic reinvestigations to continuous vetting for better risk management. Implementation is complete for the more than 4 million strong national security workforce and is underway for non-sensitive public trust personnel. OPM established the consolidated Personnel Vetting Questionnaire, which will replace the SF-85, SF-86, and SF-86P to make the initiation of background investigations simpler and easier. OPM has also worked to reduce the stigma around mental health, including updating training standards to reflect personnel vetting policy towards mental health and incorporated these changes into courses for adjudicators.
• Improved labor-management relations in service of improved organization performance. OPM has taken steps to reset labor-management relations with federal union partners to support federal employees’ right to organize and strengthen the unions that represent them, including 1,800 bargaining units covering 1.2 million bargaining unit employees. For example, OPM worked with unions to help keep federal workers safe by collaborating on federal workforce policies regarding COVID-19. OPM rescinded anti-federal worker and anti-union policies which adversely impacted the statutory rights of employees and labor unions, particularly on collective bargaining. The agency developed and implemented a series of recommendations for the Vice President’s Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. In the Biden-Harris Administration’s first year alone, these and other actions resulted in a nearly 20 percent increase in the number of federal employees joining a union. Finally, OPM re-established labor management forums across government, allowing managers and employees to collaborate in order to continue to deliver the highest quality goods and services to the American people.
• Invested in current supervisors and managers. In addition to its regular offerings, OPM provided new free trainings for supervisors and managers on a host of topics including managing in a hybrid work environment, AI fundamentals, employee mental health and wellbeing, organizational health and performance, strategic recruitment, and utilizing pooled hiring to hire at scale. OPM also issued guidance on Maximizing the Effective Use of Probationary Periods with practical tips for managers and supervisors on when and how best to actively use the allotted period to assess an employee’s fitness for the position, including the promotion of regular communication and feedback on performance and conduct.
• Focused on the development of a strong leadership cadre for the future. OPM focused on strengthening the development and selection of future senior federal leaders. For example, OPM analyzed outcomes of Candidate Development Programs (CDPs) to identify promising practices across government, which is informing a CDP best practices guide currently under development. The agency also released a Senior Level and Scientific and Professional (SL/ST) Desk guide, a reference tool for senior professionals, their supervisors, and agency human resources managers and staff who have the responsibility to develop and manage SL/ST positions. OPM implemented Structured Interviews as an additional assessment method for certification of Executive Corps Qualifications (ECQ) by the Senior Executive Service (SES) Qualifications Review Board (QRB). Finally, OPM is issuing the first comprehensive update of the ECQs in 18 years. These changes will modernize the criteria used to select and develop the Federal government’s senior executives and aspiring leaders, better reflecting emerging requirements and new technologies.
• Revitalized the Federal Executive Boards (FEB) with a new era of interagency collaboration and leadership. OPM has led the FEBs through a historic transformation, marking the most significant reform since their establishment by President Kennedy in 1961. In collaboration with OMB and the General Services Administration, the FEBs have addressed long-standing challenges such as inconsistent funding, fragmented governance, and limited authority. This revitalization included onboarding a dedicated executive leader and regional directors to expand FEB service delivery, developing a centralized funding model, and launching a unified national brand and website. OPM also introduced FEB Connect, a groundbreaking platform for interagency collaboration and knowledge sharing, and is publishing a five-year strategic plan, developed in collaboration with agency leaders and stakeholders, that establishes a framework for enhanced interagency collaboration, strategic partnerships, and government effectiveness. As a result, FEBs have increased service delivery efficiency by 25% and improved interagency collaboration by 30%, deepening federal engagement with local communities, enhancing workforce development, and strengthening emergency response.
• Delivered high quality data products that support decision-making. OPM redesigned its Data Portal and increased its average quarterly users to nearly 13,000, providing federal agencies, federal employees, and public users seamless access to OPM data products and services. OPM also delivered dynamic, Power BI dashboards to federal agencies. These dashboards included data on attrition, FEVS results, DEIA, time-to-hire, and the cyber workforce, which significantly improved upon previously static reports. OPM developed and released several versions of the public FEVS Dashboard that provide organizational health and performance information in a user-friendly, dynamic format. The team takes an iterative, user-centric approach by continuing to expand the content and improve the user experience based on user feedback. Through additional technology enhancements, over 100 agencies and departments that submit data to EHRI and/or participate in the FEVS can now access these dashboards.
• Took significant steps to elevate the federal HR workforce. OPM reinstated the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council in 2021, elevating the voices of CHCOs and recognizing their critical role as strategic partners in the development and implementation of human capital policy and programs. Since 2021, OPM, with the partnership of the CHCO Council, has undertaken a suite of administrative efforts to elevate the federal human resources workforce. The agency onboarded the first-ever Senior Advisor for the Federal HR Workforce, a senior leadership position dedicated to providing government-wide coordination and dedicated support to developing the HR workforce. OPM developed and issued a new competency model for HR specialists, developed and piloted a new career path model for HR professionals, and launched the Human Resources Career Compass on opm.gov that curates developmental and career opportunity resources for HR practitioners. To help agencies implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, OPM supported agencies in hiring more than 80 HR specialists through a pooled hiring action. Finally, OPM launched an enhanced Delegated Examining Certification program, including four new online courses focused on the most difficult to master aspects of hiring procedures as well as a 90-day bootcamp program to accelerate the learning of new staffing specialists.
• Supported agencies in achieving the highest level of employee-engagement for the federal government (ever!). OPM supported agencies in taking action on FEVS results and increasing agency participation in the survey through a dedicated Chief Human Capital Officers Council working group and community of practice. These groups helped elevate promising practices across government and allowed agencies to share lessons learned and strategies for how to improve employee engagement. In 2023, OPM launched new data dashboards on FEVS providing government-wide and agency-specific data to enable real-time decision making.

Building OPM’s Organizational Capability and Capacity

• Transformed OPM into a high-performing, customer-focused agency. OPM created a Chief Transformation Officer role and team to design and oversee a portfolio of initiatives to build OPM’s foundational capabilities and deliver on ambitious customer focused programs. The agency used the Transformation team to help lead or oversee the successful completion of a number of top priorities, including creating an agency-wide employee experience plan, supporting the development of a Retirement Services modernization strategy, and implementing OPM’s data strategy. The team also oversaw the launch of the first Open Season of the Postal Service Health Benefits Program, and it did this by integrating a holistic, best in class approach to project delivery, change management, and data-driven decision making. This approach included an enterprise program management team that helped lead numerous cross-functional solutions throughout the duration of the implementation. OPM also leveraged the team to drive its top customer experience priority, the complete re-vamp of opm.gov, which is expected to launch a public preview of the new site in FY25, and to develop a new OPM intranet for employees. Additionally, OPM deployed the Transformation team to support a number of initiatives aimed at improving management or mission support functions such program-based budgeting and improvements to strategic hiring. 
• Increased customer experience skills across the agency. OPM offered a “Service Design for Teams” course and sponsored over 130 people across 23 teams in the agency to help design more customer-focused solutions using human-centered design principles by partnering with The Lab at OPM. In addition, the agency provided further customized professional coaching to 15 teams and held 3 workshops to continue to support employees in applying learnings from the course to their service or agency work. Finally, OPM supported an “Urgent Innovators” group to allow employees to help each other create solutions to enterprise innovation challenges.
• Focused on improving customers’ digital experience. OPM has implemented a new logo and brand on 70 percent of its digital properties, successfully moved three benefits websites to .gov domains, helping customers feel confident they are on a government website that works to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. OPM improved compliance with the federal Digital Analytics Program (DAP) by 20 percent.
• Elevating OPM HR to be a model for federal government. OPM Human Resources has established itself as a model for federal human capital management, achieving the #1 ranking among CFO Act agencies in GSA’s Mission Support Customer Satisfaction Survey for 2023 and 2024. OPM established a new Strategic Hiring Committee and hiring dashboards that enable data-driven decision making. In addition, the agency launched a pioneering AI pilot project, that reduced the average hiring time from 98 days in FY22 to 64 days in FY24. Finally, by focusing on strategic recruitment efforts OPM has been able to significantly increase hiring of early career talent, military spouses, and Schedule A candidates.
• Modernized IT. OPM completed a two-year “sprint to the cloud” to modernize legacy applications into a cloud environment and achieved an “A” on the FITARA scorecard for the first time in agency history by leading in IT modernization, cloud computing, and enhancing cybersecurity protections.
• Increased employee engagement and experience. OPM increased employee engagement results and broke into the top 10 Best Places to Work ranking for mid-size agencies in 2023 through agency-wide employee experience initiatives focused on gathering feedback across the agency and developing a suite of programs to address.
• Developed more strategic budgeting practices. OPM utilized budget dashboards and strategic budgeting sessions to more closely tie together budget and outcomes, resulting in improved manager satisfaction with financial management. The agency successfully increased its budget between FY22 and FY24 to improve program delivery and implement modernized benefits delivery, including for the new Postal Service Health Benefits Program that received a budget anomaly to ensure successful implementation.

• Improved data quality & timeliness. OPM has dramatically increased the speed of human capital data collection, reducing the cycle of ingestion from eight months in FY22 to six weeks in FY24. The Lateness Score for the 24 CFO Act agencies to submit data with under the prescribed three percent error rate has fallen to under 30 days, enabling data products to provide agency leaders with more real-time decision-making data.

Looking Forward

The federal workforce is the backbone of government, allowing for mission-critical service delivery to the American people, and OPM is well positioned to continue its journey of efficiently delivering modernized solutions for the federal workforce. The momentum and plans the agency has developed position OPM to support agencies in developing and strengthening their workforces to be prepared to take on the challenges of the future. Many of OPM’s policies, programs, and products will also enhance the federal workforce experience to make the federal government a model employer to attract and retain talent.

Here is where OPM, and the federal workforce, should go next.

Federal Employees

• Health benefits delivery: Employees could have a seamless, digital experience choosing their critical healthcare needs through a modernized decision-support and enrollment platform by scaling the Postal Service Health Benefits System to FEHB, if properly resourced. Not only would this provide employees with an improved experience, but it would enhance program integrity through central, uniform data collection, real-time family member eligibility verification, and reductions in duplicate enrollment systems and processes. It would also save money for enrollees and agencies, as enrollees would be better equipped to choose lower cost options that optimize their health insurance. OPM transmitted a legislative proposal to Congress in 2024 to access the existing Federal Employees Health Benefits Fund to fund FEHB modernization.
• Pay and compensation: Working with Congress to pass existing legislative proposals would make federal employee pay fairer while also helping agencies compete for top talent. One example is OPM’s proposal to improve hiring and retention for cybersecurity and information professionals. Answering requests from agencies for greater flexibility to compete with the private sector, OPM collaborated closely with OMB, the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), and other agencies on legislation that mirrors the flexibilities that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs already have. Additionally, OPM has put forth several pay-related legislative proposals, such as a repeal of the limit on aggregate pay—a challenge for agencies trying to compete for top talent—improving existing incentive award programs, and a government-wide critical skills incentive authority that would create a new incentive to help agencies fill mission critical occupations such as STEM and AI professionals. Additionally, OPM could continue work with OMB and agencies to fix the challenge of pay compression and the negative impact that plays on attracting and retaining talent at the highest levels of the federal government.

Retirees and their Families

• Retirement Services Modernization: New annuitants could have a fully digital experience applying for their earned retirement benefits by completing the Online Retirement Application pilot and continuing build out of the digital back end, the Digital File System. OPM’s Retirement Services Transformation Strategy lays out a multi-year plan that, with proper resources, would allow for the digital processing of new retirement applications, speeding up the time for new annuitants to receive their annuity and allowing OPM staff more time to focus on customer experience by making the process more efficient.
• Modernized Systems: A core component of digitizing retirement processing is migrating away from legacy systems and antiquated coding languages. OPM has secured Technology Modernization Fund resources to do exactly that. This project, awarded in December 2024, will lay the groundwork for the Retirement Services modernization efforts.
• Customer Experience: Retirees and their families deserve to have a seamless digital-enabled customer experience to apply for retirement and make changes post-retirement. Part of this includes continuing momentum on providing more plain language, easy to understand guidance and further developing self-service options through Services Online.

Federal Agencies

• Data products and services: OPM envisions a future when all customers - federal agencies, employees, and the public - seamlessly discover, share, and use high-quality, integrated, and secure human capital data assets across a unified data ecosystem in a secure and privacy-enhancing environment. OPM is on the path to achieve this vision through the completion of a multi-year priority project to create an enterprise-level data platform with governance features for now and the future, implement a common set of data analytics and data science tools, modernize the eOPF product, improving the federal employee experience, and apply today’s technologies for delivering integrated data products that provide deeper insights for strategic workforce planning and management.
• Skills-based hiring: The federal government can transform its hiring – ensuring that the best qualified candidates make it to hiring managers for selection while broadening the applicant pool. OPM is currently embarking on a pilot effort to transform the IT Management job series to be skills-based – that is, evaluating and selecting future talent based on their skills and competencies rather than formal degrees, job titles, and years of work experience. If implemented effectively, and with proper investment and agency engagement, this pilot can be expanded to reach all occupations in the federal government over time.

• Agency workforce strengthening: As part of OPM’s FY 23-25 budget proposals, OPM has delivered a number of legislative proposals focused on supporting the workforce needs of federal agencies. This includes a comprehensive proposal to support agency’s needs to recruit and retain a cybersecurity workforce and additional proposals to provide greater autonomy for agencies to manage, shape and advance their workforces through OPM delegations of authority to agencies.
• HR workforce: The federal HR workforce supports agency operations by driving the recruitment, management, and advancement of agency employees that deliver government services to the public. HR workforces have been historically under-invested in and OPM envisions a future in which this workforce is elevated, improving delivery of agency missions. In 2024, OPM transmitted a legislative proposal to Congress to fundamentally reshape how the federal government develops the HR workforce by giving OPM the authority over strategic workforce analysis and development for the federal HR workforce.

Customer Experience & Modernization

• OPM customer experience: OPM can be a leader in delivering excellent customer service to each of its customer segments. OPM has made strategic investments in developing customer experience skillsets and standing up new programs and initiatives that improve service delivery. To cement progress on customer and digital experience and strengthen project management capabilities to deliver large enterprise programs, OPM created an Office of Strategy & Innovation that will be broadly responsible for delivering on customer experience by folding together strategy and performance, project delivery, and research and evaluation. This office will help create a consistent definition of OPM customers and identify pain points through improved performance metrics. This office will be a critical organization to continuing OPM’s strategic project delivery.
• Technology and user experience: To deliver on planned modernizations, the agency requires a focus on technology and cybersecurity. OPM has created a Digital Services team to further the agency’s user-centered design capability, while also completing the shift to agile development. This foundational work will allow the agency to both take on and successfully deliver on any number of CX or DX programs.

Strengthen OPM

• Strategic Workforce Leader: OPM has demonstrated over the past four years that it can be the strategic workforce leader the federal government needs. Its on-going efforts are indisputably critical to a well-functioning government: transforming the federal hiring process to one this is skills-based, recruiting and retaining early career talent into federal jobs, issuing policies to promote the federal government’s ability to compete for top talent, administering the largest group health insurance program in the world along with the most complex retirement system, providing crucial IT and surge services to agencies, and ensuring that our civil service continues to be based on merit and not partisan loyalty. These are but a subset of the broad range of critical functions OPM performs every day. Providing OPM with authority and sufficient resources to continue to build on its successes of the past four years is a good investment for the American people.

America deserves a government that works for them and that means having a strong OPM and empowered federal workforce who can deliver on that vision.

OPM – rebuilt, transformed, and revitalized over the past four years – is ready and capable of taking on the workforce challenges of the future.

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