Most agencies indicated they use data to inform strategic planning and have real time data they use to track progress on organizational goals and objectives, as outlined in the HRStat section. However, many agencies lack the skills to conduct meaningful workforce planning activities. Though many agencies agree that the OPM workforce planning guide is beneficial, they still lack workforce planning expertise and must acquire talent in this area. OPM recently launched a Governmentwide Workforce Planning Community of Practice to support agencies in their workforce planning efforts. The community held engagement sessions to share, collaborate and discuss topics such as leadership buy in, agency dashboards, and how to define workforce planning. The topics for the engagement sessions are developed by a cross-agency volunteer board. One large agency just recently added a workforce analytics team to its headquarters’ office to support the use of data in strategic and workforce planning.

Agencies recognize the importance of incorporating data into their strategic planning efforts and many have set this as a focus area moving forward. One example is DHS’ enhanced data visualizations that provide a visual summary of human capital trends, insights, and anomalies to inform senior leader decisions. The data provides insight into workforce trends such as hires and separations, mission critical occupations onboard and the fill rate, and data that reflects females in the law enforcement field. Demographic data such as gender, ethnic and racial diversity, and individuals with disabilities also is included in the visual summary. This type of dashboard plays an important role when analyzing data for planning purposes.

Remote Work/Telework Policies and Practices

Many agencies are still working to implement data standards for payroll and ensure data quality. Some agencies have not added or updated payroll systems with proper codes to track work hours by category. For example, one agency has not added remote workers to their payroll system and instead count them as teleworkers. This nuance could skew the data and the environment of their current workforce.

Agencies recognize the need for a consolidated approach to implementing data standards. However, as mentioned in the Data Integration and Access section, there are challenges with compiling data from multiple systems such as HR, payroll, and timecard. Agencies are interested in working together, and with OPM, to adopt common data standards that will improve data quality.

• Accurate data standards are key and remain a challenge.
• Remote work and telework are different and must be tracked accordingly
• Nuances among the standards skew data leaving agencies to base decisions on misinformation.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Trends

Agencies continue to rely primarily on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) index to measure the state, progress, and success of DEIA programs. Many agencies supplement the FEVS data with additional agency-specific DEIA surveys, pulse checks, and focus groups to dive deeper into unique agency culture and needs. Custom agency-created dashboards are used to comprehensively monitor and report on internal key performance metrics outlined in DEIA Strategic Plans, while OPM’s DEIA Dashboard facilitates external comparison against similarly sized agencies and Government as a whole.

Agencies may also use applicant flow data they collect as a primary determinant of outreach and recruitment needs, particularly of underserved communities. Mission support and mission critical occupations are often considered in tandem. The inherent digital nature of social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Handshake, OPM Talent Portal) allows agencies to report on recruitment successes more readily than traditional recruitment avenues.

While not all agencies conduct DEIA training, those who do often concentrate such training at the supervisor/manager level with a focus on creating cultures of respect, belonging, and psychological safety. Training delivery vehicles vary both among and within agencies, with digital and in-person training formats equally utilized. Agencies often lack unified agency-level training programs, with subagencies/components conducting and/or procuring their own training.

Challenges

Limited or lack of dedicated funding hinders more robust DEIA data collection and analysis with respect to both internal skill and capacity and sourcing external applicants. Agencies reference this shortage as a barrier to exploring interest in analysis of hiring authorities, as well as barriers to using the 3Rs (recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives) and student loan repayment programs. Agencies who have explored analyzing the impact of hiring and pay authorities on DEIA goals are in the early stages.

OPM Dashboards

Trends

Agencies are not yet using OPM’s enterprise dashboards extensively. The consensus is the dashboards are new, so agencies were just starting to use them. Additionally, agencies stated that limited access impedes their ability to retrieve data from OPM’s dashboards. Our analysis of HCR conversations with agencies about the dashboards reveal that 56 percent of them currently classify OPM dashboards as useful.

Instead, most agencies have built their own enterprise solutions for demographic, attrition, FEVS, and other financial and performance metrics, with varying levels of sophistication. Many subagencies/components are even more advanced than the agencies in these efforts. However, it is not always straightforward to integrate data at the agency level.  These integration challenges are due to the multiple systems/sources and data governance issues described elsewhere in this report.

Agencies see the greatest value of OPM dashboards is the ability to benchmark and make comparisons. Agencies would like to analyze performance and challenges across agencies, as well as with private sector equivalencies. They also would like to see more benchmarking features built into OPM dashboards.

The greatest value of OPM’s dashboards is the ability to benchmark and compare performance and challenges across agencies and with the private sector.

Agency Requests

Agencies would like to see more effort to increase awareness of OPM dashboard offerings. Additionally, they want an access management solution that allows quick authorization and access to as many users as needed. They say this will help drive greater utilization and value of the dashboards.

Agencies also pointed out the limited ability to “drill down” in OPM dashboards to lower levels within their organizations for greater data granularity. This limitation is due to the disparity in EHRI of organizational identifier data across agencies. Thus, the EHRI-based OPM dashboards are currently limited to reporting data only at the agency and subagency levels.

One exception to the availability of data at more granular levels is the FEVS dashboard. The FEVS dashboard provides data at all organizational levels, giving greater insight into employee perceptions and experiences among components and various program offices. Agencies would like to see earlier release of the data as well as more insights into:

• mission critical occupations,
• time to hire metrics,
• applicant flow data,
• and better context with telework information (e.g., occupational series that are typically not telework eligible).

Solutions

Benchmarking is crucial for continuous improvement and measuring success. Comparing agency performance to other similar agencies and across Government helps agencies analyze market trends, identify strengths and weaknesses, and develop plans to drive change and meet performance objectives. The most recent release of the FEVS dashboard now provides agencies with the ability to benchmark their results on items such as response rates, various indices, and core survey items against Government-wide data, similarly sized agency data, or agencies with similar missions. OPM continues to incorporate customer feedback in the product roadmaps and will prioritize needs and requests accordingly.

Data Analytics Maturity - Predictive Analytics

Trends

Agencies are beginning to experiment with predictive analytics, but no agency currently is reporting great strides. Multiple agencies indicate their initial attempts are to predict where they will end the year in terms of workforce planning. For example, they look at trends in hiring, retention, and voluntary attrition (such as resignation, transfers, and retirement) to project staffing levels. Using prediction models provides agencies with an opportunity to course correct or make operational or strategic adjustments while there is time to affect the outcome, such as succession planning for potential losses.

75 Percent of agencies have started initial attempts at using predictive analytics to inform human capital management.

Solutions

OPM’s Human Resources Quality Services Management Office launched a document sharing repository for the Data Analytics CoP in October 2024 on Connect.gov (formerly Max). The human capital Data Analytics CoP provides a forum for human capital data analytics practitioners to share methods, tools, and insights. The new document repository enables agencies to improve their data analytics capability by viewing and downloading methodologies, technical guidance, and templates submitted by contributing agencies for replication and reuse. It also includes contact information for contributors to facilitate collaboration among the community. While still in the early stages of implementation and deployment, a goal of the shared document repository is to be comprehensive across all human capital data topics, including in the area of predictive analytics.

Independent Audit Program (IAP)

Trends

Most agencies use evaluation results from their IAP as a data source to inform human capital goals and strategies in their HCOPs. However, some agencies could improve this practice by looking at more impactful data, rather than what is easy to measure. Agencies use IAP data to identify and monitor HRStat metrics. Agency accountability program managers participate in HRStat meetings and most report using evaluations to explore root causes of off target data metrics. While agencies are at various stages of using evaluation data to inform human capital strategies and objectives, four agencies have in place, or are currently developing, processes that are potential leading practices.

Solutions

In FY25, OPM is committed to reestablishing a community for agency accountability program managers to work collaboratively and explore methods to improve accountability within their own programs, as well as across Government. An environment to share information on topics such as effective systems to collect data, methods to analyze findings, and strategies to address common challenges will strengthen independent audit programs. Leading practices, especially those that focus on innovative techniques for using evaluation data to support and adjust strategies in the HCOP, will be showcased to demonstrate effective use of evaluation results from the IAP.