This FedGov Today program is sponsored by Deloitte.
On this edition of FedGov Today, the missing link in OPM's HR rebuild. The tech force gets a Pentagon counterpart and the next phase of HR 2.0. Welcome to FedGov Today in Washington, D.C. and around the world on the American Forces Network. I'm Francis Rose.
The Office of Personnel Management's adding some new capability to its HR 2.0 effort. OPM Director Scott Kupor will tell you about that later in the program, but as it stands today, there's a missing link for HR leaders across government. Lucy Melvins, principal for government and public services at Deloitte. Lucy, welcome. It's great to have you on the program. You wrote recently, "Benefits is the most visible employee-facing compliance-sensitive function in federal HR today." How is benefits maybe part of that missing link that I referred to a moment ago?
Yeah, thanks, Francis. Well, it is. Benefits is such an important part of the employee experience. It's also top of mind for agency leaders right now. We're just around the corner from open season, right? And the reality is today that benefits administration leaves a lot lacking for the workforce experience and also is wasting a lot of time and money in terms of how it's managed and administered.
What are the opportunities for HR leaders to leverage not just the idea of administering the benefit to the employee, but packaging that in kind of the back office part of the HR experience?
Yeah. Well, what it really comes down to is having better systems to support that. So, today many employees are filling out their benefits forms on paper or, you know, a PDF file that they're then emailing off, or they might be uploading it to an intranet, and then there's so much room for error. There's so many opportunities for something to be missed, and that adds time when things have to go back and forth, and it's a very manual process, right? But imagine if you have a system that's purpose-built for this, and as an employee, you are able to log in and see what are the benefits that apply to you, right? Federal benefits are very complex, over 200 FEHB plans, right? You have TSP withdrawal. You also have to provide documentation for dependent, you know, to make sure that someone's eligible. So, that's a lot of complexity, and the opportunity today is that leaders can be looking at systems that are purpose-built for that, and really streamline the process.
Are there challenges from agency to agency as far as nuances and outright differences in the benefits that one agency offers versus another?
Yeah, and we have, you know, a solution that is built for that complexity across the federal government. I think what's most important is because of the complexity, it's the right solution to support federal agencies with this. This isn't something that is retrofit or that is a, you know, it is kind of an add-on to an ERP system. It really needs to be something that's built to make that process better.
Have you seen organizations trying to kind of fit it on to systems that they already have now? What's the risk that they run into in doing that?
I mean, I think the risk there is that you're doing something that's retrofit. It's not really going to meet the needs. And the reality is that there is an opportunity to provide employees with an experience that is really tailored to the complexity of that federal benefits, and really allows for, you know, intelligent automation to make sure that things get submitted right the first time. They make sure that, you know, you don't have mistakes that are costly to employees and costly to agencies. Like, what if a, you know, a single employee accidentally fills out their enrollment and registers for a family health plan? They're paying more than they need to. The agency's paying more than they need to. And that cost adds up, right? And we know that there are issues with eligibility verification for dependents, right? GAO has estimated that a billion dollars is being spent on health benefits for ineligible dependents. So, there are opportunities like that to really save money, save time, and create a better experience for the workforce.
We have about 30 seconds left, Lucy. What's the first step that an agency leader should take to get on this train that you're talking about?
Yeah, I think what agency leaders should do is be looking for those solutions that can meet the needs for benefits modernization.
Lucy, it's great to have you on the program. Thanks for being here today. You can read more about everything Lucy told you about on today's show page at fedgovtoday.com. Up next, the Tech Force gets a Pentagon counterpart. OPM Director Scott Kupor's here when FedGov Today continues in just a moment.
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As we acquire new systems or modernize our legacy systems, it is absolutely imperative that we're making sure that the value of those investments are bringing a return, particularly in the operational side of the house. And so, you know, the 865 program that I managed years ago, that 865 aircraft is still flying today.
So, IT is part of the solution, it is not the solution. You still need leaders to drive direction, you need stakeholders to buy in, you need the people to go and implement the new solution in its entirety, including business process transformation. And then you also need a culture that will sustain that.
Welcome back to Tech Force. OPM established to bring new talent into government is evolving. The new iteration of the Tech Force is landing at the Pentagon. Scott Kupor is the director of the Office of Personnel Management. Scott, welcome. It's good to have you back on the program. The war force that you have established in conjunction with the Pentagon, what are the similarities to the Tech Force that you've already built and what are the differences that may be unique to the Pentagon's mission or other reasons?
Yeah, so first of all, great to see you again. Yeah, the similarities are it's benefited from the same infrastructure we put in place with Tech Force, which is a centralized recruiting platform and then kind of a centralized evaluation process that we ultimately will pass candidates to the Department of War. They'll also participate in the programmatic elements of TechForce, so, you know, we're doing a bunch of trainings and certifications and stuff like that. The unique piece of this is just the job description is unique to what DOW needs. So, we're calling this a forward deployed engineer, which for people who know the kind of private sector, you know, companies like Palantir and others, they kind of commandeered this term. It really is a combination between a software engineer and someone who can actually also go on site and do implementation work. So, they've told us that they're looking to hire up to 250 people for these roles. We actually just today, or actually last week, just issued what's called the first certificate. So, we've got the first set of candidates now that are actually out to DOW. So, we're very excited about it. I think it'll be great and to your point it'll be responsive to the particular needs of DOW.
When you were on the program to talk about the TechForce last time, one of the advantages that you talked about there was the ability for candidates to be vetted at the OPM level and then go to whatever agency. Is that same thing applicable here given the different nature of the mission at DOW?
We are. So, we're doing the same process. Because this is designed bespoke for DOW, DOW is going to get kind of first crack at these candidates obviously. To the extent that we have more candidates than they can place, obviously then we'll open it up to others. But yeah, the main idea is exactly the same, which is OPM becomes the top of funnel. OPM does initial evaluation. We send a vetted certificate to DOW and we say, "Hey look, knock yourself out. Here's great candidates. We've all met the minimum quals."
Where are you going to find these people? Same places you went to find people for the TechForce?
Yeah, we've been doing, you know, what we've found with TechForce that works very well is we've been using social media as the kind of outlet to find folks and so far that's working well. We're also doing some broad outreach ourselves. So, using electronic platforms like there's a company called Handshake for example that does a lot of this stuff. So, we're trying new things is the honest answer, but word of mouth seems to be the kind of most beneficial way to get stuff.
Pentagon have an element in that too in regards to?
Absolutely, and, you know, we're going to lean on them heavily because look, obviously they have a tremendous brand that can help attract folks and we've been very lucky to partner with them from the beginning, but there's no question that when they can amplify what we're doing on social media, we're a massive beneficiary of that.
What else have you learned from recruitment for the tech force that's applicable not just for the workforce at the Pentagon, but also for future efforts for the tech force or other types of hiring?
Yeah, the short answer is what I've learned is it's not easy. The outbound actually, it's not that it's easy, but I would say I think we have that down really well. What gets complicated in federal hiring, as you probably know and your listeners know, is getting the agencies to work off of kind of shared certificates is still a new muscle that people haven't done. So, you know, we talked about this I think last time. We're launching a broader early career initiative that will do more things than just tech. It'll include finance jobs and HR jobs. And as part of that, we're really trying to change the behavior inside the agencies, which is, hey look, every time you go out to hire a job, you don't need to put out your own job description. You don't need to do your own recruiting, but surprisingly for me, which I just didn't appreciate, that's a muscle that just has not been exercised very much in the federal government. So, a lot of our efforts are build the top of funnel, which I feel like we're very good at, and then more effort than I think we expected for working directly with the agencies to help understand how do we make sure they take a certificate and actually get people through the process on the other end.
It's interesting that you say that, because agency people have been telling me for 15 years or longer that they want that. They want the ability to do it. So, it's kind of striking to me that they're still a little bit... Maybe resistance isn't the right word.
Yeah, it's actually, I don't think it's resistance. I think it's just, I would describe it as inertia. Maybe that's the right word to use, which is I think you're right. I think people want it. I think people recognize, particularly with tech force, that the quality of applicants we can get when we do a broad outreach is just much better. Some of it, as you know, is look, hiring is buried so far down in the agencies, right? And so, for a particular hiring manager at a big place, for example, like DOW, that individual may or may not know about things even though I feel like I've been on your show and I've told people 8 million times about what we're doing. So, some of this is just repetition and breaking, I don't want to call it bad habits, breaking habits that historically have not been broken before.
What is incumbent on OPM to do and what's incumbent on the agencies to do to kind of change that idea?
Look, I think it's just we got to communicate effectively with one another. So, I just got to say it a thousand more times until people are sick of hearing it. And then what we're doing also is within our organization is making sure that we deployed resources specific to the hiring managers. So, you know, we started with CHCOs, right? And then we've also talked to political folks. And that's all helpful, but you got to do the tops down and the bottoms up selling of these things. So, now we're actually making sure that we get down to the hiring manager level and, you know, do some one-on-one, you know, hand-to-hand combat, quite frankly.
And to be fair, the level where I'm hearing what I've been hearing for the last number of years has been happening at like the CHCO level. So, I imagine it's...
The CHCOs love it, yeah. CHCOs love it. I think if you talked, you know, most senior executives like the idea because the whole theory, it's a pretty simple idea, which is look, if we can use the megaphone of the federal government to get you a broad pool of talent that you can choose from. Like, who doesn't want that, right? The problem is, you know, as you know, like there's, you know, a GS-15 deciding to hire somebody and then at some point there is a hiring manager who's probably several layers down the organization who gets assigned that task. And just the natural response is, "Hey, look, if somebody says to hire somebody, I go build a job description, I put it on USAJOBS." And we're trying to kind of break that behavior. So, I think we're doing a good job on it, but I would say that's been the learning curve, certainly for me.
I want to go to technology at your agency. And you paid me the highest compliment, by the way, before we went on the air when I mentioned I wanted to ask you about the official personnel folder document request service and the guide to processing personnel actions navigator. You said that's really inside baseball. I take that as a very high compliment, so you're doing your job well. What are those two things and how are they representative in your view of the kind of the tech overhaul that you're trying to do at the agency?
