Office of Personnel Management: Status of Achieving Key Outcomes and Addressing Major Management Challenges

OPM has developed the Human Capital Assessment & Accountability Framework, a governmentwide tool to manage, measure, and evaluate the workforce in accordance with 6 standards of success. The six standards are strategic alignment, workforce planning & deployment, leadership & knowledge management, results-oriented performance culture, talent, and accountability. OPM reports that it uses this information along with its quarterly assessments of the status of each agency's strategic human capital plan to assess the status of human capital in the federal government.

OPM conducts formal ongoing evaluations using its Human Capital Assessment and Accountability Framework to measure progress on agency human capital transformation efforts. OPM uses results of these evaluations as a basis for collaboration between agencies and assigned OPM Human Capital Officers and as a basis for comparisons across agencies and benchmarking. In addition, OPM has developed and used the Federal Human Capital Survey as a general indicator of how well agencies are running their human capital management systems and as a tool for OPM to assess individual agencies and their process toward "green" status on Strategic Management of Human Capital under the President's Management Agenda.

OPM reports that it has developed a comprehensive Plan for the Strategic Management of its Human Capital: FY 2004-2007, the first of its kind for this organization. The plan lays out a systematic, integrated, agencywide, and goal-specific approach to improving its Human Capital management. Through it, OPM believes it is ensuring that it has the talent and capacity necessary to meet its new and expanded responsibilities. The agency says the goals set forth in this plan are focused on achieving results that are tracked, analyzed, and used in making Human Capital decisions. Before FY 2001, the annual goals and performance measures used in OPM's annual performance plans were developed randomly and focused primarily on process, not program, outcomes and results. OPM now has identified clear and specific program outcomes, adopted a program logic approach for determining its performance measures, and revamped its performance measures to focus on program outcomes. According to OPM, this new emphasis has resulted in a more stable array of measures for each program and annual goals that are derived from expected performance. For example, in the field of evaluating agencies' Human Capital programs, OPM has established a goal dealing with employee security. The outcome is that employee on-the-job safety is secured through comprehensive safety plans. Success in achieving this goal is measured by the percentage of agencies that have workforce safety plans in place and the percentage that meet relevant personnel security standards.

OPM's Center for Retirement and Insurance Services has adopted a three-prong strategic approach towards preventing fraud and abuse in the FEHBP. OPM stated that it communicated this strategic approach to all the carriers in its 2003 Call letter and has reaffirmed this information in its Call letter for 2006. OPM also established a work group to study fraud and abuse in the FEHBP, introduced eight industry standards for health plan fraud and abuse prevention and detection, implemented the raising of consumer awareness, and developed a listing of potential fraud indicators. OPM now takes the approach of requiring carriers to report to OPM on their fraud and abuse activities, and carriers are subject to review by the IG as a component of the audit protocol for each plan.