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Strategic Information Technology Plan
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On July 16, 2013, during my confirmation hearing, I made a commitment to Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman, and members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to work with my senior management team to create a plan for modernizing information technology (IT) at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) within 100 days of assuming office. I further committed to identifying new IT leadership, using existing agency expertise, and seeking advice from government experts.
This plan fulfills my commitment and more. It provides a framework that is rooted in the use of human resources (HR) data throughout a lifecycle (“strategy to separation”), allowing for reuse of that data in our HR systems to support agile HR policies; establishes enabling successful practices and initiatives, and enterprise and business initiatives that define OPM’s IT modernization efforts; and creates a flexible and sustainable Chief Information Officer (CIO) organization led by a strong senior executive with Federal experience in information technology, program management, and HR policy. Our CIO is supported by a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with private sector and academic expertise, along with a team of dedicated business unit experts within OPM and in our partnering Federal agencies.
In developing this plan, we focused on our current operations, especially retirement programs and USAJOBS®, while orienting ourselves toward our vision. In particular, we considered the necessity to bridge the current systems to our vision of a shared platform using infrastructure that promotes an enterprise, rational, secure, scalable and cost effective way to manage information flows among systems. We seek to simplify USAJOBS® to ease the burden on applicants and build the most diverse, highly talented workforce. We also seek to ensure data availability and accuracy across the lifecycle for faster retirement processing, increased accuracy of annuity calculations, and a reduced backlog of cases.
We will measure the performance of our IT program using three basic metrics:
— Compliance with laws, policies and successful practices;
— User and stakeholder satisfaction with improved IT capabilities; and
— Cost per IT service or transaction.
While a plan is just a plan, the true value we provide to our customers will be derived from our ability to deliver high quality, modern IT services and capabilities that enable us to fulfill our mission (Recruit, Retain, and Honor a World-Class Workforce to Serve the American People) and implement our Strategic Plan. By structuring our IT modernization around the HR lifecycle using the “strategy to separation” approach created by the HR line of business (HR LOB) effort, we can ensure our mission is carried out by:
— Improving policy regarding a wide range of HR functions by enabling — Aiding agencies in strategic HR planning so they fill the right jobs;
— Helping agencies recruit and hire the most talented and diverse Federal workforce possible to serve the American people;
— Ensuring our Federal workforce is properly investigated and can be trusted to serve our great nation;
— Providing the training, benefits, and work/life balance necessary for Federal employees to serve, prosper, and advance in their careers;
— Ensuring the Federal workforce and its leaders are fully accountable, are fairly appraised, and have the tools, systems, and resources to perform at the highest levels to achieve superior results;
— Ensuring recognition and reward for exemplary performance of current employees and honoring the careers of Federal retirees; and
— Ensuring our Federal workforce and retirees, their families, and their beneficiaries and survivors receive appropriate benefits, such as retirement payments, life insurance, and health benefits.
By coupling the “strategy to separation” HR lifecycle with successful practices in the six areas of IT Leadership, IT Governance, Enterprise Architecture (EA), Agile IT, Data Analytics, and Information Security, we can ensure our business units have integrated and shared accountability with their processes, data, and technology:
— IT Leadership will structure OPM’s IT organization for optimal performance outcomes, ensuring appropriate partnerships with the business community and other stakeholders, and providing career-enhancing challenges for our workforce to enable them to remain competitive in the IT field.
— IT Governance will enable us to: (1) align business and technology leadership to identify investment priorities, (2) properly and proactively manage our IT program, (3) ensure we invest wisely in technologies, and (4) identify and transparently manage our IT budget while we seek cost avoidance and savings opportunities in sustainment areas, thereby enabling scarce resources to be used for new efforts.
— Enterprise Architecture will ensure our innovative solutions integrate to support our desired performance outcomes and that we adopt solutions that provide benefit throughout OPM and the Federal government rather than unique solutions in each business unit.
— Agile IT principles will more quickly and efficiently deploy innovative solutions, whether they are enterprise or business-unique capabilities, lowering risks by delivering capabilities in smaller segments with incremental investment, and allowing better stakeholder engagement and feedback throughout the solutions development process.
— Data Analytics will ensure data is structured and standardized, synthesized and analyzed to produce information, which can be made available to agency leaders and HR specialists, hiring managers, jobseekers, and other stakeholders to better inform our decisions.
— Information Security will ensure we protect the identity and privacy of our citizens and employees by implementing and actively monitoring standard security controls in our IT systems that effectively protect the large volume of sensitive personal data collected and stored by OPM IT systems.
Taking a "strategy to separation" approach, we will adopt an HR lifecycle IT framework as a concept for sharing information among the various existing IT solutions and future capabilities at OPM, at other agencies, and in industry. We will provide a set of standards that will span the HR lifecycle and support information exchange. This framework will drive government and industry in creating solutions and supporting processes that provide high-quality, modern IT services and capabilities to citizens, Federal employees, and agencies, in a way that also ensures information sharing. HR IT solutions, whether developed by government or industry, will be able to share information while they support business processes and decisions.
Figure 1 illustrates the HR lifecycle IT framework. The enabling initiatives provide the strong foundation necessary for successful operation, development, and management of IT that increases accountability, efficiency, and innovation. The enterprise initiatives allow us to organize and leverage resources across OPM to benefit all programs by laying the groundwork for fundamental capabilities. All of these initiatives together enable the success of current and future business initiatives.
UNITED STATES OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT - Organizational Body
NONE
Information Technology
English
1-69
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