OMB, OPM Modernize the Federal Patchwork HR Infrastructure

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) unveiled a plan to consolidate the federal government’s disparate human resources infrastructure into a unified system. The Core Human Capital Management (Core HCM) platform will modernize human capital technology and processes make federal HR more effective for taxpayers and public servants, according to OPM Director Scott Kupor.

“For too long, taxpayers have footed the bill for duplicative HR systems that no modern organization would tolerate,” Kupor said in a statement. “By consolidating more than 100 systems into a single, modern HR platform, we are delivering billions in savings while giving agencies the tools they need to manage the federal workforce as one coordinated enterprise. This is exactly the kind of smart, cost-saving reform the American people expect and deserve.”

The initiative aims to replace more than 100 legacy systems with a modern, cloud-based platform designed to manage the nation’s 2.2 million civilian employees as a single, coordinated enterprise.

“Today, the government has deployed 119 … distinct core HCM systems — none of which integrate effectively with each other,” Kupor told GovCIO Media & Research in an interview. “We’re doing this this big HR IT consolidation service … It has downstream effects for making our retirement more efficient, because we now have a canonical record of everybody’s lifetime data in government and all kinds of other stuff like that. There’s both immediate dollar savings from consolidation and more importantly, long term: how do we actually help people manage their own environments?”

This fragmentation has tangible consequences for federal employees and retirees, Kupor said. When a civil servant retires, OPM staff must spend months manually assembling a consolidated file of their work history from many agency databases, a process Kupor described as a costly and error-prone process that leads to unnecessary delays in enabling a seamless transition to retirement.

The Core HCM platform will serve as the official system of record for personnel action processing, employee records, time and attendance and benefits administration, Kupor said.

“The ideal ‘to be’ state is a single, pan-government Core HCM system that gives the federal government full, real-time visibility into its workforce and drives effective workforce management on behalf of the American taxpayer,” Kupor explained in a LinkedIn post.

The new system is expected to provide real-time data on org charts, managerial spans of control and payroll across the entire executive branch — data that currently takes months to compile through manual “data calls.”

A Phased Implementation

The transition to the new Core HCM platform will occur in two primary waves to ensure stability and allow for interagency feedback:

• Wave 1 (Beginning FY 2026): The Office of Personnel Management, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs.
• Wave 2 (Beginning FY 2027): The Departments of War, Treasury, Justice, State, Energy, NASA and the Social Security Administration.

The goal, according to OPM, is for government-wide adoption by fiscal year 2028, with agencies currently directed to pause all independent Core HCM procurement and development projects to prioritize the unified suite.

Delivering for the Taxpayer and HR Professionals

OPM and OMB estimate that Core HCM implementation will deliver billions of dollars in savings by eliminating redundant contracts and reducing the administrative burden on the federal workforce, according to the announcement. Kupor echoed the sentiment, telling GovCIO Media & Research that the change will greatly impact processes.

“The fullest vision of when all this stuff is done is the impact, both economically and from the amount of time that HR professionals are spending managing systems,” Kupor said. “It’s so massive.”