From an anonymous TPM Reader …
As a former OPM appointee, this seems suspect for numerous reasons. Going through the Federal News Network article, the first thing that doesn’t make sense is in the second paragraph. Leading with retirement applications and RIFs is really odd, since the federal retirement process is a government-wide problem that a central OPM system isn’t going to fix alone, and OPM has no real role in RIFs for other agencies. The small price tag you cite is another huge red flag. This must be for OPM systems only (internal, not in a government-wide capacity) and I know from experience working with Workday and companies like them that $300K doesn’t go very far. I think they got rid of too many people at OPM too quickly (a mix of policy expert people and hands on execution people) and this is a desperate effort to fill that gap.
The listed services that the contract will cover raises more questions and red flags. Anyone who has ever implemented a major IT system change will reject the concept of what is described. In effect, it sounds like they are implementing every module for every HR activity all at once. They reference July 15, which is the end of the hiring freeze period, as a key day, and they say that they hope to have the contract awarded by then. But then they reference a memo about payroll and retirement that has the same July 15 deadline as the point at which all retirement submissions must be electronic. So they are awarding the contract and making a major policy/operations change on the same day? Do they think the system is so “push button” that everything will be online in minutes?
I read the sole source justification, but the only additional information I gleaned from that is that Workday was chosen because of their speed of implementation, as demonstrated by recent work at the Department of Energy. When they list all the requirements, I know that SAP/Deloitte and Oracle have federal-specific, cloud-based systems that can do everything that Workday can, so the speed of implementation is the primary factor. The justification memo also lists another company, Dayforce, that I have not heard of, as if they were the only other company that expressed interest. I am interpreting that one of two ways. Either the Administration did not actually talk with SAP and Oracle or they gave them more realistic timelines than Workday promised. With this administration, I think it would be smarter to let Workday go ahead and fall on their face than to protest and risk never getting work again out of retaliation.
Again, the most confusing parts are that the article and even the OPM justification memo conflates or at least makes it unclear if they are talking about OPM’s internal systems or the government-wide role they play, especially in retirement. I suppose both can be true, but the way it is written is confusing. Namely, the reference to the need for OPM to develop RIF registers quickly and then the references to the crush of retirements hitting them. All those things take way more effort and money than what is being procured. I think it is funny that a big part of the justification for the speed of implementation is all the EOs and OMB memos and deadlines. Essentially, we are telling ourselves to go at this pace, so we have no choice but to sole source.I can say from personal experience that the Obama Administration worked for 8 years on facets of retirement systems modernization after the Bush Administration tried to hire Hewitt to bring private sector solutions to federal retirement. That project was slated to cost nearly $300 million over 10 years, but it failed spectacularly. When my team arrived at OPM in 2009, we heard all sorts of wild stories of waste and flim-flam related to that effort. There was talk of a presentation where data from across the government went into a literal black box (as depicted on the slide as Hewitt’s proprietary solution) and accurate retirement claims came out the other side. This seems similar but in one year for one tenth of one percent of the price. Right.
