'One HHS' movement continues

Tommy Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has ordered the restructuring and centralization of the agency's human resources system.

In a memo dated July 11 and obtained by Federal Computer Week, Thompson said revamping the system would result in "economies of scale, elimination of duplicate systems and effort, and better delivery of our personnel services."

It is Thompson's third memo in the past six weeks ordering the consolidation and centralization of functions within the agency to create "one HHS." The other memos called for an enterprise architecture plan and a financial management system for the massive agency, which runs some of the biggest programs in government.

The latest plan calls for a centralized human resources production system and one testing system for HHS. Both systems will be located at the National Institutes of Health. The development, testing and production systems will run PeopleSoft Inc. human resources functional modules on an Oracle Corp. database using Unix as the operating system, according to the memo.

In his memo to human resources directors within HHS, Thompson said he considered the program "vital to improving our internal business systems and services to our employees.

"I emphasize how important it is for you to buy in, contribute to its development and ultimately share in its success," Thompson said.