OPM poised for HR initiative

The Office of Personnel Management expects to issue a statement of work soon for one of its high-profile e-government human resources initiatives.

The Enterprise Human Resource Integration (EHRI) program will allow agencies to store, access and exchange standard electronic human resources information that they can use for workforce planning and analysis. EHRI will replace paper files and create an official electronic personnel record that will follow an employee from the time they are hired into retirement.

The statement of work for EHRI will be out in about two weeks, and OPM expects to make an award to a systems integrator by June 1, said Norm Enger, OPM's e-government project director. "We've finished the design work. Now we're ready" to award a contract, he said.

EHRI will require agencies to submit employee information into a central electronic repository — something that OPM expects to have in place for agencies to use by Sept. 30. The repository will contain data on about 1.8 million civilian workers.

Eventually there will be 500 pieces of information associated with each employee that will be stored in the repository. Currently, the Central Personnel Data File contains 89 data elements.

OPM will tell agencies the format in which to submit data to the repository. Agencies are expected to submit the information biweekly, Enger said.

"By looking at this profile of federal workers, we can make decisions about federal human capital," Enger said, at the FOSE conference in Washington, D.C., last week. "We can do all kinds of data mining and analysis of the federal workforce."

EHRI also will feed into the retirement system, which is undergoing an overhaul but is not one of the Bush Administration's 24 e-government initiatives. The Retirement Systems Modernization project will automate recordkeeping systems for retirees.