Gov't HR Department Latest To Get Nastygram From Auditors

Uncle Sam's HR department has become the latest agency to get a nastygram from federal auditors, who are hoping its recently-appointed director can get his house in order better than his predecessor. 

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent a report on open recommendations to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor Wednesday, informing him of 58 unresolved issues identified by the GAO, 14 of which are important enough to be considered priority recommendations. Several relate to IT.

According to the GAO, the 14 outstanding priority recommendations include improving IT systems to reduce retirement application processing time, implementing workforce planning activities for its IT staff, better management of its permanent electronic records, and improved software license management.

Retirement application processing stands out in the report as a particularly egregious failure, with GAO noting that OPM has little to show for two decades of work "fraught with IT management weaknesses." 

OPM has made some progress, GAO noted, but not enough. 

"For example, OPM has not yet demonstrated that it has incorporated key aspects of IT project management as part of its modernization effort," GAO noted. OPM has also failed to implement all the GAO recommendations on workforce planning and training, which GAO said would give it "greater assurance that it has the IT staff with the necessary knowledge, skills, and ability to support its mission and goals." 

Workforce skill shortages are also going unresolved due to the lack of an action plan to fill needed positions - something GAO said OPM desperately needs, and which auditors noted is progressing well, at least for now. 

"In March 2025, the agency stated that it expected to approve or finalize its IT workforce plan by the third quarter of fiscal year 2025," the GAO noted. We note that the third quarter of the government's fiscal year ended in June. "It also stated that it expected to complete competency assessments by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 and the related analysis by the second quarter of fiscal year 2026." 

Along with those IT recommendations, the GAO also called OPM out for not doing enough to stop false federal employee health benefits (FEHB) claims. The GAO said that stopping these claims would save taxpayers more than a billion dollars. OPM said in 2024 that it had taken steps to prevent new enrollments by people who aren't qualified for service, but that just includes new enrollees - not old ones. 

"While beneficial, OPM's strategies do not address the significant risk of improper payments and potential fraud stemming from ineligible family members that are already enrolled in the FEHB program," GAO noted. 

A priority, but nothing out of the ordinary

There are a lot of recommendations in the GAO's OPM report, but its publication isn't out of the ordinary for government agencies of late. 

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The GAO issued a trio of reports directed to the General Services Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Homeland Security last week covering the same topic of outstanding auditor recommendations. Homeland Security has been particularly bad about meeting its GAO recommendations, with 43 outstanding matters noted for the agency in last week's report - several less than OPM's count of 58. 

OPM's 58 outstanding recommendations also mean that it painted a big target on its back for the GAO to aim at, as it has fallen far below the government-wide average for addressing auditor requests.

"On a government-wide basis, 70 percent of our recommendations made 4 years ago were implemented," the GAO said, noting that data comes from November 2024. "OPM's recommendation implementation rate was 33 percent." 

While OPM blamed government employee layoffs for some of the issues it left unresolved, it offered no justification for other outstanding items. We reached out to OPM to see what it had to say for itself, but didn't hear back. ®