The U.S. federal government is technically one entity, but its software practices look more like a UN summit. Washington uses more than 100 human resources systems to manage payroll and benefits for roughly two million federal employees. That patchwork includes long outdated, insecure systems that cost agencies billions of tax dollars per year to maintain. Worse, these systems often fail at their most basic tasks, driving lost productivity and real disruptions for employees and their families.
The Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management recently announced plans to consolidate federal HR into a single platform by 2028. The initiative, dubbed “Federal HR 2.0,” promises to save billions of dollars while finally giving the federal government a single system of record for managing its workforce — something common throughout the private sector.
The move is welcome and long overdue. But its success or failure will depend on whether the federal government can look beyond the entrenched contractors and vendors that created the mess in the first place.
