OPM restarts its financial migration

Agency vows to avoid the mistakes it made in its initial attempt at financial outsourcing

If failure brings an organization one step closer to success, the Office of Personnel Management is nearer to achieving its goal of outsourcing the agency’s financial management operations. OPM signed an outsourcing agreement with a government service provider in 2005 that it later canceled after both parties realized the arrangement was not going to work.

Now OPM is preparing to issue a new solicitation for financial management services. Later this month, it will ask government and commercial financial services providers for information about their capabilities before soliciting bids in the fall.

OPM officials said lessons they learned from their initial outsourcing attempt could be helpful to other agencies. All federal agencies are required to move to a public or private shared services provider under the Office of Management and Budget’s Financial Management Line of Business consolidation initiative. Its purpose is to enable agencies to more efficiently and uniformly account for taxpayers’ money.

- Mary Mosquera, FCW.com

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