The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has sent a letter to OPM requesting information on a recent mix up in which the agency mistakenly told 300 applicants to the prestigious Presidential Management Fellowship program that they had been accepted, but who were actually not selected as finalists.
The letter, signed by committee chair Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Dennis Ross, R-Fla., who chairs the federal workforce subcommittee, notes that the committee is concerned that the mix up is "indicative of larger IT failures within OPM, which include Retirement Modernization and USAJobs.gov."
OPM opted to cancel the retirement modernization contract after running into performance problems and had to roll back the re-launch of USAJOBs.gov after glitches in functionality surfaced.
The committee cited other problems the PMA program has encountered in recent months. It noted that on November 1 OPM sent blank emails that did not identify whether or not applicants qualified for in-person assessments, and that from October 7 to 10 qualified applicants could not access their online assessments.
After erroneous notifying the 300 PMA applicants OPM followed up with a mass email apologizing, but the damage had been done. The letter requests a trove documents, and questions whether OPM’s administration has diminished the reputation of the program, which has become an important leadership pipeline into the federal ranks.