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By: FEDweek StaffOMB has told agencies to “streamline operations” as part of the administration’s initiative to shift from what it calls “low-value” work to tasks of higher value.
“Each year, federal employees devote tens of thousands of hours to low-value compliance activities from rules and requirements that have built up over decades,” said a memo issued Monday (August 27). “The President’s Management Agenda prioritizes reducing the burden of these low-value activities and redirecting resources to accomplishing mission outcomes that matter most to citizens.”
Shifting “resources” — mainly meaning employees—to higher-priority work has been an ongoing theme of the Trump administration’s budgets, management policies including this year’s President Management Agenda, and the agency reorganization plan issued recently.
Federal employee organizations have cited the potential in such an effort for cutting jobs. In response, administration officials note that the plans advocate “reskilling” affected employees, for example to help fill high-demand cybersecurity and other IT-related positions where agencies are short-handed.
OMB’s memo recounts several steps already taken, including prior memos eliminating guidance to agencies—on financial management, acquisition, IT and other topics—as burdensome or obsolete. OPM and GSA also have reduced some of the reporting requirements they impose on agencies and are working on further reductions, it adds.
It tells agencies “to regularly review their own management guidance, identify opportunities to streamline operations and reduce burden on their components, and publicly report their progress.” It sets requirements for the 24 Cabinet department and largest independent agencies—the so-called CFO Act agencies—while encouraging other agencies to take those steps.
“Reforms may include streamlining or eliminating unnecessary reporting requirements, consolidating processes and functions across offices, using shared service solutions or technologies, eliminating agency specific guidance or policies that preclude using shared services, and introducing new technologies, such as robotics process automation, to reduce repetitive administrative tasks, and other process-reform initiatives,” it says.
“Where feasible, agencies should report progress in terms of FTE [full-time equivalent] hours shifted to high-value work,” it adds. “If agencies implement significant shifts in resources that are not amenable to reporting in FTE hours, agencies should report cost savings instead. Agencies may use alternative methods, such as number of pages of reporting eliminated, when neither FTE hours nor cost savings is feasible.”
