The Office of Personnel Management is eyeing July 4, 2027, to fully launch a new governmentwide human resources system.
In a new request for proposals released Friday, OPM details a much more specific plan of action to modernize and centralize 119 distinct core federal human resources systems across the government.
Scott Kupor is the director of the Office of Personnel Management. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
“The ideal ‘to be’ state is a single, pan-government core human capital management (HCM) system that gives the federal government full, real-time visibility into its workforce and drives effective workforce management on behalf of the American taxpayer,” wrote OPM Director Scott Kupor in a blog post on Monday. “Key to this ideal is our hypothesis that one system at governmentwide scale will drive significant per-user cost savings over the current siloed, duplicative, ad-hoc landscape.”
Kupor said these 119 systems cost about $5.5 billion a year to manage, and are costly, error-prone and leads to unnecessary delays in enabling a seamless transition to retirement.
“These hardworking [HR] folks have to navigate thickets of outdated and duplicative technology systems, hindering their efficiency and effectiveness, and doubtlessly frustrating them in the process,” he wrote. “We want HR professionals focused on what matters: driving the selection, development, and management of a high-performance federal workforce of the future, not dealing with duplicative and confusing technology systems.”
This latest RFP comes after two false starts earlier this year with OPM awarding a no-bid contract to Workday in May only to pull it a few days later. It then released a task order through the General Services Administration’s schedule program in late May, only to withdraw that effort a few weeks later as well.
Over the course of the next several months, OPM worked with GSA to develop this new solicitation, holding an industry day where it met with vendors one-on-one to learn about the current state of technology, and issued two requests for information in September and October.
“I applaud the government for actually listening to industry and for admitting they were wrong in what they previously published, saying they did market research and found Workday was only capable vendor. It was wrong. I don’t know how many letters of protest OPM got, but I imagine many did submit a protest letter saying they didn’t do their homework,” said one industry executive whose company is following this procurement and therefore requested anonymity. “It seems that OPM expanded their view of what’s actually possible to deliver in 90 days. In the original request, they wanted a fully functional system in 90 days for $300,000. A lot of us were like ‘What are you talking about?’ Anyone could deploy in 90 days with out of the box requirements, but that system will not meet needs of federal employees. In the new RFP, they better defined expectations in that initial period. They want to know this is real software that has real FedRAMP authorization and can serve as a core HCM system of record. That is a much different requirement than having all your configurations for 2 million employees, being able to log in and utilize it. I think that is really good.”
In the new RFP, OPM is asking industry to propose a commercial software-as-a-service (SaaS) system that provides eight core functions. Bids are due by Oct. 31, only 14 days after OPM released the solicitation.
Source: OPM RFP from October 2025.
“We are inviting industry to tell us how they would propose to accomplish these objectives. We are excited about this very important project, because we believe that this type of transformation is crucial for managing the government talent pool of the present and future,” Kupor wrote.
The 10-year firm fixed price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity type contract sets an aggressive timeline with full implementation across all agencies, serving about 2 million users, by July 4, 2027. OPM didn’t offer any maximum dollar value for the contract. Some industry experts estimate the contract could easily be worth more than $1 billion.
“Agency Transition will begin at completion of the Core Implementation. OPM will staff a Governmentwide Program Management Office (GPMO) that will provide support for the transitions along with the contractor. This GPMO will include contracting officer representatives (CORs), account managers, business analysts, system testers, system trainers, Tier 1 help desk support and data scientists. It will also include additional technical resources from the OPM CIO responsible for governance, architecture, integration, security, identity management, data migration and infrastructure readiness support to ensure alignment with enterprise IT policies and successful implementation of the SaaS Core HCM platform,” OPM stated in the RFP. “The GPMO is responsible for project oversight, compliance with federal security standards, and support for system integration and SSO and will serve as the primary integrator responsible for working directly with the agencies. The contractor resources will support OPM with agency transitions and will take direction from OPM.”
Implementation to begin in May 2026
OPM says it will initiate task orders to begin agency-specific implementations, breaking agencies down by how complex their current environment is and how difficult the transition will likely be to the new system.
Each agency implementation will include a six-month trial and usability test as part of the overall timeline.
OPM anticipates an award for this contract by December, with the implementation of the core HR system completed by April. Then agency-specific task orders will begin between May 2026 and May 2027.
“The contractor shall ensure the government is maintained on the latest version of the platform, with all government configurations, to support continued modernization and innovation,” the RFP stated. “Minimizing customization is crucial to meeting government timelines. To limit customization, the Government Steering Committee will first look to standardize and streamline government policies and processes and enforce configuration patterns and reusable templates across all agencies, which should allow for the requirement to be met via out-of-the-box or configuration. To promote long-term sustainability, interoperability, and maintainability, the contractor shall prioritize the use of out-of-the-box capabilities and standardized configuration options. Customizations may be proposed only when the required functionality cannot reasonably be achieved through configuration or integration and will be limited to requirements such as statutory, regulatory, or mission-critical operational requirements, as defined by OPM, that cannot be addressed through configuration. All proposed customizations will be approved by the Steering Committee prior to development.”
OPM is also encouraging the contractor to suggest efficiency opportunities around everything from business process improvements to interoperability challenges to specific government requirements that may impact the HCM configuration.
Stephen Galvan, president of Galvan and Associates and a former Office of Management and Budget E-Gov portfolio manager for the Internal Efficiency and Effectiveness Portfolio that helped consolidate 24 payroll providers, said the fact OPM is calling for minimal customization is doable, but agencies must change their processes to conform to the new SaaS platform, which is more difficult.
“The many-to-many agency and systems relationships can lead to unknown complexities, volumes and unforeseen scheduling feasibility to reach the July 4, 2027, target,” Galvan said. “The complexity to get to federalwide solution can get complicated to achieve for each agency.”
Two-step evaluation process
Galvan added to achieve OPM’s goal of a single governmentwide system, they have to consolidate existing core systems like the enterprise human resources integration system, the electronic official personnel folder and employee express as well as integrate with the seven payroll providers.
“While these companies have done large implementations, the federal government not only has the size with the 2 million person workforce, but also has a large number of lines of business and the related services that support the lines of businesses. The administrative LOBs are more achievable, but the mission services can get very granular when you convert functions like learning management and certifications and ‘interoperating’ with payroll, travel and even time and attendance,” Galvan said.
OPM is using a two-step evaluation process for vendors. The first step is for vendors to provide case studies, customer references and a virtual demonstration.
The second gate includes a second product demonstration, a final price proposal and system testing.
The industry executive said these types of approaches are helpful for industry because they know if they aren’t making it past the first round and can limit how much money to invest in the bid.
The likely bidders include Workday, SAP, Infor, Oracle and Ceridian as well as possibly teams that includes Salesforce, ServiceNow and integrator partners like Deloitte, Guidehouse and Accenture Federal.
“One of areas that we still are not fully understanding is this is a massive undertaking and I don’t see it being able to be fulfilled by a single company. It’s less about the size and more about uniqueness of each of the agencies. OPM needs to focus on standardizing requirements, which they have done a better through the federal human capital business reference model,” the industry executive said. “I think they need to push the HCBR out to various agencies and say whatever you are using, it needs to follow these requirements and you need pass a third party audit by July 4, 2027, versus trying to move everyone on a single platform. You have certain agencies that are much more hourly basis and other agencies that are more fluid in when and how they work. This solicitation isn’t saying all 2 million need to be on same platform in sense of capturing time and pay. They say they will use shared service providers and existing ancillary services, but this is only supposed to be core system of record. I look at that and think it’s a huge risk.”
And of course, vendors say one big challenge for OPM is to keep a procurement of this size and breadth out of protest purgatory.
But at the same time, the initiative has the attention at the highest levels of OPM. Kupor said in the blog post that “this type of transformation is crucial for managing the government talent pool of the present and future.”
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