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HR LOB: Guidance from above

When it comes to some human resource functions, share and share alike.

Federal News Network Staff

October 3, 2008 6:38 pm

1 min read

By Max Cacas
FederalNewsRadio

One of the big priorities for the Bush Administration has been managing federal government resources along several key lines of business.

Recently, the Office of Personnel Management issued new guidance for agencies that are considering moving to shared service centers under the Human Resources Line of Business.

The HR Shared Services Centers Migration guidance is designed to help agencies that want to take advantage of these SSCs to save money.

Joe Campbell, OPM’s coordinator for Shared Services Centers at OPM says that the SSC is a way for agencies to essentially outsource key human resource functions, such as the processing of forms, keeping records, and some IT functions, that are not core to an agency’s mission, and share those functions with other agencies.

We designed a business case for the HR LOB, when we began the initiative. While we don’t have the information at the agency level, we’ve projected a cost savings and cost avoidance of $1.1 billion over a ten-year period.

The figure reflects savings when it comes to operations and maintenance costs, in addition to savings when the agencies don’t replace duplicate IT resources, like servers and network bandwidth.

Campbell says agencies have some flexibility in deciding whether to take advantage of shared services centers. Five agencies at present are set up and authorized by OPM to provide certain HR services under the SSC model:

the Agriculture Department
the Pentagon’s D-FAS
the Department of Health and Human Services
the Interior Deparrtment,
the Treasury Department

The General Services Administration is developing criteria for private sector SSCs which will also be authorized to provide shared services to federal agencies.

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On the Web:
OPM – HR Line of Business Web site