HR 2.0: Reinventing Government (Again)
I have worked with the federal government’s human resources management system (choose your preferred term) for a few decades.
On my first day on the job at a federal agency in Washington, my boss brought several large binders to my desk (government-issued metal desk with a soft gray top and numerous initials scratched into the surface). The binders were heavy and totaled about 10,000 pages. I was given the task of reading this monstrosity to acquaint myself with how the federal personnel system worked. The binders were the Federal Personnel Manual (FPM).
I read it and stayed awake for much of the time, though I thought about how much more interesting it was to drive an armored personnel carrier around a muddy field at Fort Knox, KY. That seemed boring at the time, but it was more interesting than reading the FPM for the first time.
I became quite familiar with the FPM. It was easier to understand than the Code of Federal Regulations and better indexed. It was sometimes referred to as the Bible for personnel specialists. It was designed to ensure all agencies processed personnel actions consistently and fairly, and that all federal employees were familiar with a similar or identical system.
That started to change in 1993. Government was being reinvented. Out with the old system and in with the new one. The FPM was discarded (though many personnel specialists kept their own copies because it was still useful—but that could not be stated in a public forum).
Democrats were in charge of the federal bureaucracy, but Bill Clinton and Al Gore sounded and acted more like Republicans than the left-wing Democrats today. The Clinton Administration wanted to reinvent government to be more efficient and less expensive. It was an effort to undo the efforts of the Hoover Commission’s government reinvention from 1947-49 when top-down management was in vogue as a way to eliminate bureaucracy and create efficiency.
Flexibility was a keyword. The National Performance Review (NPR) cited this as a problem that needed to be corrected. Presumably, less centralized control was the answer to this problem with federal employees:
[F]ederal employees quickly learn that common sense is risky-and creativity is downright dangerous. They learn that the goal is not to produce results, please customers, or save taxpayers’ money, but to avoid mistakes. Those who dare to innovate do so quietly.
This is perhaps the saddest lesson learned by those who worked on the National Performance Review: Yes, innovators exist within the federal government, but many work hard to keep their innovations quiet. By its nature, innovation requires a departure from standard operating procedure. In the federal government, such departures invite repercussions. The result is a culture of fear and resignation. To survive, employees keep а low profile. They decide that the safest answer in any given situation is a firm “maybe.” They follow the rules, pass the buck, and keep their heads down. They develop what one employee, speaking with Vice President Gore at a Department of Veterans Affairs meeting, called “a government attitude.”
The result was “Reinventing Government”. What federal employees would not welcome a federal personnel management system designed to:
- Reduce bureaucracy and simplify human resources rules so agencies can be more flexible in hiring, managing, and classifying employees;
- Delegate more authority to line managers rather than forcing them to navigate a vast, centralized rulebook;
- Cut pages of redundant regulations as part of a broader government-wide effort to “work better, cost less, and get results Americans care about”?
The practical result was not just dumping pages of policy. It was a shift in how federal personnel management was governed — toward agency flexibility and away from one massive, centralized system typified by the Federal Personnel Manual.
The administration described its efforts to eliminate the root cause of government inefficiency and cost as reforming an “industrial-era bureaucracy in an information age.”
Reinventing Government in 2026 and Beyond
How did the reinventing government initiative work out when the project, headed by Vice-President Al Gore, eliminated the FPM, gave agencies more flexibility, reduced bureaucracy, and created a government to “work better, cost less, and get results Americans care about”?
The Clinton administration was proud of its efforts. It reduced the size of government by 240,000, closed about 2,000 field offices, eliminated nearly 200 programs and agencies, reduced the number of federal supervisors by nearly 54,000, and tested new automated systems that “make sense and will save over $100 million a year.”
With this success, what does today’s HR system look like, and what should be changed in 2026?
According to OPM Director Scott Kupor there has been a significant downside:
Today, the government has deployed 119 (there may be more, but that’s all we could in fact find) distinct core HCM (‘Human Capital Management’) systems – none of which integrate effectively with each other. That’s almost one per executive agency of the government.
This is crazy for many reasons, not least of which is that it costs American taxpayers an inordinate amount of money for the privilege of having so many systems. In addition, it means that the government lacks a single, government-wide source of truth for any basic employee information – e.g., how many positions actually exist in any organization; what do org charts and managerial spans of control look like across government; how much are we actually paying people by sub-department; etc.
So, perhaps, the efforts to reinvent government in the 1990’s were a success—for that time—and it is time to centralize the system again using new technology that was not available 30 years ago.
Decentralizing the system led to the system described by OPM in the quotes above. While it is unlikely the FPM will return to its former glory, artificial intelligence (AI) did not exist in the 1990’s, and a return to a more centralized system will certainly change the current federal personnel system. Perhaps the flexibility NPR hoped to achieve did not occur or did not last—the federal personnel system just morphed into a different form, and “a government attitude” persisted as before.
We are now addressing the current problem as articulated by OPM’s Director, Mr. Kupor. No doubt, this will be a massive undertaking that requires careful planning and implementation, which the agency is preparing to undertake. With luck, the result will be a more efficient government, probably similar in many respects to what the Clinton-Gore team hoped to achieve.
Past Problems That May Reappear
Some of what employees experienced in the 1990s was predictable, and some of these issues will reappear. Based on personal experience:
- Loss of staff and heavier workloads as a result of change, especially in administrative and support functions.
- Unclear or inconsistent HR guidance.
- Difficulty for employees to obtain understandable information about a complex system with personal repercussions and using new, complex software.
- More agency-by-agency variation, sometimes meaning flexibility and other times confusion.
- Mixed success with digital tools—some helpful, others clunky or poorly integrated. This will be a complex system, and many employees will not adapt well to new technology.
- A push for “customer service” metrics that didn’t always match real mission needs.
- Cultural change varies by agency.
- Transition pains as long-standing rules were rewritten or left to agency interpretation.
Here’s what’s coming in the 2026 version of reinventing government under the Trump administration.
One System Replaces Dozens
Today, agencies run their own HR systems, including separate tools for personnel actions, timekeeping, training, and performance documentation. Many of these systems are old, custom-built, or incompatible.
HR 2.0 scraps that. Agencies will migrate in waves to a single government-wide Core HCM system. That platform becomes the system of record for your personnel file, actions, and employment history.
What you use now—whether it’s HRConnect, PeopleSoft, CAPPS, NFC tools, agency-custom databases, or a stand-alone learning or timekeeping system—will be phased out.
What Will Change for Employees
Instead of bouncing between separate sites and logins, employees will have a single entry point for:
- Leave and timekeeping
- Personnel actions
- Benefits information
- Training records
- Performance documents
- Career and promotion history
- Self-service updates to personal information
The new system is meant to look and feel like the commercial HR tools used in large companies, with faster, more standardized personnel actions. In theory, all agencies will use the same workflows:
- Promotions, step increases, reassignments, awards, and separations should process faster.
- Errors tied to inconsistent data or mismatched systems should drop.
- Employees changing agencies will no longer face weeks of paperwork delays because systems don’t talk to each other.
The idea is that employees will be able to see their own records. Currently, employees often have to hunt for old SF-50s, training completions, or position descriptions. The new system consolidates the entire employment lifecycle into one digital folder with consistent record formats.
One goal will be to increase transparency and the availability of audit trails. Every action will have timestamped workflows. Employees will be able to see where actions sit and who is processing them—something many current systems barely support.
What Will Change for Supervisors
Supervisors get standardized dashboards for:
- Pending personnel actions
- Onboarding checklists
- Required training
- Performance milestones
- Workforce analytics (turnover, skill inventories, vacancy timelines, etc.)
Agencies will lose the ability to customize workflows. Supervisors will gain a consistent, government-wide structure that may eventually feel easier to understand and operate than the current multiplicity of systems.
Training and Transition
Every agency must create an internal transition team. Employees should expect:
- Mandatory training on the new system
- Temporary dual-system periods while data migrates
- Occasional freezes on personnel actions during final cutovers
- Requests to validate personal and HR data already in legacy systems
You’ll be asked to check your records. Do it. Bad data in a legacy system will follow you into the new one if it isn’t fixed in advance.
What Doesn’t Change
While the tools are changing, here are some core systems or rules that do not change although how these systems are accessed and interpreted may change with a more centralized system.
- Title 5 requirements
- Merit system principles
- Veterans’ preference
- Competitive vs. excepted service rules
- Promotion and classification standards
- Benefits eligibility
- Retirement laws
HR 2.0 affects how HR functions—not the legal framework that governs federal employment.
The Practical Upside
If the implementation goes smoothly—and that’s a big “if”—employees should eventually see:
- Fewer delays
- Less paperwork
- Fewer “lost” personnel actions
- A clearer view of their own data
- Better access to training and career tools
- Simpler experiences when transferring between agencies
Agencies may also benefit from cleaner data and fewer information systems to maintain.
The Risks and Growing Pains
A transition this large is not painless, and it is unrealistic to expect everything to go smoothly. Here are some probable results:
- System cutovers
- Temporary slowdowns
- Occasional errors during data migration
- Training fatigue
- Reduced flexibility for mission-specific processes
- A period where everything feels more complicated before it becomes simpler
Large human resource conversions in federal agencies do not always go smoothly. No doubt, this type of system will take time and patience and create considerable frustration in some instances.
What Employees Should Do Now
- Download and save recent SF-50s.
- Check training and performance records for accuracy.
- Ensure personal contact information is current.
- Keep copies of recent awards, certifications, and promotions.
- Pay attention to agency notices about incoming changes.
Getting these items straightened out now can prevent at least some future problems that could impact individual employee finances and retirement.
Summary
HR 2.0 is a massive modernization push. Whether it becomes a smoother, faster HR system or a long, bumpy transition depends on planning and execution. Based on past experience, there will be changes, and some successes and failures in the new system.
Federal employees should prepare for real changes in how their HR information is managed and accessed.
No doubt, there will be plenty of material for future articles on what went wrong, what worked well, and laying the basis for an HR 3.0 a few years into the future.
