Oversight Hearing - U.S. Office of Personnel Management

Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government will come to order. This hearing is titled the Oversight of the Office of Personnel Management. Members will have five legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material into the record. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, plays a central role in the most human resource decisions within the executive branch. This is particularly true as it relates to the federal workforce. In 1979, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act, which disbanded the United States Civil Service Commission and reassigned most of its functions to three newly established agencies, including OPM. Over the last year, OPM has played a central role in implementing this administration's workforce modernization initiatives. In addition, OPM has played a key role in using technology to revolutionize the way federal employees interact with federal government. I have no doubt that many of the colleagues will have questions about policies implemented by OPM and how those decisions have been impacted their constituents. I look forward to discussing OPM's work over the last year and their expectations for FY 2027. I now recognize Ranking Member Hoyer for any opening statement he may have.

I want to thank the chairman. I want to thank Mr. Cooper for being here and for taking what are obviously extensive experience in the business world and efficiency and effectiveness and agreeing to take on the responsibilities at OPM. Some 14 months ago, this administration, however, before you were there, renewed its crusade against the federal workforce. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought made this intention clear when he said, and I quote, "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected." He went on to say, and I quote, "When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down. We want to put them in trauma." Frankly, that intent was certainly delivered upon. The federal government has lost some 300,000 federal employees since Trump took office. DOGE created uninformed, irrational, and negative chaos. Chaos and great trauma. Trump, Vought, and Musk justified their purge in the name of improving government efficiency, an objective we all share and you have articulated in your statement. Instead, our government has become less efficient, in my view, to the detriment of the American people. My own view, Mr. Cooper, is that DOGE knew exactly how to get rid of people and had no idea of the consequences of their actions. That was demonstrated in four months of chaos. The Office of Personnel Management has been instrumental, again, not under your leadership, of this effort to dismantle the federal government and traumatize our federal workers. As one who represents 77,000 federal workers, I think the most of any member of Congress, I have certainly experienced that, my district office has experienced it, and I've seen it firsthand in my district. Last month, OPM finalized its Schedule Policy Career, previously known as Schedule F. That rule makes it even easier, in my view, for the administration to purge another 50,000 nonpartisan federal employees and replace them with political, and I use this word harshly and advisedly, sycophants. OPM is also working to weaken the authority of the Merit Systems Protection Board and deny former employees of their right to appeal their termination. You and I are both lawyers. Having the appeal come from an agency and then having that same agency oversee that appeal seems to me to be not in the best interest of our federal employees or our federal government. These federal workers are patriotic, professional, who provide vital service to the American people every day. They swear their loyalty to the Constitution, not to whoever sits in the Oval Office. I've been on this committee for a very long period of time, essentially since January of 1983, with 20 years off for leadership services, but I've asked almost every person who has come out of the private sector to compare their federal workers with their private sector workers. Invariably, they say they are surprised at the high level of commitment, efficiency, and effectiveness of their federal employees. You're shaking your head, maybe I'll ask you that question when that's timely. Last summer, OPM also canceled its annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which measures federal workers' morale and the organizational performance on their agencies. It will not surprise you I'm somewhat skeptical and apparently that the answers were not wanted. No wonder the administration does not want that survey to see the light of day. I understand that many of these policies either predate you or did not originate with you, so this is not, we'll find out where you want to go. But you and the rest of OPM are pivotal in carrying out these policies. I'm eager to hear you in how you intend to stop these attacks on our merit-based civil service, which is really the pride of this government in many ways in comparison with the rest of the world. I also want to make it clear that I believe the objective to improve government efficiency is an absolutely essential objective. We need to modernize how the federal government handles HR, and you've advocated for some changes that I agree with on paper, we'll see how they're executed. You want to improve skills-based hiring and modernize retirement processing, so do I. But I'm skeptical that OPM can take these changes when it lost a third of its staff in the past 14 months and when it is trying to do the job of the Merit Systems Protection Board as well. We've already seen signs that OPM has stretched itself too thin. May I have unanimous consent to have another minute? This is critically important agency as you can tell, as you know. In the past few weeks, one of my district workers has received 50 cases, past weeks, of federal retirees who've seen disruption in their retirement benefits. I see in your statement you deal with that. They need those benefits to keep a roof over their heads. They have tried calling, emailing, and visiting OPM in person, all to no avail. Director Cooper, you are clearly very capable and have had a successful career in business. I'm sure you know from experience how important employees are to the success of any enterprise. That's why Vought's remarks are so antithetical to any kind of human resources policy by any government, large or small, or any private sector enterprise. No business could treat its workforce this way and expect greater efficiency. For the sake not only of our federal employees but the American people they serve every day, I hope we can find a way to work together to turn this situation around. And I thank you very much, as I said at the beginning, for offering your services in this role.

Thank you, Mr. Hoyer. The chair would now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Ms. DeLauro, for a five-minute opening statement.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to Ranking Member Hoyer. Thank you to the director for your testimony this morning and for answering our questions here today. The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, is often described as the human resources department for the federal government. It wields an incredible amount of influence over the quality of life of more than two million federal workers. It determines the benefits that they receive, the salaries they make, the promotions they earn, in short, it governs the conditions under which these employees work. Because of this, OPM holds a lot of power over the quality of the public services these employees provide. If workers are mistreated, if they are unfairly removed or unjustly punished, the quality of service the American public receives is lessened. If workers are not rewarded for their commitment or their contributions, we are all worse off for it. Career civil servants are experts in their fields. They often forgo much higher private sector salaries because they feel drawn to public service out of a sense of duty or patriotism or responsibility to the nation. They make a personal sacrifice for the public good, and I believe that that is commendable. But since this administration took office, it has been one trauma after another for the federal workforce. They have been subjected to illegal firings, followed by sporadic court-ordered reappointments. They have been stranded abroad in the middle of humanitarian missions. They have been demeaned, forced to prove the value of their work to, honestly, to the unqualified underlings of Elon Musk. It is clear that this is an abuse of power. The countless court rulings invalidating these illegal actions should be, are and should be evidence enough. But beyond the obvious illegality is the immorality. These are honest, these are hardworking men and women who have chosen to serve their country, and in my view, they deserve better. Oversight at OPM is clearly necessary in order to ensure the kind of reckless, illegal abuses we saw carried out under this administration, that they cannot happen again. If we want to have a capable federal workforce that can provide the high-quality public services the American people have come to depend on, then we need to treat them fairly. There are many challenges ahead for OPM. I look forward to hearing the director's answers to this committee's questions and how you plan to navigate them. And I thank you and I yield back.

Thank you very much, Ms. DeLauro. Today we welcome the testimony of Scott Cooper, Director of the Office of Personnel Management. Mr. Cooper, without objection, your written testimony will be entered into the record. With that in mind, we ask you to summarize in five minutes your testimony and look forward to hearing from you, sir.

Thank you, Chairman Joyce, Ranking Member Hoyer, and as well Ranking Member DeLauro, thank you for being here and the members of the committee. It's an honor to be here today and I do appreciate the opportunity to appear in front of you and talk about the work of the Office of Personnel Management. Since my confirmation last summer, as Mr. Hoyer you mentioned I've been here since July, I've tried to approach this role with the same mindset I brought from decades in the private sector. That means getting the fundamentals right: people, systems, and culture, so the government can operate efficiently, innovate where it needs to, and earn the trust of every taxpayer. Today I'd like to zero in on three of the priorities that are driving our efforts today at OPM, and I look forward to your questions. Number one is ensuring that we have the right employees in the right roles at the right time and in the right places across government. Number two is being good stewards of taxpayer dollars by modernizing the federal workforce ecosystem to eliminate outdated processes and systems that unfortunately waste time and money. And third, it's important for us to drive a high-performance culture where excellence is rewarded, accountability is real, and everyone is set up to do their best work every day. Let's start with the first option here, which is having the right people in the right roles. As you know, this is the foundation of any high-performing organization, public or private, but in government we've historically struggled even to get a clear picture of who we have and where the gaps are. One of the early moves that we did in this administration was to replace what we called the outdated FedScope tool with the new Federal Workforce Data that we launched fairly recently on OPM.gov. The old system was clunky, it was hard to navigate, it often lagged months behind reality. This new portal delivers monthly updates, a much cleaner user experience, and real-time insights into workforce composition, demographics, and trends. For the first time, leaders across agencies, the public, and importantly, members of Congress can see the data clearly when they want to see it and they can act upon it. With that visibility, we've now zeroed in on some critical weaknesses and challenges that I believe we have in the government. There's no question that tech talent is an issue, as well as early career hires, these stand out as persistent pain points in the government. One of the initiatives we've launched to try to address this is called TechForce. This is a cross-government initiative to bring in a thousand early career technologists over two years. We hope these will be sharp, motivated engineers and developers who will embrace the new modernization activities that are happening across all of the industries, HHS, Treasury, Department of War, and others, and accelerate the efforts that we're working on. We've designed this as a public-private partnership designated to inject fresh talent where it's needed most, while giving participants career development, speaker series, exposure to both government missions and private sector opportunities at the end of the program. The numbers that we face today on the demographics tell a really important story. Today about 7 percent of the federal workforce is early career or under the age of 30. On the other end of the spectrum, nearly half of the federal workforce is over the age of 50. These numbers are wildly different from what the representations are in the broader workforce. On the 7 percent that we have in government, in comparison there are 23 percent of all American workers who are under the age of 30. So by a factor of three to one, we have a very, very important demographic imbalance that I believe is unsustainable. Without deliberate attention to attract and develop the next generation, we risk an existential capability gap that will undermine our ability to effectively serve the American people in the years ahead. TechForce is just a start program that we have here, but we will roll out additional cross-government efforts to make sure that we can fill this gap and build a pipeline of talent that reflects America's future. Our second priority is modernizing the federal workforce system. Right now human capital is inefficient. We have more than 120 disparate human capital systems across government for which we spend billions of dollars and we have poor data, duplicative data, and that doesn't make any sense. We're tackling this head-on with a project that we call Core H-C-M, where we are looking to bring a single instance of a healthcare system, excuse me, a human capital system into government to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and stop wasting resources on redundant systems. In addition, we have more than 45,000 HR professionals in government who spend an inordinate amount of their time trying to collect data out of outdated systems and therefore are unable to participate in helping employees actually achieve what we want from a career development perspective and making sure we have the right talent. The introduction of this new system will enable those HR professionals to be able to refocus their efforts in the areas that we think are most important. You mentioned, Mr. Hoyer, the retirement process. This has long time been a source of frustration, I'm sure it's not new to any of you. This has been a paper system for 50 plus years. Quite frankly, it's an insult to the hardworking federal employees as they transition into retirement. Many of these individuals have devoted their entire federal careers to the public service and we have done them a tremendous disservice in terms of how we've handled this. We launched this year the online retirement application. More than 130,000 annuitants now have gone through that system and we are seeing incredible progress. We actually have doubled our productivity in terms of the amount of applications we can process and we've reduced our processing times by more than half. This is critically important. At the same time, we have also made sure that every employee who is retiring within seven days has access to interim pay while their application is being adjudicated. That compares with 40 percent in the prior administrations. We want to make sure that the transition to retirement is respectful and important for others. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we're focused on building a high-performance culture and this starts with hiring. We've eliminated unnecessary proxies for merit like rigid degree and tenure requirements and shifted to functional and technical assessments that actually measure whether someone can do the job. Retention and performance though go hand in hand. Today, performance management is broken. Nearly everyone in government gets ranked at top of the system. 99.7 percent of employees every year are ranked at or above expectations. 0.3 percent of people are ranked below expectations. As wonderful as I agree the federal workforce is, that is not a system that engenders accountability. None of this is about politics, partisanship, or shrinking government for its own sake, it's about creating an environment where federal employees can come to work, do their best work every day, are held to clear standards and recognized for outstanding work. If we get the people right, we modernize the systems and foster a culture of high performance, we end up with a more efficient workforce. I see that I have exceeded my time and you've been very generous to give me an extra minute, so with that, I will wrap up and look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much, sir. I try to be fair and let everyone have an equal amount of overtime. Thank you very much, sir. I try to be fair and let everyone have an equal amount of overtime. Exactly right, yes. I feel vindicated, thank you. And I now recognize myself for the first...

Exactly right, yes. I feel vindicated, thanks.

And I now recognize myself for the first question. Director, we've talked several times about the work OPM is doing to modernize outdated systems throughout the federal government. We discussed how technology can revolutionize the federal retirement process as you just talked about. Would you talk about what OPM has focused on over the last year, what projects did OPM start, what projects are completed, and what projects remain and what is the timeline for their completion?

Absolutely, yes. And Mr. Chairman, as you mentioned, look, one of the things we're trying to do here is in order for us to deliver great services to the American people without hopefully bankrupting the country, we have to use technology to modernize our systems. So let me give you a couple examples. One, I mentioned the retirement services system. So today, that is a live operational system. 130,000 applications have been processed through that system. We're able to turn those around in 30 to 40 days compared to the 90 plus days that it takes us on the old paper system. We have a lot more work to do, so you will see as we get through the end of this fiscal year, our goal is we want 90 percent of all applications to be done electronically and we want to reduce our transaction processing time to 15 days. I think that's important for us to do, that work is ongoing. We also have a project that we've started that will also complete at the end of this fiscal year to modernize the call center in retirement. So without a doubt, if you look over long periods of time, we have not done a great job in terms of being able to respond to questions from annuitants in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, again, that's because we have no modern technology to do that, we are completely revamping that system and I'm very confident that will happen. I mentioned HR systems, so a critical project that we are working on is the introduction of a single HR system that will cover all two million civilian employees. That will not only save us a tremendous amount of money, but will actually solve a lot of these problems. So just to give you an example, Mr. Chairman, in retirement, one of the reasons why it's so complicated is when you retire, we have no history of your government. We have never actually kind of gone through and said, great, you know, you worked at these five agencies over these 25 years, we are assembling all that information for the first time when somebody retires. In my mind, that's just insane. If we actually had a centralized human resources system, you should be able to know at all times exactly what your employment history is and therefore the process of retirement, all the information is there for us to adjudicate that. So this is a great example where the introduction of a consolidated HR human resources system will actually have downstream effects for some of the other challenges we have. So those are some of the projects we're working on, but I would say more generally, one of the things we're trying to do is how do we find ways to utilize technology so that we can deliver more services on behalf of the American people at higher quality. Our health and insurance program is another area that we're going to focus on, even quite frankly how we do regulatory writing and how we kind of process policies. All of those things can benefit from technology, not as a substitute for humans, but as a way to augment human work so that we can actually increase the productivity of the workforce.

That's great. And my dear friend Mr. Amodei, who will soon be retiring, has volunteered to test the efficiency of your system.

We would appreciate that. We need user testing, so thank you, sir.

What can the committee do to ensure that OPM has the resources it needs to continue modernizing this process, services, and systems OPM maintains to support these federal employees?

Well, Mr. Chairman, look, you and your team have been very gracious in terms of listening to our requests. As you know, obviously we've submitted our budget requests going forward. I think the biggest challenge we have, and this is not just an OPM problem, is it's very hard to do some of these projects where they kind of cross over multi-years and require funding that kind of doesn't neatly fit into a single fiscal year. So in the case of the HR system, through partnership with your team and partners with OMB, we have been able to get agencies to allocate dollars that kind of will go across budget years. But one of the things just more broadly that as you think about priorities is if there is a way for us to kind of find ways to fund projects that inherently will take much longer periods of time that cut across these years, that would enable us to make sure that we don't have starts and stops in areas that make sense. But right now, you have been very responsive, we have no additional requests that have not been dealt with and we're very confident we can deliver in the resources you've provided us.

Thank you very much. We now recognize Ranking Member Hoyer for I'm sure will be a series of questions.

Well, thank you very much. Let me say, we had in place when I was either majority leader or minority whip and McCarthy was one of the two, we number one focused on technology. Number two, those replaced U.S. Digital Services, which was under this committee as well. And we had a program to bring in experts from outside, younger people, highly trained in tech to come in for short periods of time. So this is a program familiar to me, which I think can have great benefit. So I certainly agree with you. Attaining the objectives that you say in terms of making sure that we handle cases in a timely fashion of retirement in particular, it's been traumatic for many. Now let me ask you specifically, I mentioned the trauma that Mr. Vought said he wanted to impose. Would I be correct in saying you think that is not a positive policy to either recruit or retain the young people that you want to come to government to bring their skills?

Mr. Hoyer, you know, look, obviously I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment on Mr. Vought's comments. What I think you're hearing from me and what I believe strongly in is we need to, in order to attract the best and the brightest, we have to have a system that enables people to do their best work, to learn, to grow, develop, to be recognized for what they're doing, and by the way, to be held accountable. I do think that's important. I think, unfortunately, I think the accountability system we have today is lacking. So that's where I'm trying to focus the OPM efforts.

I understand the appropriateness, but he is after all essentially the chief financial officer of the United States of America. Those are comments he does not deny, he made them, he continues to make similar statements. That is antithetical to getting young people to come into which you say is a priority. Yes, we have a senior workforce, federal employment has historically been more stable. It is not now. And not being so, first of all, we shut down government, which is a stupid policy for us to do across the board, Democrat or Republican. And secondly, we don't pay people as much as we pay them in the private sector for the same job and probably with more responsibility, but maybe not as much accountability, which is a disconnect. So I ask you in terms of sending a message to those young people you want to recruit, what is that positive message we're going to send them in the context of the environment we see in federal employment today?

Yeah, I'll tell you precisely the message that I'm going to send them, which is, and many of which I think we agree on. What I would like to see is I would like to see every young individual in this country come to government for some period of time. And by the way, we designed this TechForce program for two years because I don't think young people actually think about 40-year careers. I think they think about small increments. So number one, what I want to tell them is look, come solve the hardest, most complex problems that there is, be in an environment where you can do your best work, an environment where tenure quite frankly does not determine your performance, but your actual merit determines your performance. And then when you've done your two years, three years, four years, if you want to stay here, God bless you, we'd love to have you, if you want to go to the private sector, that's great too. I think that's the message that we got to tell people. I think we have failed in telling that message quite frankly.

I think certainly our actions have belied that message in many instances, both in shutting down the government and in our lack of compensation matched to skills.

I would welcome the opportunity to work with you on compensation. I couldn't agree more that compensation is a real challenge. Now look, we're never going to pay, the government's never going to pay what the private sector is and that's fine. But look, we would welcome the opportunity, what we are trying to do just so you know on our end, we are trying to eliminate things that mislevel people in the organization. So today we have strict degree and tenure requirements in almost every job. We can eliminate those and use actual performance as a way to level people appropriately and we can eliminate what we call time in grade, which are tenure-based promotions as opposed to performance-based promotions. Those are things that we can do through regulation. We would love to look at the comprehensive GS pay scale with you and your team and figure out a way that we could address that.

The tradeoff, of course, was stability and less pay. What we've done is we've undermined very, very substantially stability. So if you're a young person looking to come into service, you look at an employer that is a, sending a very negative message, not you, but the CFO of our country sending a very negative message regarding federal employee and the second thing, we don't pay competitive wages and we take too long to hire people. Or perhaps get, and I agree with you, I've told the unions, we need to have a system that the American public is confident gets rid of non-performers. So I agree with you on that and I look forward to working with you on that. My time has expired.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, could I just respond to one comment from the Ranking Member?

Of course.

And you and I may disagree on this. I actually don't think stability for young people is the most compelling message. Now there may have been a time when kind of young people thought about that. I'm lucky enough to have kids that are this age. I think people think in two, three, four-year increments.

You have three daughters and I have three daughters.

I do, yes sir. So again, we may disagree on this. I think what young people want is they want to build their careers, they want to learn, they want to be surrounded by smart people, they want to be in an environment where they can actually progress and be recognized for that and that's why the early career push is exactly, you know, consistent with our push around performance management culture. I think those two things go hand in hand.

Thank you very much. Your time has expired. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Now recognize Mrs. Hinson for any questions she may have.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our ranking member as well. I'm glad to hear, Director Kuper, that merit is back in the federal government. I'm excited to hear about recognizing that our high performers should be rewarded for that, and that does provide great value for the taxpayer. So we need to be looking at that, ensuring that the federal government is consistently delivering. And so I appreciated that you're focused on really modernizing that we can do more for the American people at higher quality without driving up costs. And so I look forward to hearing more through this hearing about how we're going to continue to do that at OPM and government-wide. So we know at the start of President Trump's second term, OPM and OMB prioritized implementing the mandate for federal workers to return to the office to improve not only training, but accountability and, of course, service delivery for the American people, as well as ensuring that these people are going into the office and we're not just bankrolling empty buildings, right? Which I went to OPM during the Biden era and it was at like 7 percent occupancy, which was abysmal and a terrible deal for the taxpayer. So can you share...

Yes, please come see us now.

Yes, well, I'm hearing that you're back at work, which is exciting to me. But can you explain how agencies like yours are complying with this directive?

Yeah, so thank you, Mrs. Hinson. So yes, return to work has been an important priority here. And what we've done now, so we track information and we're happy to share this with you, but we track on a monthly basis across all the agencies a number of metrics, one of which is return to office. Today what I can tell you is consistently across organizations, we're running about 90 percent in office and we're checking that through badging data and also just through other data that we can get. So it's not 100 percent perfect data, but it's certainly very representative. As you know, there are reasonable accommodations that agencies can make either for legal reasons or for health reasons, and so we're tracking all those as well. So look, I'm a big believer that if you put out a metric and you don't actually track the data and give people an opportunity to see it, you just have no chance of managing it. So this monthly dashboard that we do is the mechanism by which we're managing that across government.

And the feedback from employees has been, I'm assuming, positive about the return to work? I mean, most people, do they understand the collaborative process and being in the office and how that directly correlates to, number one, efficiencies for the taxpayer, but also, you know, just a great benefit for the American people that you have teams of people working together for them?

Yeah, certainly I think there are people who recognize it. There are people who kind of think differently.

Grumble a little bit?

Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I think this is true anytime we change a policy, there's going to be reactions to it. So but yes, look, I think for most of the jobs that we're doing on behalf of the American people, they benefit from the workers being together and being able to communicate effectively with one another.

So you talk about tracking the data. Can you speak to maybe the savings associated with getting people back into the office?

Yeah, so as you probably know, and GSA would have the exact numbers, but the occupancy rates in our buildings were terrible. And one of the things that I know the new administration at GSA is doing is now going through and figuring out how we consolidate offices where appropriate. So I can tell you, for example, if you come to OPM, you will see OPM people, you will actually now see GSA people also kind of sub-tenanting in our office as well. So we're looking for opportunities to do there. I don't have a precise number for you in terms of the quantification there, but the enabling people to come back to office is now giving us the opportunity then to figure out kind of what is the right size we need and therefore GSA, I think, is very, very active in this consolidation process.

Yeah, and we look forward to having a parallel conversation with GSA about office space as well because that we want to make sure that we're delivering a good value there for taxpayers as well. And in talking about that, you know, obviously we're dealing with a lot of ballooning spending and an increased reliance it seems on federal contractors. And we want to make sure that, I mean, I think the number was $700 billion on federal contracting and that seems unfathomable to me. But last year, I know you began assessing the reliance of the federal government on contractors. So can you talk a little bit about where you are in that process, the savings you might be able to realize there as well for taxpayers?

Yeah, thank you for that question. Yeah, so just so you know, everyone else is aware, so we spend roughly about $250 billion on the two million full-time employees that we have in government and we spend $750 billion on top of that on contractor. We spend a trillion dollars on what I would call headcount-related resources in the government. One of the reasons for that, unfortunately, I think is we have basically created a shadow contractor full-time employee force. So contractors, I think, can be very valuable where you have temporary assignments and or you have skill gaps where potentially the government can't recruit those. Instead, we have people who are contractors for five, 10, 15, 20 years. They are basically full-time employees in disguise and they get paid anywhere from 25 percent to 100 percent higher than what a federal employee would on our GS scale. So what we are doing in combination with OMB is we have required all agencies at the beginning of their fiscal year to give us a headcount plan that includes not just full-time employees, but also contractors. And what we have encouraged them to do is to manage that as a single bucket of dollars and to go through and figure out where there are opportunities to reduce contractor dollars and quite frankly increase FTE headcount where...

So bring those people in-house?

We support that, bring them in-house. That's exactly right. So I would be perfectly happy if actually the two million headcount number in the government goes up because we brought the contractor number down because we will absolutely save money and we will actually deliver a better service for the American people.

Well, thank you. I see my time has expired. I appreciate it. Thank you, Director Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much. Chair now recognizes Mr. Pocan for his five minutes of questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Director Cooper, for being with us. I always appreciate when people take a break from very successful careers to come to the federal government. I appreciate you doing that. I do have some questions around DOGE and employees because we tried to get DOGE to come before the committee and they thumbed their nose at us, so they never came. And I get it after watching the depositions from the DOGE bros, I wouldn't want those folks in front of us either. But how closely did you in your tenure work with DOGE for those about a half a year that you had overlap?

Virtually not at all. So as you probably know, I was installed here around July 14. Elon Musk, obviously, who was leading DOGE at that time, had already left government. Now, obviously, as you well know, there are people who were, you know, kind of part of the DOGE organization.

And they kind of disbanded around November, you're saying, I think, if I from your...

Yeah, it didn't get... DOGE has never been disbanded. Certainly the principles that we're all talking here about efficiency is there. But certainly Elon Musk as the leader of that organization and kind of OPM and GSA kind of, you know, working on those teams, that was all predated my time.

Because DOGE never came, it's even as members of Congress, we don't know much about it. Is it possible to get us the full accounting of every individual who served within DOGE, the legal authority in which they were hired, their positions, titles, compensation, and even their resumes? Is that something that you can get to us for the people who worked with DOGE?

I don't know precisely, but I'd be very happy to go back to my team and see if that is information that we have and we can make available.

If you could, and if it's at all possible, because I don't think it would be that hard to put that together by the time we mark up the budget, April 15, in case we want to add any amendments and things, would be very helpful to us.

I'd be delighted to take that back to the team.

I appreciate that. Thank you. And also, as you said just kind of inferred anyway, not everyone left. DOGE is still kind of around. Do we know how many of the DOGE employees are still embedded in other agencies?

I don't know the answer to that, but again, I think that's a question which which...

Could you give us that info at that same timeline? Thank you. I appreciate that. Another thing is a lot of the DOGE-affiliated individuals came from the private sector and they were reported to have retained financial ties to these companies and then also got some personnel data that may or may not have left the federal government in a may or may not legal way. How much is OPM responsible for oversight over that and have any of those agreements been reviewed for potential violations that they may have signed at the time before taking data with them?

So OPM would only be responsible to the extent there were individuals who were actually employed via OPM. As you know, as you mentioned, all those individuals were employed through the USDS organization. So I think the right organization to ask those questions would be USDS, not OPM.

Gotcha. No, I appreciate that. And then finally, did you get a chance to see the depositions of the DOGE bros that's been kind of widely out there?

I have a Twitter feed, or sorry, an X feed, so yes, I think most of us saw that.

Gotcha. They implied that they were using like ChatGPT and things like that to do the work that they have. And many of the people now I think are finding out that they might have lost their job, obviously a huge number of people by decisions made by DOGE employees. Is there any appeal process to these employees that may have now found out that they lost their job not from a human, but from AI or ChatGPT?

I don't know the specific answer to that question. Look, as you know, there is a very, very robust appeal process within the federal government, you know, through the MSPB or through various other things. So certainly to the extent any employee feels like they have an employment case that they want to bring, there are plenty of avenues for them to do so.

I guess a related area is also, you know, they've you've reclassified federal employees under schedule policy career. And I think the comment was nothing else happens to those folks, but I think the employees feel like something else has happened because they've lost access to the independent Office of Special Counsel for whistleblowing complaints and some other eligibilities they lost under recruitment, tension, relocation incentives. Because I know it's been said nothing else happens, but there have been other things under that reclassification. What written notice did they receive about those changes and again, do they have an ability to contest that reclassification through OPM given it is different than nothing else happens?

Yeah, so the reason there's been no written notifications is the rule has not gone into effect yet. So the way the rule will go into effect is the White House will issue a list of via executive order, it will issue a list of the positions that are now being converted into schedule policy career. That has not happened yet. Once that happened, obviously then that note there is a notice that will happen.

And there will be a process then for people who want to contest?

Yeah, with respect to your question, I'm glad you brought up whistleblower because I think it's a really important point. The reason that the whistleblower rules changed is wholly within this body and with your ability to change it. So under the current congressional legislation, anybody who is in a policymaking role is actually not entitled to the OLC whistleblower protection. That's why we created a separate whistleblower protection in the policy career. If you want to change the law, you certainly have the ability to change the law to include policymaking roles within the standard OLC whistleblower protection.

Appreciate it. Yield back.

Thank you. The chair now recognizes vice chair, Mr. LaLota, for any questions he may have.

Thank you, Chairman. Good to see I'm way down over here on the edge of this dais because I'm still somewhat new to Congress and this subcommittee. And maybe it's because I'm still somewhat new that I still cringe when I hear some of my colleagues say one thing at meetings like this, but then do another thing with their vote card. So I want to use part of my five minutes to offer a contrast to the ranking member's opening statement, who on behalf of his party claims the high ground with respect to looking after federal employees. The gentleman offers criticisms of DOGE and other efforts that he describes as disruptive. And on one hand, who could disagree that a nation that is $39 trillion in debt looking to reform a lot of the ways we do things can be disruptive? But while the gentleman frames his remarks as looking to protect federal employees, the gentleman fails to state how his party has used and is continuing to this day right now using leverage against the same federal employees that he claims to protect at meetings like this. And the term leverage, it's not my term. It's the term offered by his party's whip, Katherine Clark, when DC Democrats previously blocked funding for 43 days earlier this Congress to cause a shutdown, a shutdown that led to hundreds of thousands of government employees not getting paid. A shutdown or the threat of one is part of their plan, Senate and House Democrats' plan to cause pressure and force concessions through negotiations. Now that tactic I would offer denies hardworking federal employees their pay, but that tactic's a real thing, so much a thing that Senate Democrats right now are employing that tactic once again for the last 40 days, shutting down the entire Department of Homeland Security for the last 40 days and denying pay to folks like the hardworking folks at the TSA who with whom I visited a couple of days ago, who are working hard, they're not six-figure employees, they took an oath to protect the country, they're coming to work every day, and we're not paying them unfortunately because of that government funding that's being blocked by Senate Democrats and is not desired by House Democrats. So sir, appreciate you being here. You are the head of the Office of Personnel Management?

That's correct.

The OPM?

Yes, sir.

And you're essentially the HR department for the federal government?

That's a good way to describe it.

That's why I Googled it and I talked to some of my colleagues and that's kind of what it says out there. So you deal with HR issues, pay, workplace issues, compensation, benefits, things like that?

Correct.

So can you tell us, what is the impact of a federal employee coming to work but not getting paid? What's the impact upon their morale, their family, their finances? Take for example a 60k a year TSA agent who's been coming to work for the last 40 days but has now missed three paychecks. In your view as the head HR person in the federal government, what is the impact upon a person like that?

Yeah look as as you mentioned Mr. Vice Chairman, look it's very severe. So look at those compensation levels, these are people who literally live paycheck to paycheck, right? So they do not have savings, they have to make car payments, they have to make, you know, housing payments and rent payments, they got to put their kids through school. And yes, there's no question that if you are asked to come to work and you're not paid, that's a problem and this is why unfortunately I think and we saw this in the prior shutdown as well, which is this is why you see people not showing up to work. It's understandable because they need to find some other means of actually providing compensation for their families. So it's incredibly disruptive.

So with respect to their own personal finances, is the grocery store taking IOUs that you're aware of sir?

Not to my knowledge.

Are the mortgage companies giving relief for when mortgage or or folks who collect rent, are they giving any relief on that because those folks aren't getting paid?

No sir.

College tuitions, are they giving any breaks because those payments are due but not being made?

No sir.

I don't know that you are Mr. Cooper, but are you aware of what DC Democrats are asking for in exchange to reopen the government? And if you don't know, it's not on you.

I I don't know. I read the same newspapers you do but I'm not part of any of these conversations.

That you don't know, I don't know either because they keep on moving the goalposts. Couple of weeks ago, it was all about body cameras and training. And the administration and the Congress said okay yeah we'll we'll give you body cameras and training, that makes a lot of sense. And then when we were close on that, then they started to say okay we need less operations around churches and schools and courts and we said okay we're sensitive to that. And then they were like okay you know we need to have more identification of of ICE officers and despite them being under vicious attacks, them being doxxed, the cartels have been wanting to get them for years, we're offering some accommodations on that and still we don't have a deal. And I think it's unfair that my colleagues from the other side of the aisle, many of whom I like personally, continue to deny your employees' pay for the work that they're doing. So my final question is this. Can you tell the folks who are calling into your office complaining about issues with respect to their quality of life and specifically their pay, that there are some people here in this town who want to ensure they get paid, who don't think it's fair they're being used as leverage in this and we hope to get it to a resolution soon?

Yes sir. I will do that.

Thanks, I yield. Thank you.

Chair now recognizes Mr. Ivey for any questions he may have within five minutes.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I say to my colleague from New York, sign the discharge petition. We'll get it out. We can do it today and we just need a handful of Republicans.

Gentleman, this is this is not a discussion upon political, please.

Thank you Mr. Chair.

No no no. No, let me stop right now. Let me stop the clock then.

Yeah you can stop the clock, that's fine.

We're not having it. You have questions for this gentleman here, that's what you can do. If you have frame your questions to him, not to other members.

I say to you that if there are any Republicans who would like to move these things forward with respect to TSA employees getting paid, those Republicans in the House can sign the discharge petition, there are Senate bills that can move it forward as well and we can get it done today if they'd like to do it. So thank you Mr. Director for being here. I do want to say I commend you for your point about cutting contractor numbers. I think that's a a good way to go and in fact I've heard it from NASA and other organizations that are looking to do the same thing. Bringing the talent in-house I think makes sense if we're going to pay them, you can pay them less and get them to get the experience we can use it in-house in the same way. I agree with a lot of the things you said but I got to point out a couple of things. I mean with respect to the accountability issue, which I take seriously, that doesn't square very well with the probationary employees. So you guys fired 25,000 probationary employees and the key point about them being on probation is that it's a time where you can hold them accountable pretty much on whatever standards you want to use. So the accountability piece could have been one way to make a decision about who got fired and who didn't, but that's not what was done. They were fired en masse without any individual review of what they'd done or how well they'd done it. The court, one court overruled that and one of the points they said was you've got to actually give them a letter that's that explains that they were not terminated for poor performance because one of the really egregious things the administration did was say that the reason they had all been fired was for poor performance when that wasn't true. And so I appreciate the fact that you guys have directed agencies to do that and agencies have moved forward with that, but that's a a real bad signal to send in a couple of ways. With respect to the stability piece that you and Mr. Hoyer were discussing, and I've got kids too in that age group, I've got six, they run from 25 to 40 roughly. Roughly. Yeah, it's hard to keep track of all of the numbers when they get when you get past five it gets tough. But you know look, yeah they want challenging careers and I did it when I was coming through too, I went to the Department of Justice and actually worked as a staffer here on the Hill. One thing you can't really afford is a total lack of stability. I knew people in my district who came to me and said you know Mr. Ivey, I sold my house in Iowa to move here for a job that the federal government gave me and I'd gotten started and I was getting good feedback that I was doing a good job, but I got fired with the whole group of 25,000 that got laid off and they couldn't find a new job right away. Obviously it's a new city. So they sold the house, you've got people that made family decisions, okay we can start having children now. Those are the kind of decisions that go directly to the stability piece and I don't care how bad you want to advance your career, you've got to consider those things. So I hope you'll keep that in mind as you move forward with it. And I'll say this as well. The accountability or the probationary piece, I know there's DOJ attorneys, I went through the Department of Justice, I did four years there and I know you're a trained lawyer as well and Stanford Law School was certainly impressive and your career's been outstanding. But you know one of the things that's important there to keep in mind is you can have accountability because a lot of the DOJ attorneys in fact I think most of them aren't on the civil servant protection frame scale, I wasn't. But you want to work hard and do the right thing. Now this isn't you, but the Trump administration has fired DOJ attorneys, many of them and FBI agents as well for obviously and explicitly political reasons, retaliatory reasons, reasons I think are illegal. But in any event, the signal that that sends to people out in the and you know young people looking to come into the federal government. I was in Charleston last weekend talking to a young man, he came up to me, he was law review at Columbia Law School, now working at one of the top litigation law firms and he heard my background when I was introduced, he said should I go to the Department of Justice? And I said you can't go right now because you don't know how you will be managed while you're there and they're firing people for obviously political reasons. I like your idea about the two-year piece, bringing young people in and rotating them through. It can be four, it can be whatever, but I think it's a great way to go to bring in young talent, especially on the tech sector side. But if you're if there are going to be parts of the government, and I'm not I'm not setting this on you, but if there are going to be parts of the government that are firing people at random at points when they need stability and they need fair treatment and their record has is going to reflect the fact that they got fired if that's what happens, you're going to undermine the ability to bring in the best talent. Thanks for what you're doing, keep up the good work and I yield back.

Mr. Chair, could I just respond very quickly to one comment?

Absolutely.

Thank you Mr. Ivey, I appreciate your your comments. The comment I just want to make is look, the what we want to do here is accountability needs to be part of an overall system of reform in in my mind, right, a whole performance management system. So one of the reasons why you see probationary things or you see other stuff like that, you know we had to create, you know the DOGE team had to create this whole DRP program was because we have a system that just does not work to manage accountability in the government. So what I hope we can do is create a system where we can actually hold people accountable, it doesn't take 24 months of litigation for people to actually truly be removed when they are not performing in their jobs. And if we had a system like that which we are trying to, you know make changes to, then I think you can solve the challenges you're looking for which is fairness and accountability without kind of people having to fear the stability question. So I appreciate your comments and that's something that we are working on.

Mr. Director, just so you understand, we're here to hear from you.

Okay.

We want I want people to ask you questions because your time is very valuable as well.

I appreciate that Mr. Chair.

Speechifying, you know there's plenty of room in the hallway to go do that.

Thank you sir.

We now recognize Mr. Edwards for anything he might have to say.

Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I think I get to use my five minutes any way I'd like to. I think that's the committee rules, I think those are the House rules. So thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Cooper, thanks thanks for being with us this this afternoon in such an unenviable position as to be the head of human resources of the federal government. I heard in a member's comments earlier that we may have seen a reduction in force in the federal government by about 300,000. I haven't seen that number published, but I'm really encouraged by it because many of us came to Washington with the goal of reducing the size of federal government. So my first question, is that 300,000 remotely close to being accurate?

Yes, that is accurate and in fact if you're interested, we can send you a public data set that we've now published that shares all that. One point of clarification which I'd like to make is more than 90 percent of those were people who voluntarily chose to resign, so either through the DRP program, through early retirement or otherwise. I know, you know Mr. Ivey made a comment about probationary employees, about reductions in force, those were a very, very small minority of that 300,000.

Well I'm even more encouraged and I hope that there are plans to reduce more. Not that we don't value our federal employees, it's just that and I know you're well aware we now have $39 trillion in debt, the American people are gravely concerned about that and you have to start somewhere. We don't necessarily want to make any changes to some of the larger programs, Social Security, Medicare and others that folks have worked all their lives for, but we have to make some changes someplace. I'm encouraged that we've got this start. How do you go about and since most of these reductions were voluntary, you had no idea from what agency folks would be retiring. Can you give us some perspective on from what agencies were these voluntary cuts made and what efforts are there being made to balance or rebalance after?

Yes sir. So first of all again, I will put a plug in for the data set which we're happy to share with you and literally you can look at it by agency, your team could look at it and see that. You know the the reductions generally flow they generally follow kind of what you'd expect in terms of where the major areas are. So if you look at, you know kind of Health and Human Services or, you know Department of War, the very, very big agencies, you know kind of you have kind of proportionate reductions there. There were some smaller agencies, it was mentioned in this hearing which is true, agencies like OPM and GSA and others, you know we had larger reductions than others. The way we went about it and the way we're trying to do it now just so you have a sense is it's really just basic blocking and tackling, which is we are asking everybody in the organization to say are you working on the things that are most important? What are the things that you're doing today that with the benefit of technology or process changes or reorganizations you think you could deliver actually a better service to the American people at lower cost and are you doing that? It's this question that was mentioned about the reuse of contractor dollars versus FTEs, are we being smart about this? Some of this is just basic management tactics that, you know it's not that we've had a poor set of individuals, that we've had a system that has never actually asked or rewarded that behavior. And so that's what we're trying to do.

Thank you. And I also read that your own agency OPM has reduced its workforce by about 30 percent. I applaud you for that. I think the first step in looking for a more productive government is to insist that we have a more productive government. And the way that you do that is you ask for folks to look for efficiencies and how they might do more. So thank you for embracing that concept yourself. I also noticed that OPM's improper payments in the last year jumped from 337 million to about 435 million in fiscal year 2025, about a 30 percent increase. Can you give us a bit of perspective in what those improper payments may have been and what you might be doing to reduce those?

Yeah, this is again another area where quite frankly the fact that we have not used technology quite frankly has really handicapped our ability to do this. We have, you know, too many manual processes on this. So the primary areas where that would come from would be either in our retirement services division where we might be paying individuals who, you know, are no longer entitled to retirement benefits. In some cases we have had fraud cases where unfortunately an annuitant dies and a child may, you know, kind of fraudulently continue those payments. Also on the health and insurance side, so as we look at kind of pharmacy related payments and others, these are areas where quite frankly we need to invest more and we are investing more in our areas to increase our technology utilization. This is a great example where AI can help us very tremendously to identify these opportunities so that they don't end up with these, you know, kind of 10 year old collection efforts where quite frankly there's no money left to collect at that point in time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, my time is up, so I'll yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Edwards. Chair now recognizes Mrs. Gluesenkamp Perez.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Director Cooper, for being here today. I want to talk a little bit about your efforts to centralize the government's human resource system with the Federal HR 2.0 proposal. I think you've rightly recognized that the landscape is a little convoluted when it comes to HR within the federal government and there are likely cost and data management efficiencies that could be made by streamlining the over 100 different human capital management systems currently in use. But I'm a little bit concerned about how the proposal is playing out. Specifically, I'd like to talk about the cost. Our job here is to appropriate and we know that the DOD tried to streamline their HR system just a couple of years ago and the cost overruns were like 780 percent and there was nothing to show for it ultimately. The DOD pulled out and called it a waste of good taxpayer money. So it's my understanding that with your proposal, OPM would hold the contract for one centralized system and provide HR as a service to the other agencies. So my question is, can you explain how OPM is planning to pay for this modernization and whether agencies are expected to pay for this out of other appropriations?

Yeah, so first of all, I very much share your concerns about kind of cost overruns generally and this is a very, very important topic. So yes, the way it's working right now is as you mentioned, everybody has an existing HR system. We have a very aggressive target, our plan is by September of next year, so literally less than 18 months, is to have everybody transitioned off of their old systems onto the new systems. So what we worked out with OPM is there will be a period of time where people will be decommissioning old systems while they're paying for the new systems, so there will be some overlap of cost for a limited period of time. That money has been appropriated through OMB working with the agencies. What I can tell you, we are still in the contracting process so I unfortunately can't give you, you know, kind of too much detail on that given the incredible complexity of the contracting process, but I can tell you the cost savings are going to be tremendous. Like we are not talking about 5, 10 percent type cost savings here, we are talking about a real opportunity to dramatically change the cost. So if you look at this, there will be again as I said a very small period of time where there might be an overlap of old system decommissioned and new system onboarding, but all of that can be accommodated within the appropriations that OMB has already allocated.

Okay. And how is OPM planning to provide fiscal transparency to this committee on the cost of Federal HR 2.0? Like what transparency will OPM offer to agencies about the cost of the service?

We'd be delighted to provide whatever you want, quite frankly. I have no problem with that. I'm highly confident that this is going to be very, very cost effective.

Great. I understand that the initial award was supposed to be announced in January but has been delayed in part because of protests from companies that know they aren't getting the award. What is OPM's plan if this process incurs additional protests? Are agencies who have ongoing modernization projects having to pause them while they await the outcome?

Yeah, the short answer is no. So we have, despite the delay which you're absolutely right is from a protest, we have a team of 60 people within OPM who are working with all of what we call the phase one agencies. So these are the ones who are first in line for the deployments. So we're doing, we're using this time to do all of our prep work, you know, as you can imagine, things like data migration, data normalization, all the stuff you have to do to get off of old systems and new systems. So look, we're going to move through as quickly as possible. Look, I wish the procurement process were different than the process we have, but we have to deal with obviously what we have.

And are you expecting that these delays are going to drive up the cost in the interim?

No. I don't, no. The only cost in the interim is the fact that unfortunately we are paying way too much money for the existing system. So yes, it's driving a cost in the sense that the longer it takes me to get off the old system to the new system, yes, it's costing taxpayer dollars.

Okay. And I'm sorry, I'm running out of time, but you've made a decision in this process to secure a single contractor award. I understand that having one signal system would be advantageous, but I worry about relying on one single software vendor makes it hard to ensure the government is getting the best deal. So what's the plan if, you know, we have this one award, we've made all this migrated all this data and then they jack up the price? What's the plan to ensure there's competition?

Yeah, so look, as we have designed the RFP process and obviously it's all public information, you're welcome to see it, we have asked for fixed pricing even on a per user basis, so the only scale in pricing will be if we add more employees to the government then there'll be obviously an incremental scale.

And what's the horizon on that contract? I mean, how many years fixed?

The contract will be issued for a 10 year period.

Okay. And following that 10 year period, what would we do if they jack up the price in 10 years?

I appreciate, no offense taken. We will run another competitive process basically.

Okay. Mr. Alford.

And then one I wanted to bring this up in my last half minute, I've been hearing a lot from my constituents who are federal employees about the delay in mailing the 1099 forms. They say that they're weeks behind in where they currently have been. So curious what's happening here, what has the agency done to ensure this doesn't happen again?

Well, thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ranking Member Hoyer, good to see everyone here today. And an added note to that, if I ask a question that has already been asked, that's because I was not in here listening to your answer.

Yeah, sure. Thank you for bringing that up. Yes, so as part of our modernization efforts, we started notifying annuitants back in November of last year that we would be moving towards online downloads of 1099-Rs is what it is. Excuse me. To date we've had basically 60 percent of people have actually done the download process, which is great, that saves taxpayer dollars. For the other 40 percent, we have mailed them. Right now there is a small gap, there is 3 percent of people who we have reached out to proactively who have not either downloaded it or requested that we mailed it. We've asked them to please let us know what their preference is and so I anticipate that we will have all those taken care of. Understood, understood.

So maybe if it's a second go around on a question, you will have polished...

Exactly, I'll have a much better answer for you. Yes, sir.

Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Hey, OPM plays a critical role in ensuring that the federal workforce is supported and that includes making sure federal employees can retire with certainty, efficiency, and dignity. Far too long, the federal retirement system has been slow, outdated, and overly reliant on paper-based processes that create unnecessary delays and frustration for retirees. We're talking about a system where paperwork was mailed back and forth, where applicants had little to no visibility into their status and where processes delays could stretch for months. That is simply not acceptable for the men and women who have spent their careers serving our great nation. I'm encouraged by the steps OPM is taken to modernize and streamline this process. The transition to a fully digital retirement application system is a major step forward, for the first time federal employees can complete the retirement process online with full visibility into where their application stands. And we're already seeing results as you've said today. Looking ahead, OPM is working towards a system that could process full retirement applications in as little as 15 days. That is the kind of efficiency that we should expect from our government. In addition, broader modernization efforts like consolidating personnel records and integrating systems across agencies will further streamline retirement processing and reduce administrative burdens. And at the same time, we need to make sure that these improvements can keep pace with the demand. OPM process tens of thousands of retirement claims in just a single month, which underscores the importance of having a system that is efficient and scalable. Mr. Cooper, thank you for being here today. My office regularly, as I'm sure all of our offices do, work with constituents trying to access the benefits that they have earned. And one of the biggest pain points that we see is the delays in the federal retirement process. When you took office, what did that process look like and what specific improvements have you made to streamline that process, sir?

Thank you. Thank you, and Chair would now recognize Mr. Alford, who has brought up a point just so you understand, as people are getting up and leaving, he's on four committees, all of us are on different committees, it's not out of disrespect to you, sir.

Well, thank you, Mr. Alford. It's not even when I took office, you can literally go back 50 years and you will see articles of people talking about this paper process. So the state of the process was exactly as you described, which is retirees would literally fill out paper documents, they would mail those through the Postal Service to their HR departments who would fill out paper documents who would then mail them to the payroll providers and who would then mail them to literally an underground mine that Retirement Services has in Boyers, Pennsylvania. That process is crazy and efficient and oh by the way if somebody missed a signature or something was wrong, we would send the package back to the retiree and ask them to fix it. So it was completely broken and as I said, literally if you Google this you'll see this is not like I didn't wake up one day and find this problem, this is a problem that has been obvious to everybody. So we started with the online retirement application as you mentioned. So far we have had 130,000 retirees who've gone through that system. What we're finding is we can actually process applications in 30 to 40 days compared to 90 days on paper. As I mentioned, our goal will be to get that down to 15 days by the end of the year. And we are finding the productivity of our team, if you look at the productivity of our team, we are doing double the productivity, meaning our team with actually even fewer numbers of employees than we had in each of the last five years is actually doing double the amount of retirement applications versus what we had. That, in my mind, is exactly what we should be doing. As you said, like we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to any person who has committed their federal career to the government, and the fact that we treat them with the amount of disrespect that we have previously is just, you know, in my mind, is just ungodly, and we are going to fix that process. We're not done. We have a lot more work to do. We're not perfect. We recognize that, but this is the way we're going to solve these problems is by utilizing technology in a smart way that augments human performance and that can deliver greater value.

Well, I look forward to seeing the results. This is not just an issue that's, you know, with your department, this is throughout the federal government. We have a Homeland Security office which processes I think every application for immigration, it's in my new district just outside of Kansas City and I've been in there and it's a warehouse full of manila folders and rubber bands. It is unbelievable that with the technology that we have as this great nation that we're not caught up. So I applaud your efforts, thank you for what you do, and with that I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Alford. With everyone taken care of here in the first round, we'd move to a three minute second round speed question tactic to also answer and address any questions that may come up in the first round when you were answering these questions. I'm going to ask you a series of questions in a row and then you can help me to develop the answer as you go along here. You talk about the skills the federal workforce needs to have for keeping up with technology. Why are technologists critical to the federal government? How does this program make the federal government more effective and efficient not only for federal employees but for our constituents? And how do you reconcile need for the program with downsizing that has taken place with the federal government over the last year?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. So look, the way I would think about it is as I mentioned, one of our goals is we have to have the right talent in the right roles. And unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, we are lacking talent in certain areas. So the way I would think about what has been happened or what we've been doing in the government is we are reshaping the workforce. We are reshaping the workforce to make sure we are taking advantage of technology, taking advantage of areas that we need to do where we might have critical talent gaps. So this is what I think, what I think this is like about as existential a problem as we have in government today, which is are we convincing younger people to come into government and do government service? And then on the other end, do we have the technology skills to be able to advance our nation in the way that I think is appropriate? We can't solve these retirement problems by hiring thousands more people. It just doesn't serve the American people from a cost perspective, and quite frankly, it doesn't serve the retirees either. We ought to be using technology as an augment to human behavior, and that's what we're going to do. And so we need to get this talent in so that every single agency can do the kind of modernization efforts that we're trying to do at OPM.

That's fantastic. Mr. Hoyer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me ask a couple of specific questions and then I have a general comment. The Merit Systems Protection Board. You indicated that people needed a proper appeal process. Why are we eliminating and consolidating the Merit Systems Protection Board in OPM?

Just to be clear, sir, we're not consolidating or we're not eliminating, excuse me, MSPB. So what we are proposing to do, and by the way, these are in regulatory process, so there's obviously the public will have an opportunity to comment. We're proposing to consolidate RIF and probation-related appeals into OPM as well as what we call suitability appeals, so kind of people who have behavior that may no longer make them suitable federal employees. The reason we're trying to do that is we think we can do it much more efficiently. We think we can do it in a way that actually will protect the rights of individuals, and we think again, this is part of us making sure we have an accountable system where it doesn't take 12, 24 months of litigation for people to make changes in the organization.

The problem with that is the administration has removed many people, including regulatory members of regulatory commissions, on the theory that they were inconsistent with the president's objectives or words to that effect. The problem with that, of course, is the Congress created for a separation and for a minority views to be represented, not the administration's views. Both parties did that. Three Republicans, two Democrats, or if we're in charge, three Democrats and two Republicans. How can you square that lack of separation, lack of independence, if you will, with the agency that makes decisions as opposed to the agency that reviews and appeals?

So Mr. Ranking Member, excuse me, I apologize. The way it works just to remember is OPM does not and does not have the authority to make changes. So OPM cannot say you need to RIF these individuals, you need to terminate these individuals. Those are all done at the agency level. So I do think there is independence here, which is the agency that's affecting the change versus the agency that's adjudicating it are independent agencies. The reason why I believe OPM is the appropriate place for these areas is OPM actually has the policy expertise. So we are the ones who have designed the rules, designed the regulatory framework for these things, and so it's a very logical consistency that kind of the designation of the rules and the adjudication of the rules are consistent functions within a single organization.

Well, you can hopefully appreciate the reticence and concern when we have multiple agencies run by the same person. Clearly the White House making it very clear that they're in charge of OPM. They are in charge of OPM. You work for the administration. No question about that, sir. And that their personnel policies are such that the president has clearly articulated speculation about appeals and courts. So that anytime you consolidate under one agency, which is obviously an executive agency, there is great concern. Let me ask you something. Why did you not have the employee survey this year? Was that your decision?

It was a decision that we had jointly with the White House and OMB, certainly. Yes, sir.

That's my point. I didn't know that was going to be your answer, but that's my point. The White House. What's his name? No. I can't, there's a guy in the White House that... James Shirk. James Shirk. Was he involved in that decision?

I don't know if he was. I know I spoke with OMB about it. James Shirk is in Domestic Policy Council, so it's quite possible though that he would be part of that.

Again, the centralizing of the appeal process causes great concern.

Mr. Hoyer, if I just could, if I could respond to that just for one minute, Mr. Joyce. So the reason that FEVS didn't happen is, and this is my perspective and we're working on it is, I don't think FEVS actually does what we need it to do. So I'm a huge believer in actually measuring employee engagement. In fact, if you've seen, we actually in our own department actually do what we call pulse surveys, which are much more regular surveys that go out to all of our employees. I make them public, they're on my Twitter feed, you can see them. And this is important, but what I think we need from surveys is you need actionable information. I need to know in my department, do I have managers that are meeting with my individuals, that are providing clear objectives, that are giving feedback, do people understand how their objectives tie to the overall objectives of the organization? That's what we need. I don't believe the FEVS in its current instantiation does what we need it to do. So one of the things that we are looking at is is there a better process by which we can actually get that information to the managers so that they can affect change? So I 100 percent agree with the concept that employee feedback is tremendously important. We need to make sure it's packaged in a way that we can actually make it usable so that it can affect the changes that we need in the organization.

Thank you. Mrs. Hinson, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad you also recognize complacency is our worst enemy, right? And especially at the federal government, we should not continue with this disservice to taxpayers. We're going to keep doing it the way we've always done it because that's the way we've always done it. And I think that this is a great lesson in that, whether it's employee engagement or reforming these processes that need a new look. So I want to follow up on a line of questioning actually that my colleague Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez was mentioning on Federal HR 2.0 and to this effort that you're doing that potentially could help save taxpayers billions of dollars in these efficiencies. And I get that there's a little bit of overlap in moving from old systems to new systems, but why in your opinion has it taken the federal government so long to make these changes? Is it because of the pushback on the complacency and it is the way we've always done it, which is again, a disservice to taxpayers at this point?

Yeah, I think that's right. Look, and you know, as I've kind of observed things, I think you're spot on in the sense in which is look, we have and I think this was mentioned by both sides, look, we have a tremendous workforce in the federal government. There are tremendous people who come to work every day and want to do their best on behalf of the American people. My view is we have put them in a box in a system where we do not allow them to think about risk in any area. So the answer on every test is you must get an A+ on every test. I come from a world in the venture capital world where we take crazy amounts of risk, and that's clearly not appropriate for government. But we need to think about balancing some modicum of risk with what's the potential upside. Right now we have an incentive structure and a performance management system that does not provide any reward for that kind of behavior. So I think this is a great example of this. Like the reason why nobody's done the HR IT consolidation is because you know what, no one wants to take a risk and do it. And yes, like none of these things are without risk, but the upside is so tremendous in terms of quality and efficiency and cost and everything else. This is the kind of culture change that I believe we have to have in government because I think we have people who want to do the right thing and quite frankly, I think they are boxed in by a system that does not permit them to actually do their best work.

Yeah, and we made some of these changes at the state level when I was serving in the Iowa legislature and guess what, the sky didn't fall and it saved taxpayers lots of money and things became more efficient and ran better, delivering a better service as well for the taxpayer. And we have still great talented people who work in government in Iowa just like the federal government. Let's talk quickly about technology modernization because I think that that is another place where we have seen some market improvements in those investments and the changes and obviously the tech threats to the U.S. government. We need to be making these updates and tackling that modernization head-on. Can you talk a little bit about the U.S. Tech Force and its role in helping and where you see that initiative being most substantial?

Yeah, so Tech Force is really designed to address technology gaps that we have from a skill set perspective. So we are lacking enough skill set in what I would call modern software development, modern AI technologies, data security, data analytics, all these things that are critical to the things you're describing. So what we're trying to do with Tech Force is we literally are going to embed teams of 25 to 50 engineers as part of this program into HHS, IRS, all these other places. Let them tackle these modernization efforts. And then as I said, look, what I want to do is I want to demonstrate that these individuals can perform such tremendously valuable work for the federal government that should they decide to go in the private sector, that's great. Like we'll go help them get a job in the private sector. So this is really about kind of reframing the narrative around what people can do that's additive to their career in the federal government and then they can have take their job opportunities wherever they want to go.

Thank you, and I see my time is expired, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Hinson. We now recognize Mr. Bishop for any questions he may have.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Hoyer. I'd like to welcome Mr. Cooper, apologize for my delinquency, I had a conflicting subcommittee meeting and I'm back and I'd like to ask you regarding a March 12th CBS News report that reported that the White House is considering ending funding of long-time civil rights election program aimed at protecting the rights of minority populations to vote. The federal observer program authorized under the Voting Rights Act and launched in 1966 is an Office of Personnel Management operation that partners with the Justice Department to send neutral third-party observers to monitor election sites to ensure that voters don't experience discrimination at the polls, whether it's due to race, language barriers, or disabilities. The observers who are both recruited and trained by the Office of Personnel Management are expected to watch, listen, and take notes without interfering in the voting process. Those observers then turn over their findings to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. The White House is exploring whether to cut spending for the program, sources say, in a discussion that comes as the country gears up for crucial midterm elections this November that will determine which party controls Congress. Can you comment on this report and what is OPM's FY 2027 request for this program?

Yes, Mr. Bishop. So that news story, and I believe the White House actually made the same comment, that news story was the first that I had heard of this discussion. So that was news to me. Right now there have been no decisions made, certainly not from OPM, but we obviously will welcome whatever input that others have.

Do you have a recommendation for funding for FY 2027?

So my understanding of that program actually is it has been funded through volunteers, quite frankly. So I don't think it is a, my understanding is we don't hire full-time employees. This is a program of federal workers who volunteer to do this poll watching, and we're certainly happy to support that if that's required.

Do you intend to pursue that?

Again, as I said, I have had no discussions with the White House on it, so I really can't tell you what their impressions are. If the White House requests that we do this consistent with our obligation, certainly we would do it.

Okay. So the fiscal year, thank you.

Yes, sir.

And if there's any additional information, please follow up with us. But the FY 26 House FSGG bill contained report language instructing OPM to further explore ways to advance hiring outcomes for military spouses. As the co-chair of the bipartisan Military Family Caucus along with Representative Jennifer Kiggans of Virginia, what efforts are underway to link military spouses with federal job opportunities?

Yes, Mr. Bishop, this is a very important topic. So one of the things you may know is we talked about this earlier, but as part of the return to office mandates, obviously we have made exceptions, for example, for military spouses, which we think is important to make sure that they have the ability to get their jobs in the federal workforce without having to relocate to offices that may be inconsistent with their other requirements. So that's been a, that's been one of the major initiatives. And then as you well know, of course, there are broader preferences of course that are applied for military veterans and others in the hiring processes.

Thank you. I think my time has expired.

Gentleman was around for the first round, so it certainly indulge another question.

Thank you. Let me go back. The retirement claims backlog at OPM has grown nearly 90 percent since the start of FY 26 and it exceeds 65,000 unprocessed claims. The surge is a direct and foreseeable consequence of the administration's workforce reduction policies. So what is your target for reducing the backlog and when do you expect to return to normal processing levels?

Yes, Mr. Bishop, thank you for that. Yes, so we talked about this a little bit as well but just to make sure you have the numbers. We have implemented the online retirement application system where we've had 130 applications go through that process. That enables us to actually reduce processing time to 30 to 40 days from over 90 days which is what it has taken us. If you look at our productivity, we are operating at double the productivity that we have ever operated before over any time over the last five years. So yes, we clearly have a large volume, we have more than 2x the number of applications that we've had before, but quite frankly in the absence of this modernization effort, we would be in significantly worse shape than we are today. We recognize we have more work to do and we're continuing to process it, but I feel very confident that we'll get through this backlog.

I have a number of constituents that continue to call my constituent services directors in my three offices who want to know why is it or when will I be able to get my retirement processed.

Yes, sir. Yeah. Yes, sir, I recognize that and one thing I will, you know, again, I know this is not a full solution, but one of the things that we have done is 100 percent of all retirees get what's called interim pay, which is an 80 percent calculation of their retirement within seven days of us receiving their application. That is unprecedented. So historically only 40 percent of people ever got interim pay. We did this specifically because we knew that the volume of applications was going to be high that it would take us longer to adjudicate these claims. So this is not is not the end all be all in terms of solving those problems and I recognize Mr. Bishop that we do have work to do here, but I think we are on the right track.

Okay. Your public statements acknowledge that OPM doesn't receive a completed retirement application until roughly 120 days after the employee begins the process, with nearly a third of the applications stuck at the payroll providers at any given time. So

Yes, this is a serious problem. So look, we you're exactly right which is we are dependent upon the HR organizations within agencies and we're dependent upon the payroll providers to give us information we need. So you're absolutely right there are delays as a result of that. As part of the online retirement system for the first time we actually have visibility into that delay. So we had an agency, for example, that was very far behind, we could go look in our system and see that we had one agency that was contributing to about 60 percent of our backlog of applications and we were able to basically give them resources to push them through. So you're absolutely right in the future in the new system we are testing this today, we are going to bypass HR basically, we are not going to kind of rely on the HR agencies because we will now have all the electronic information we need to adjudicate an application. But you're 100 percent right which is today a huge portion of delay of retirement unfortunately is not, you know, at the feet of OPM but it is because we are dependent upon HR agencies and payroll agencies to get us information that we require.

Thank you, Mr. Bishop. Chair now recognizes Mr. Edwards.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I find it bizarre that we're sitting here taking our time talking about how to get retirees their payment while we have so many federal employees at this moment that need their paychecks so they can pay their mortgages and buy groceries and send their kids to school and those types of things. And I can't think of a better place to have a conversation about the effect on our federal employees than in this very hearing. Can you tell me the classifications of federal employees that are not getting a paycheck right now because of the government shutdown?

Yes, as you know obviously there's clearly the TSA personnel which are very much in the news. Obviously there's members of I believe the Coast Guard as well who are part of that and other organizations. And as you well know look these are people who are not making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I believe the average TSA agent makes somewhere between $35,000 and $45,000 a year. And so, you know, one missed paycheck means that, you know, you are at risk of losing your car, you're at risk of losing your house.

So what what other federal employees are not getting paid right now other than TSA?

Coast Guard. Yeah, Coast Guard, I'm sorry, I thought I mentioned that as well, I apologize.

Those folks in FEMA?

That's correct, yes.

Are ICE agents getting paid right now?

That is correct, ICE agents are getting paid because they are appropriated through the different process through the one big beautiful bill process.

So I can't help but think too, why would anyone want to come to work for the federal government knowing that their employer could at any time say I could stop paying you and, by the way, I could require you to continue to come to work while I'm not I'm not paying you. I heard that about 450 FEMA or TSA agents had quit. What's what would be the cost to recruit, hire, and train one TSA agent that has left their job because of the the shutdown?

Yeah, I don't know the precise number but I can tell you whenever we've seen numbers from CBP and others, you know, you're talking about, you know, tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum to recruit and then ultimately put people through training. Sometimes these can run $30,000, $40,000.

And then the average tenure of a TSA agent is what, three years, five years?

I think it's very short, yes, sir.

And and so it takes five years to replace a a person that had been in position for five years. Do you have any idea what the total cost of personnel to rehire, train, restart from a government shutdown of this magnitude would be?

I don't have that number, sir.

Could you could you get it? Has any study been done?

Sure, we can I don't know but we can certainly look at that, I'd be very happy to come back to you and see what we can find.

I think that that's something that Congress needs to get involved in and look at closely, especially as many times as we've exercised the political will to shut the government down at the drop of a hat in some cases for reasons not related at all as we are here to the reason that they want to see the government shut down.

Yes, sir, be happy to look into that. Thank you.

I'm out of time, Mr. Chair, I yield.

Thank you, Mr. Edwards. Chair now recognizes Mr. Ivey for three minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Director, I'll start this line of questioning the same way I started the last one. You know, any of my Republican colleagues who want to sign that discharge petition and pay all the people who were just mentioned a moment ago, please feel free. I think we're up to two now. I think if we get two more, I think we're there. But in any event, I did want to ask you about this report issued by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, minority, and it's called the $21.7 billion blunder, analyzing the waste generated by DOGE. Have you had a chance to see this?

I have, yes, sir.

Okay. Because I'm going to ask you two things. One is, you know, your thoughts on it, but the other is this is dated July 31, 2025. So if I could get your updated response on it, I'd appreciate that. The two points I want to raise real quick though, one is we're back on the probationary employees. This is saying that people who got paid to not do their jobs basically, the cost was $443,874,000 and change. Wanted to know if that's a number that you've seen, you agree with, you disagree with, and that's as of last July.

Yeah, I don't know again, I don't know precisely that number, but as you probably know the way that the federal system works, which is something that we are working to reform, is people do get put on administrative leave in in order to facilitate a removal process and quite frankly administrative leave in my mind is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.

I agree. And especially in this instance, I was shocked I thought it was illegal actually when it was done, so I was surprised to find out.

It's not unfortunately unfortunately it's the common practice which is why we need to reform the system to actually enable accountability in the market.

Yeah, and certainly in a massive restructuring approach like this, I think it's totally inappropriate. I can imagine a scenario where somebody might be put on administrative leave pending some kind of adjudication or something.

Investigation. Absolutely. Yes, sir.

Okay. The other question though too was for non-probationary employees, this has the number of the cost at $5,620,000,000 and some change. Do you know if that number's correct?

I don't know if that number's correct. I believe what that's referring to is look, as part of the what's called the DRP program, the deferred resignation program, remember we offered people who wanted to opt out of the federal government, we gave them effectively eight months of what you would normally consider severance. In this case again because of the way the federal rules work is you can't actually fire them and then give them severance, you after literally have to put them on administrative leave for eight months and then they can kind of terminate their role. So yes, in my mind we should fix that system, but if you the reason we have to do that is because we have a broken system that does not enable us to actually hold people accountable. Now, that you're absolutely right which is it costs money to do that.

Well, just on that point, I take the accountability point, that's not what happened here though. This wasn't an accountability. This was just a decision to fire a massive people regardless of their performance all at once. It was an unmatched

Well, with with respect Mr. Ivey, nobody was fired. These are people who elected voluntarily to take eight months of

They elected voluntarily to take the leave because they saw how

Excuse me. Director, you were answering something.

Yeah, if I could, yes, please. They they elected to take eight months of voluntary severance. That is the most generous severance program that I have ever seen even from a private sector company. Yes, we changed the rules. We said we are going to have a workforce that is now accountable to the American people, that actually cares about efficiency, that cares about delivering on behalf of the people, and 270,000 people said I'm out, I don't want to participate in that program. Perfectly respectable. That's totally fine. And we gave them a financial off-ramp to be able to do that. I think that is actually an incredibly generous thing from a federal perspective.

Thank you, and with that our time has concluded. There may be some members who would like to submit additional questions. Please submit those questions for the record to the subcommittee staff within seven days. I'd like to thank you again Director Cooper for being here and the subcommittee now stands adjourned.