{"id":696530,"date":"2026-06-10T22:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/696530\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T22:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:52:08","slug":"opm-awards-major-hr-it-modernization-contract-to-oracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/696530\/","title":{"rendered":"OPM awards major HR IT modernization contract to Oracle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Office of Personnel Management awarded a nearly $400 million contract<\/a> to Oracle on Wednesday, as part of ongoing efforts to launch a governmentwide IT platform for agencies to manage their human resources capabilities.<\/p>\n

The vendor is expected to deliver a consolidated, secure, cloud-based HR platform that all federal agencies will eventually use to manage personnel functions, such as payroll, benefits and employee performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis becomes the centerpiece for how we create effectively a unified set of applications that every federal employee can follow from cradle to grave,\u201d OPM Director Scott Kupor said in an exclusive interview with Federal News Network. \u201cThe opportunities are endless \u2014 what this does is basically drive an enormous amount of self-service, and more importantly, the ability for us to actually be able to make the employee experience much more seamless.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades, agencies have used disparate systems to manage various HR services. Governmentwide, there are currently\u00a0119 different IT platforms<\/a>\u00a0in use for managing agencies\u2019 HR functions.<\/p>\n

]]><\/p>\n

\u201cMany are outdated and duplicative,\u201d OPM said Wednesday in a press release. \u201cFragmented systems lead to delays and errors in personnel processing, leading to unnecessary costs and hurting the government\u2019s operational efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has been putting together plans to consolidate those 119 systems into one \u2014 a long-time goal for the federal government.\u00a0The initiative is expected to reduce costs to taxpayers by more than 90%, according to OPM. The agency said the consolidated platform will streamline HR operations and improve data quality.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than 119 different versions of the same data field or the same capability, we are at OPM going to account for agency-specific flexibilities, but also drive standardization and consistency across the federal employee and practitioner experience,\u201d Jason Parman, OPM\u2019s principal deputy associate director for HR Solutions, said in an interview with Federal News Network. \u201cHitting the go button enables us to leverage that vendor partner, which will have all of their demonstrated capabilities, all of our fit-gap requirements worked out and all those configurations ready, so that agencies can effectively and rapidly transition to the new platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

OPM chose Oracle over Workday for the 10-year contract. Workday will have 10 days following its debrief to file a protest, if it chooses. OPM had initially awarded a task order to Workday<\/a> in May 2025, only to withdraw the contract<\/a> a few days later.<\/p>\n

Oracle and Workday both did not immediately respond to Federal News Network\u2019s emails seeking comments on the award.<\/p>\n

OPM last year issued a request for proposals (RFP), seeking a 10-year contract for delivering the governmentwide HR IT system. The administration initially set a target launch date for July 2027, but that timeline will likely be pushed back by at least six months. Although OPM intended to award a contract by January 2026, the award was delayed by several months due to bid protests<\/a> from two major tech companies that did not make it to the final contract award stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always hard to predict these things, but the team has done an incredibly thorough process,\u201d Kupor said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been using this delay that we had to make sure that all the prep work that we could do with all the agencies is up and running. Our hope is to be able to actually deliver on behalf of the American taxpayers. If things come up that delay, we\u2019ll deal with it as they come, but I\u2019m highly confident in the work the team has done and our ability to successfully defend any challenges to this process.\u201d<\/p>\n

]]><\/p>\n

At the same time, many former federal executives have said<\/a> a single-award approach for a project of this scale will be challenging to get across the finish line. Other agencies have failed at similarly large single-award programs, due to either protests or implementation issues.\u00a0The Defense Department\u2019s cloud program called JEDI collapsed under the weight of protest, while several financial management consolidation attempts at the\u00a0Department of Homeland Security struggled<\/a>\u00a0in the implementation phase for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have tried to be students of history as much as we can here and understand exactly where the pitfalls are,\u201d Kupor said. \u201cIt\u2019s obvious we should do it, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily make it any easier to take on a task of this Herculean size.\u201d<\/p>\n

To get ahead of potential challenges, OPM has been working with other agencies, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, on months of preparation work for the major modernization undertaking, Kupor said. OPM also set up several committees and working groups to prepare from various perspectives, including data governance, security and HR \u2014 and is anticipating customization requests from different agencies.<\/p>\n

Following the contract award this week, OPM said it will be working with \u201cphase one\u201d agencies on the first steps toward onboarding them to the new system, including data migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to literally start fanning out to the phase one agencies who are on the list to basically be able to be the first deployment agencies for the system,\u201d Kupor said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be hard at work \u2014 no longer dealing with procurement, but actually the first phase of implementation of this system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first wave of agencies is expected to be onboarded to the new HR IT platform in the early parts of fiscal 2027, or possibly sooner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re optimistic about what we\u2019ve seen thus far, what we\u2019ve evaluated with the platform capabilities and our ability to configure and deploy this at scale with speed,\u201d Parman said.<\/p>\n

The HR IT consolidation effort is a major part of the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cFederal HR 2.0\u201d initiative, which OPM announced\u00a0last year<\/a>. As part of the same initiative, OPM in March launched a new HR shared service center<\/a> \u2014 which gives agencies the option to enter into an interagency agreement with OPM to receive access to a suite of \u201cvetted\u201d IT tools meant to streamline human capital management capabilities.<\/p>\n

The first round of agency customers for the HR shared service center will be onboarded later this fall, Kupor said.<\/p>\n

]]><\/p>\n

OPM said the new HR IT platform will ultimately strengthen workforce planning and create a more consistent experience for federal employees and HR teams governmentwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine if you asked one workforce-related question, and you got 119 slightly different variations of the same answer. It takes people, it takes money, it takes time and it disallows us from making decisions about the workforce,\u201d Parman said. \u201cNow replace that with what we intend to do \u2014 and those questions are answerable in real time from a single platform and a single dashboard, or a single set of decision-informing data that we can view \u2014 and help make enterprise strategy decisions at scale and quickly. That\u2019s transformative \u2026 I see a tremendous improvement in both the lives of the HR practitioner at the federal level, but also all of those communities that the HR practitioner impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal News Network\u2019s Jason Miller contributed reporting. Updated Wednesday afternoon with additional details.<\/p>\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9\u00a02026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Office of Personnel Management awarded a nearly $400 million contract to Oracle on Wednesday, as part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,133093,2054,301772,79589,16360,25141,35043,62726],"class_list":["post-696530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-hr-it","tag-human-resources","tag-jason-parman","tag-office-of-management-and-budget","tag-office-of-personnel-management","tag-oracle","tag-scott-kupor","tag-workday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}