U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM)

Open Season is the Best Time to Compare Your Options! Are you planning a major dental procedure in 2026? Federal employees, retirees, and eligible family members have access to comprehensive dental and vision insurance through the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP). The Federal Benefits Open Season is the perfect opportunity to evaluate your plan options and ensure you have the best coverage for your needs. During Open Season, you can log in to BENEFEDS.gov and compare estimated out-of-pocket expenses between the dental plans. Here's how: ✅ Log in to your account on BENEFEDS.gov ✅ Select the Decision Support Tool ✅ Enter your provider’s zip code ✅ Enter the dental procedure Don't miss the chance to compare your options and select the plan that works best for you. Take control of your dental and vision health and make informed decisions for 2026! For more information, visit benefeds.gov.

Everyone Has a Plan – Until You Step Into the Ring President Trump recently issued an executive order directing executive agency heads to submit annual headcount plans to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This is an important step in ensuring the government is working on behalf of the American people, focused on the most important objectives with maximum efficiency. Why the latest executive order? For most of this year, the government has been operating under a series of hiring initiatives. Most notably, the president set a target of four reductions for every one new hire into government. We exceeded this goal – the government hired roughly 68,000 people this year, while approximately 317,000 employees left the government. The new executive order builds on that success to institutionalize the process of refocusing the federal workforce. What are the goals of the annual headcount plans? First, we want to make sure the government has the right talent focused on the key priorities of the administration and that we are eliminating wasteful taxpayer expenses in areas that are inefficient, no longer required, or in direct contradiction of administration priorities. Simply put, we want agencies to focus their headcount resources on the most critical objectives that deliver maximum value to the taxpayer. Second, in addition to the roughly 2.1 million civilian full-time employees, the government has a huge external contractor infrastructure. We estimate there are at least two times the number of contractors employed as there are full-time employees (FTE) and that the government collectively spends about $750 billion annually on contractors (nearly three times what we pay for FTEs). Contractors can indeed serve a very important purpose – e.g., where we need rapid temporary increases in labor to solve time-limited problems or where there are specialized skill sets that the government is not able to recruit as FTEs. Unfortunately, we have expanded our use of contractors well beyond that and have a permanent shadow class of FTEs essentially cloaked as contractors. The government should utilize the expertise of contractors in the right ways; not as a substitute for hiring well qualified employees working on behalf of the American people. Third, hiring authority is highly distributed across government – we have nearly 300,000 hiring managers – and this has contributed to the default motion of hiring more people as the proposed solution to nearly all problems. Instead, we all know that there are organizational changes, process changes, and/or technological changes that could enable the federal government to deliver great services to the American people with greater efficiency. Each agency will create a Strategic Hiring Committee to help drive this behavior. Read the full blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gyzq5Wr4

Senior executives interested can sign of for the program here: https://lnkd.in/guFPYzic

OPM has launched two new executive development programs to equip federal leaders with the skills needed to drive change and deliver results for the American people. Read the more here: https://lnkd.in/geVZYyhc

With the government shutdown behind us, I thought I’d share a few reflections. First, some definitions. The shutdown basically prohibited the government from performing activities that receive funding via appropriated funds, unless those activities are deemed “excepted” (more on that in a second). This is largely the salaries of the people who work for government and the expenses associated with procurement or other discretionary activities. However, most of government spending is not from appropriated funds; only about one-quarter of total spend comes from this. The other three-quarters of government spend comes from mandatory spending programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government retirement annuities, etc.) and interest on the debt. None of these dollars are impacted during a shutdown. Checks to Social Security recipients, payments to health care providers, and payments to annuitants continued to flow in the latest shutdown. The employees working on these mandatory spending programs – about 1.3 million people, or about 62% of the total civilian workforce – were deemed exempt. That means they show up to work every day and get paid. For this group of employees, the shutdown looked no different than their non-shutdown activities – for the most part. Within the appropriated activities, employees are further divided into furloughed and excepted. Furloughed employees were forced to do nothing during the shutdown; literally, they are prohibited from even responding to emails (other than in very limited circumstances). There were about 400,000 furloughed employees, or about 20% of the workforce. Furloughed employees do not get paid during the shutdown, although they are entitled to back pay if Congress determines to appropriate such monies post-shutdown (which is the case today). Excepted employees are deemed to be working on activities that are permissible during a shutdown – e.g., national security, air traffic control, TSA agents, and some other functions deemed critical. There were about 400,000 exempted employees, the remaining 20% of the workforce. This group is treated the worst – they receive no pay (they receive the same backpay as furloughed employees) but are required to do their regular jobs. So, in very simple terms, the shutdown put 800,000 federal employees in a really tough situation. None of them received paychecks for 40+ days, despite the fact their mortgage payments, car payments, grocery bills, etc., were all still due. And half of them (the excepted group) couldn’t even attempt to find other sources of income because they were required to work full time! In addition to the massive life disruptions for these employees and the other major inconveniences created (e.g., flight cancellations), what did this cost the American taxpayer in direct employment costs? Read my full blog post here: https://lnkd.in/d8Wzhv8X

Need help choosing the right plan this Open Season? OPM Associate Director for Healthcare and Insurance Shane Stevens shares three hypothetical scenarios that highlight various medical and pharmacy costs you could incur based on a traditional health plan or a high-deductible health plan. Watch here:

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC area are open. Employees are expected to begin the workday on time. Normal operating procedures are in effect. https://lnkd.in/eBUDEEN

Retiring from the Federal Workforce? As you embark on this exciting new chapter of your life, it's essential to ensure your insurance plans continue to provide the best coverage. The Federal Benefits Open Season is the perfect opportunity to review and adjust your options to meet your evolving needs. During Open Season, you can evaluate your current dental and vision insurance plans to determine if they still offer the coverage you require. If you decide not to make any changes, rest assured your existing coverage will remain in place. However, it's important to note your payment method will transition to deductions from your annuity or direct bill. Take this time to explore your options and make informed decisions about your benefits. Ensuring you have the right coverage will provide peace of mind as you enjoy your well-deserved retirement. For more information and to review your options, visit https://lnkd.in/eUEVYZZE Here's to a happy and healthy retirement! 🎉

Human beings are creatures of habit. Mostly that’s a good thing – habits are a good heuristic to enhance our safety, predictability and, sometimes, economy. We don’t need to rethink from first principles everything we do on a daily basis – life would grind to a halt if we did. But, when habit supplants critical thinking and our ability to change with the times when circumstances merit it, it can lead to organizational stasis. We forget the reason why we developed the habit and keep doing things the same way because – well – that’s the way we’ve always done it. This can happen in any organization and, not surprisingly, it happens in the federal government. Some processes are rooted more in tradition – or even urban legend. For example, maybe we were sued sometime many moons ago over some past practice, so we developed a new one in its place. And now years later that practice persists independent of whether the original problem for which it was proposed is still relevant. Simply put, we are often fighting the last battle. It’s not that people don’t care—quite the opposite. Most of the time, those systems were built to prevent something bad from happening – it’s generally good not to get sued. But in trying to eliminate all risk or by refusing to periodically ask whether the risk that we perceived is still valid, we sometimes make it harder to do what’s right for the people we serve. A great example in my organization is how we handle interim pay for new retirees. Interim pay is the first check you receive after leaving federal service, essentially a bridge while OPM finishes processing your full retirement package. Basically, our team is doing a rough calculation of what we think you will be owed and then we pay out 80% of that amount to the annuitant. For years, we had a bunch of “stopper codes” that automatically prevented interim pay from being issued in certain situations where we felt as though the estimates might be too complicated because of, for example, a federal law enforcement officer who may have had a period of part time service. The goal was a good one – to avoid the possibility of overpayment. But that “do not take any risk of overpayment” mindset came with a cost: retirees waiting too long for their first check. And this would be exacerbated further in 2025 because of the heavier than normal volume of retirements owing to the voluntary retirement and deferred resignation programs we made available to federal employees earlier in the year. So, we took a step back and asked, “What’s the real risk here?” What has been our actual track record of overpayment? In cases of overpayment, what has been our actual track record of being able to timely recoup those payments in the future? And what is the range of possible actual financial losses if we do in fact slightly overpay someone and can’t recoup? Read my full blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gfv5iDkv

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget today released updated guidance to federal agencies designed to embed stronger accountability into the federal hiring process. Under this new policy agencies will: • Establish Strategic Hiring Committees to align staffing decisions with agency mission and administration priorities.  • Submit annual staffing plans and quarterly updates to ensure new hires are placed where they are most needed. At OPM, we believe a high-performing, mission-driven workforce is critical to delivering results for the American people. These steps mark a significant milestone in modernizing federal hiring and reinforcing that every staffing decision counts. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e93c6dU3