The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) celebrated the conclusion of the Biden-Harris President’s Management Agenda (PMA) on Wednesday, bringing together the individuals and teams who have made significant contributions to the PMA to recap its successes.
The practice of new administrations issuing PMA documents dates back to 2001. The documents describe strategies to make the Federal government more efficient and set overarching goals for management.
The Biden-Harris administration’s PMA, which it released in November 2021, consists of three priority areas: strengthening the Federal workforce; delivering excellent customer experience; and improving the business of government.
“The PMA was built together across teams with the members of the President’s Management Council, and there were two things that came out of those conversations,” OMB’s Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller said. “One was we wanted it to be simple, and two was we want it [to have] good values. And we did that.”
Federal Workforce
Miller explained that “there’s a reason” the White House made strengthening the Federal workforce the first priority in the PMA.
“Ultimately, progress and outcomes are about people and teams,” Miller said. “Everything we do is a result of the people and the teams that are doing the work, and if we focus on the people and the teams, we will get better results and better outcomes.”
Over his four years in office, President Biden set out more than 130 tasks to hire diverse, qualified employees; engage and support employees; shape the future of work; and make the government a model employer.
Some key steps the administration took over the last four years to bolster the Federal workforce include:
- Issuing guidance on new skills and competencies needed for positions related to AI;
- Launching the Workforce of the Future Playbook;
- Authorizing governmentwide hiring authorities for advancing Federal government use of AI;
- Publishing the final rule updating the Pathways Programs; and
- Issuing a memo supporting improvements to the Federal hiring experience.
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Acting Director Rob Shriver joined the celebration to highlight a few wins stemming from the PMA, including that Federal employee engagement hit an all-time high this year.
Shriver also pointed out that OPM is continuing to work to implement skills-based hiring. The agency started by focusing on the 2210 series – which accounts for nearly 100,000 current Federal employees working in IT, cybersecurity, and AI roles.
“If you demonstrate that you’ve got the skills, you’ve got a chance to compete for the job. We’re going to get that done,” Shriver pledged. “Thanks to the work of all of you, we’ve already increased the number of skills-based assessments that agencies are using by more than 2.5 times what they were at the beginning of the administration, a 250 percent increase.”
Seeyew Mo – the assistant national cyber director for workforce, training, and education – said that the transition to skills-based hiring for the 2210 series is “one of the key successes that we’ve had,” thanks to the PMA.
“This is not about removing four-year college degrees. It is about what’s the minimum qualification for folks,” Mo said. “Because of PMA … this is now possible.”
“I am so grateful for the PMA because it sort of set the president’s priority in place,” Mo explained. “We are all doing so much work, we have so many priorities. PMA allows us to align all these resources, all these worksheets, into a natural workload for our staffers … so that’s one of the big things that PMA has been super helpful for us in advancing cyber workforce and education priorities.”
Customer Experience
The administration’s second priority – “delivering excellent, equitable, and secure Federal services and customer experience” – also met with success.
“I think we have fundamentally bent the curve on how we serve customers. It’s not just a one-and-done,” Miller said.
“We have focus inside of teams across the entire Federal enterprise, we are measuring the satisfaction that the individuals we serve have with their experience – not just a point of contact, but over the entire life cycle of that individual engagement,” he added. “We built capacity in teams that didn’t exist several years ago to continue to perform.”
Over his four years, President Biden set out just under 200 tasks to improve high-impact Federal services; support key life experiences; and develop shared products, services, and standards.
Some key steps the administration took over the last four years to strengthen Federal CX include:
- Launching “Life Experiences” designated to prioritize for governmentwide action;
- Meeting commitments outlined in the president’s executive order on CX; and
- Successfully launching the IRS Direct File Pilot, which helped over 140,000 taxpayers file their Federal tax returns.
Business of Government
The final priority area, managing the business of government, is what Miller referred to as the “less visible” work, “but it’s profound.” This work includes managing Federal financial management and procurement.
“It is structural change in the plumbing of how we do business, of how we find things, of how our mission outcomes are accomplished with the dollars that we are giving to others,” Miller said.
As a result of that, Miller said the Federal enterprise has saved more than $100 billion for Federal taxpayers, of which roughly $60 billion of that savings is under the Biden-Harris administration.
Over his four years, President Biden set out 27 tasks to improve the Federal acquisition system and strengthen Federal financial management.
Some key steps the administration took over the last four years to better manage the business of government include:
- Issuing guidance streamlining and modernizing the Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting (FAC-C) Program;
- Issuing updated guidance – known as the Uniform Grants Guidance – to improve the management of Federal grants and financial assistance;
- Launching the Better Contracting Initiative, which looks to ensure the Federal government is getting better deals when purchasing goods and services; and
- Creating the Council on Federal Financial Assistance (COFFA) to ensure agencies have the proper tools needed to deliver financial assistance programs, including reliable technology.
“In this space, it’s so often behind the scenes the work that we do in terms of what we buy and how we deliver financial assistance across the country,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, OMB’s associate director for performance and personnel management. “It’s as small as the paper clips on your desk, all the way to major systems that cost gazillions – in official terms – of dollars.”
“It’s the less miserable plumbing,” Miller added. “When your plumbing doesn’t work, you sure know it. And it matters, the outcomes are unbelievable.”
