OPM Launches New Records System
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is introducing a new records system titled “Federal Competency Assessment Records” that will collect and store OPM data to be used for training and development purposes.
OPM stated in a notice in the Federal Register announcing the new system, “OPM also has a statutory responsibility under 5 U.S.C. 1103(c) to guide, enable, and assess agency strategic human capital management processes to find best practices for assessing the management of human capital by federal agencies. The records in this system of records are necessary to administer competency assessment and exploration tools to enable individual and organizational strategies to address skill gaps and support employee development.”
OPM created this new records system to assess and judge employee skills and use that information to improve the performance of employees. The records collected will include employee name, job title, place of residence, and time worked at the agency, for example. The new records system will improve the efficiency of OPM and help OPM create strategies and tactics that improve employee growth and overall performance, according to the notice.
OPM has a large inventory of tools, meant to improve hiring practices, promote employee growth and development, and provide crucial guidance for many agencies. While these records will be for “training and development purposes,” the records in this system “are not intended to be used, and may not be used, for employee performance ratings or hiring and promotion decisions,” according to OPM.
Records will be collected from employees and supervisors themselves through assessments and surveys.
Regarding the storage and retrieval of these records, the notice stated, “Records may be retrieved by the Federal employee’s name along with their agency name and government email address, the employee’s direct supervisor’s name, email address, or other personal identifier contained in this system of records. The records in this system of records are stored electronically on OPM’s production database servers, hosted at an OPM data center in Macon, GA. Access to these servers are restricted to authorized government personnel.”
Comments can be submitted through the Federal Register on or before September 21, 2020, and the system is expected to become effective on September 24, 2020.
