The 5 D’s of Director Berry…

Yesterday the House Panel on Government Reform and Oversight held a hearing called “Back to the Basics: Is OPM Meeting Its Mission?”. I wish I could have been there in person. It focused on OPM’s 20 year failed retirement modernization project and the failed launch of USAJOBS v3.0. 

BTW, I’m going to claim that I coined the term USAJOBS v3.0 from my blog of August 2010 until proof surfaces that someone else came up with it first.

Fortunately for all of us it was videoed and posted to YouTube. Whoever provides this service, you have my thanks.

The hearing was split into 2 parts, the Director, John Berry and OPM’s affable and wardrobe malfunction prone CIO Matthew Perry were first; followed by a second panel that consisted of representatives from OPM's OIG, GAO, DoD and Monster.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S3IYSDXVbk

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HgUFsf3dPA

For his part, Berry gets to sit there and listen to a couple back benchers from the House pontificate a bit before giving him a few softball questions. But even with these softballs, one has to watch in amazement how shameless Berry’s answers are. It’s like watching the 5 D’s of Dodgeball (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ASBsQfXnw). 

Only Berry’s version of the 5 D's goes more like Dodge, Deflect, Defend, Deny and Deceive.

To give you an idea of the 5 D’s; take a look at minute 25 of Part 1. Congressman Lynch pontificates about the volume of work and how it’s overwhelming OPM. He sees more hearings if OPM can’t right the ship. And asks Berry we does he need. Berry response is one for the books (around minute 27), and I quote: “Our resources, like many across government are on the decline. We’re trying to do more with less.”

Really? More with less? I went on to FedScope and here are the actual numbers. At the end of December 2009, almost a full year into this administration, OPM employed 5,878. At the end of June 2011 (last data available) OPM employed 6,389. This is an increase of 511 employees (8.7%) in a year and a half.

Only in Washington, DC can you write the narrative that because there is mere talk of trying to cap federal spending that agencies are suddenly going to wither on the vine.

In OPM’s case, they have more employees, more money; they’ve engaged in predatory practices, expanded their state run enterprise and somehow want us to believe that they’re not only effective stewards of the resources already wasted, but they simply don’t have enough. Wow!

Continued…

Part 2 of the hearing was a little better as the witnesses were more truthful; in particular, the GAO Auditor and OPM’s OIG.  Their blunt assessment of OPM management capabilities was honest and refreshing to say the least.

Patrick MacFarland, OPM’s OIG said in his opening remarks that his office would open up 2 new audits of OPM.  The first audit will evaluate if appropriate IT controls exist and the second will determine if OPM follows system development lifecycle processes properly.

Having watched the USAJOBS Facebook page (until apathy set in) I hope the OIG looks at one particular thread posted on October 28, 2011 in which the USAJOBS user responding to a complaint said, “Without getting too techie on you, we believed that we could insert code behind the scenes without affecting users who were on line in the early morning hours.  Lessons learned!”  I took a screenshot of the overall exchange.

So in effect and in a panic, OPM was dropping new code into production while the system was operational.  Yep, that’s a world class IT operation.  I’m sure that those audits will not go well. 

I guess the DoD’s Mr. Tamburrino was there for OPM’s moral support.  He certainly doesn’t understand the difference between recruiting and staffing.  Nor did he mention that DoD uses OPM’s USA Staffing product for its back office functions.  He probably doesn’t know.

Ms. Melvin, GAO focused more on OPM’s 20 year failed modernization effort of the retirement system.  She was very effective at describing OPM’s limited management capabilities.

Patrick Manzo and Mark Conway also testified on behalf of Monster.  In fielding the first question from the committee chair about costs for enhancements and changes to USAJOBS, it was obvious that Mr. Berry was less than truthful (under oath no less) about why they brought USAJOBS in-house.  Manzo was a good witness.

Towards the end, Congressman Walberg followed up on Berry’s assertion that all the metrics since the launch of USAJOBS 3.0 were going in the right direction.  Berry didn’t give any values, but when you start at zero and you can’t go any lower, then the only direction is up.  Again the 5 D’s play a role.

And last, Congressman Connolly talked about insourcing vs. outsourcing and whether there were contract issues with Monster that led to bringing USAJOBS in-house.  There were none.  OPM simply wants control of all things Federal HR.

In summary, yesterday’s hearing was a mere shot across OPM’s bow.  It’s a poorly run organization with limited talent and management capabilities and a documented history of failed IT projects as far as the eye can see. 

Director John Berry did his best to mislead the subcommittee and one only hopes that he gets promoted to the private sector sooner rather than later.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!