Before we get to like what the new initiatives that are ongoing right now, why don't you pile on a little bit about the current environment, the as-is state that you that you were faced with?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'd love to.

add to what Gary was just talking about in terms of the decentralized nature of HR and the federal government.

You know, a lot of listeners here may already be somewhat aware of the work that OPM has been doing, and they've publicized, you know, numbers like they're being well over 100 different HR systems across government that they're in the process of trying to consolidate.

And I think for a lot of us, we sometimes think that it's just kind of natural that government is so big and so complex that it's normal to have these unfathomable numbers in terms of the level of duplication and fragmentation that exists.

But to put things in context, when I was working at OPM and I was leading the HR QSMO and the HR line of business, And these functions do still exist at OPM.

Tell us a little bit about that.

This is a wife that lost it and beat her husband to death.

There's nothing to suggest that Allison did anything.

This is just strictly an accident.

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On October 17th, 2023, after two months of investigation, police declared Kevin's death a homicide, and two months after that, a warrant was issued for Allison's arrest for the murder of her husband.

I mean, th- this is unbelievable.

So we get a recommendation for a criminal defense team in Indianapolis, Andrew Baldwin and Max Wiley.

I spent quite a bit of time with her, and she's just a wonderful person.

What's the potential risk, if any, for the agencies as they set up their own questions? And what is the potential loss that they might get that's kind of the flip side of that idea that they are better positioned than OPM to assess how their individual organization works and how engagement functions in that individual organization?

Yeah.

Well, so first of all, I think that the points that Scott made in his blog by and large are fairly reasonable in that agencies are in a better position to be able to, um, you know, query employees and kind of, uh, get into topics that are of localized interest and, and make them more actionable.

I think this was one of the points that Scott made in his blog, but I think was, was really fair was how actionable our, uh, these surveys, how actionable has the FEVS survey results been in the past? And for instance, the challenges that agencies have had in the past working with OPM, doing this on a global basis, largely have to do with the timeliness of data coming back to them and the level of granularity.

of the data that comes back to them.

And all of that goes directly to that actionability.

In fact, there are some examples of agencies, not every agency has worked with OPM on the FEBs, There are some examples like the Veterans Administration that opted out of FEVS some number of years ago.

Is there something that other organizations can learn or should they all be knocking on Tracy Tyritt's door to say, hey, how can you help me figure out how to do this?

Uh, do you agree with that assertion, and how do you characterize state civil service systems for yourself and the work that you've been doing?

To kind of zoom out here for a moment, y- you know, Gabe provided a whole litany of challenges that exist in the HR policy space, and I think you see this as well with the federal government, right? Which is There are plenty of challenges, you know, wherever you look.

It's kind of hard to know where to even start.

But, you know, when you take a look at HR and what HR really means in a governmental sense, uh, whether it's at the state and local level or at the federal level, realize that governments aren't manufacturing companies, right? They're, they're service providers.

There's a great tie-in between the human resources of a government and the services that it provides.

It really is the human resources that provides the value from a, from a governmental perspective.

So in a lot of respects, the biggest issue that I think governments face, uh, whether it's federal, state, or local, is really in, in sort of the resource planning and allocation of those resources, which you might think of as strategic workforce planning.

How do you think about reimagining HR hiring, HR management?