The congressionally mandated review of the OPM-GSA merger is complete. The National Academy of Public Administration finds the merger would not have solved the problems at OPM that the Trump administration thought it would.
- Janet Hale, Former Associate Director for Economics and Government at OMB and on the team who produced the report, said they concluded that instead of a merger, the solution was to strengthen human capital across the federal enterprise and strengthen OPM’s hand in that.
- Peter Levine, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses and also on the team, said a culture shift from compliance to assistance is necessary.
- In order to undertake this shift, OPM could delegate more to agencies and must take a more strategic view of compliance, looking at agencies on a holistic basis instead of a case-by-case basis, Levine said.
