In his OPM blog post “Everyone Has a Plan – Until You Step Into the Ring,” Scott Kupor emphasizes that federal workforce planning requires strategy, discipline, and a focus on delivering results for the American people. Agencies can no longer rely on prior-year headcounts or automatic hiring; instead, they must carefully align staffing with mission priorities. Below are the goals he outlined.
Agencies must ensure they have the right talent focused on the administration’s top priorities while eliminating wasteful spending in areas that are inefficient, unnecessary, or misaligned with the mission. Resources should be directed to objectives that deliver the greatest value to taxpayers.
In addition to roughly 2.1 million full-time employees, the government relies on at least twice as many contractors, with spending of about $750 billion annually. Contractors serve important temporary or specialized roles, but their use has expanded into a permanent “shadow workforce.” Agencies should employ contractors strategically, not as substitutes for qualified employees.
With nearly 300,000 hiring managers, authority is highly distributed, and hiring has often been treated as the default solution. Strategic Hiring Committees will guide managers to consider process, organizational, or technological improvements first, while ensuring that highly skilled employees are hired when needed.
Staffing plans will no longer be based on prior-year counts or budgets. Agencies will build bottom-up plans focused on their functions, alignment with presidential priorities and statutory obligations, required staffing levels, and comparisons with current headcount.
Merit-based hiring is essential. Employees will be selected based on formal assessments rather than self-attestation. OPM will also use pan-government hiring data to centralize recruiting for high-demand roles, improving efficiency, compliance, and the applicant experience.
Performance management needs reform. With roughly 99.7% of employees in the federal workforce rated “fully successful” or higher, accountability is minimal. Agencies must ensure first-line managers supervise effectively, provide ongoing feedback, and hold employees accountable to deliver results for the public.
Certain activities remain out of scope: The goal of this federal workforce planning exercise is not to impose mandatory headcount reductions or focus on raw FTE numbers. Instead, agencies are expected to prioritize resources, incorporate efficiency into planning, and deliver the best possible service to the American people.
Where possible, agencies may substitute contractors for FTEs or vice versa to reduce overall costs without compromising service quality. Once staffing plans are approved, agencies do not need to seek additional permission from OPM for investments; the intent is not ongoing micromanagement, but rather to ensure compliance with individualized, mission-focused staffing plans.
