OPM’s HR systems award clears protest window

The Office of Personnel Management’s plan to consolidate human capital management systems was a hotly-contested contract that Oracle won in June.

Seven companies in total submitted bids, but Oracle has begun work on the 10-year, $395.8 million contract and the protest window has closed. Companies generally have 10 days to file a protest following a debriefing.

Other bidders for the contract included Workday, IBM, SAP and Economic Systems inc.

With no protests, the company is now working with OPM to modernize human resource systems that serve 2 million federal employees.

IBM and Economic Systems filed pre-award protests, objecting to terms in the solicitation. IBM later withdrew its protest and GAO denied Economic Systems protest on June 1, clearing the way for OPM to make its award.

OPM structured the contract as a firm-fixed-price award with a 10-year ordering period. Requirements include core HR and personnel action processing, payroll and benefits integration, audit-ready reporting, and time and attendance tracking.

The system also must comply with security standards such as FISMA and FedRAMP, as well as be interoperable with existing federal IT systems.

OPM wants Oracle to finish the core implementation by the fall. Other phases will follow for agency transitions and then licensing and sustainment.

More than 100 HR systems currently operate across the federal government. Federal HR 2.0 is OPM’s attempt to wrangle all that into a single, integrated platform.

Some of the functions OPM wants include position management, personnel action, records processing, workforce analytics, and employee and manager self-service capabilities.

Much of what OPM uses to manage HR functions runs on PeopleSoft, which Oracle acquired in 2005. Oracle recently extended its support for PeopleSoft through 2037, which includes updates and fixes.