The inspector general charged with overseeing the federal government’s dedicated HR agency is warning that the system undergirding the U.S. Postal Service’s new employer-sponsored health benefits program could fail as a result of the Trump administration’s hiring freeze and efforts to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce.
The Postal Service Health Benefits Program, launched last fall by the Office of Personnel Management, was supposed to be an model for administering health insurance for federal workers, providing a more modern process for employees seeking to enroll or change their coverage and a centralized system for HR officials to better monitor for improper payments and enrollments.
But according to a report last week from OPM’s Office of the Inspector General, President Trump’s hiring freeze interfered with the hiring of IT workers to take over the PSHB’s underlying data platform from a government contractor. And the deferred resignation program took away even more employees who were slated to work on it.
Ahead of the April handover of the platform to OPM, the agency had seven out of a minimum 11 employees needed to administer the program. The hiring freeze effectively halted OPM’s search for the additional four workers, including in one instance where an applicant had their job offer rescinded in January.
