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Services for Agencies HR Line of Business

Overview

The HR Line of Business (HR LOB) Provider Assessment program is a business practice-based assessment that evaluates the business practices and service delivery for the following approved HR Shared Service Centers (SSCs) and payroll providers¹:

Acronym	Participating Provider
NFC	Department of Agriculture, National Finance Center
DCPAS	Department of Defense, Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service
DFAS	Department of Defense, Defense Finance and Accounting Service
IBC	Department of the Interior, Interior Business Center
TSSC	Department of the Treasury, Treasury Shared Service Center
GSA HR LOB SSC	General Services Administration, Human Resources Line of Business Shared Service Center

The Provider Assessment program supports federal goals to increase efficiency across the government through the adoption and migration to shared services, and the modernization of HRIT solutions. The HR LOB Program Office has collaborated closely with federal customer agencies and the HR LOB providers to develop an assessment that promotes accountability and transparency between the HR LOB providers and customers. The results include the following key objectives:

Conduct reviews of providers’ service delivery against established measures and metrics.
Report customer perceptions of providers’ business practices and service delivery.
Provide information to customer agencies to assist in evaluating service offerings.
Provide actionable recommendations to improve provider performance.

Assessment Framework & Timeline

The Provider Assessment framework is comprised of business practices that have been identified as critical by the HR LOB customers. The business practices are consolidated into the following business categories:

Strategy & Architecture: Promotes practices that emphasize the importance of sound business and technology strategies that support a provider’s mission and vision.
HRIT Modernization: Promotes practices that emphasize the importance of modern, interoperable HR and payroll applications that support technology infrastructure to be accomplished through sound planning and architecture practices.
Compliance: Promotes practices that emphasize the importance of effectively deploying procedures that meet Federal and agency-specific requirements.
Customer Relationship Management: Promotes practices that emphasize the importance of proactively reaching out to customers and effectively responding to customers’ needs.
Performance Management: Promotes practices that emphasize the importance of tracking performance results and using those results to improve operational effectiveness.

The HR LOB performs the assessment on an annual basis with the support of the HR LOB providers and federal customer agencies. The assessment uses a questionnaire to capture customers’ satisfaction levels and perceptions of quality with their providers’ systems and services. The HR LOB analyzes these results to develop the Provider Assessment reports and share with the individual providers and their customer agencies. The results are also combined to create the aggregated provider results for the Provider Assessment dashboard available here for public access.

To view the aggregated Provider Assessment results, please navigate to the Overall Results and the Business Category Results tabs.

Additional information about the Provider Assessment is available in the Frequently Asked Questions or by contacting the HR LOB at hrlob@opm.gov.

1 Currently, the HR LOB Provider Assessment does not assess the four approved commercial providers: Accenture National Security Services, Allied Technology Group, Inc., Carahsoft Technology Corporation, and International Business Machines.

Participation Results

In the 2015 Provider Assessment, the HR LOB received 4,678 customer agency participant responses to the 2015 Provider Assessment Customer Questionnaire, resulting in a response rate of 21 percent. The number of participants increased by 113% percent from 2014 to 2015.

2015 Customer Questionnaire Response Rate
Participation Type	Proportion of Responses	Number of Active Users
Response	21%	4,678
No Response	79%	17,598

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Respondent Breakdown

The participant population is comprised of three notional employee levels:

Employee Level	Roles & Responsibilities
Level 1	HR/Payroll Officer or Director Senior manager responsible for agency needs for HR Shared Service Center (SSC) and/or payroll provider services Senior manager responsible for agency HR and/or payroll policy
Level 2	HR/Payroll Department Lead or Liaison Acts as the liaison between the department and agencies Leads or participates in HR and/or payroll provider user groups Sits on HRIT boards and committees Recognized as the organizational expert for HR and/or payroll shared services
Level 3	HR/Payroll Specialist or Assistant Performs day-to-day input and processing of HR and/or payroll actions in the provider's system(s) Interacts with provider Help Desk to resolve issues

Across these three notional levels, the Customer Questionnaire participant breakdown is:

Respondent Breakdown
Respondent Levels	Proportion of Responses	Number of Active Users
Level 1: Senior HR/Payroll Officer or Director	Level1Percentage	385
Level 2: HR/Payroll Department Lead or Liaison	15%	680
Level 3: HR/Payroll Specialist or Assistant	77%	3613

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Additional information about the Provider Assessment is available in the Frequently Asked Questions or by contacting the HR LOB at hrlob@opm.gov.

* Due to rounding, not all totals will equal 100 percent.

Background

In August 2005, the OPM Director and each shared service center (SSC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with OPM to establish the agreement between OPM and the SSC Agency for the continuation of HR service delivery by the SSC Agency to other Federal agencies. According to the MOU, OPM responsibilities include:

Conduct reviews of HR SSC service delivery against established measures and metrics
Provide information to customer agencies to assist in evaluating service offerings to SSCs

Provider Assessment Cycle One

During Fiscal Year 2009 the HR LOB collaborated with both customer agencies and the HR LOB service providers (SSCs and Payroll Providers) to develop the Provider Assessment Program. The Assessment process design was approved by the MAESC in November 2009, and is based on business practices that were considered important by customers of HR LOB service providers.

The assessment was endorsed by the Office of Management and Budget when, in their Fiscal Year 2011 budget pass-back language, they included language instructing OPM to conduct assessments of HR Line of Business service providers. It also required of all service providers to prepare for OPM-administered, regular assessments.

The initial Provider Assessment that occurred between February 2010 and September 2011 was the first cross-government assessment of HR shared service centers and payroll providers. The successful assessment resulted in the following:

Increased understanding of the operations and service delivery of Federal HR shared service centers and payroll providers.
Increased engagement and collaboration among stakeholders, including providers, customer agencies, and the HR LOB.
Tangible changes, including new customer user groups, organizational alignment changes, and internal provider action teams to address HR LOB recommendations.

Provider Assessment Program Improvement

Following the initial cycle of assessments, the HR LOB conducted an evaluation of the Provider Assessment Program and collaborated with multiple stakeholder groups to improve the program. In addition, the HR LOB received OMB mandates included in the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy and TechStat recommendations to add customer satisfaction measures to the Provider Assessment and streamline the data collection and reporting process. These changes are reflected in the revised 2013 Provider Assessment Methodology.

If you have any further questions, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions or contact the HR LOB at hrlob@opm.gov.

Overall Results

Year

Employee Level

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Demographic

Functional Area

The following charts show customers' aggregate satisfaction with their providers overall, the value of their providers' services, and the likelihood of customers to recommend their providers to another agency for HR and payroll services. You may select an option to filter the results by a given year or any of the demographic options listed in the filters above.

Strengths & Improvement Opportunities

The following charts show federal providers’ aggregate strengths and improvement opportunities across all business practices. The Business Practice Strengths represent the three business practice questions that received the highest percentages of satisfied customer responses. The Business Practice Improvement Opportunities represent the three business practice questions that received the greatest percentages of dissatisfied customer responses.

* Due to the phrasing of this question regarding fees, DCPAS has been excluded from the 2013 results.

Additional information about the Provider Assessment is available in the Frequently Asked Questions, or by contacting the HR LOB at hrlob@opm.gov.

Business Category Results

The HR LOB Provider Assessment collects customers’ perceptions of quality and levels of satisfaction across five business categories. To view the results for a particular business practice, first select a category from the “Business Category” filter above. Next, select a practice from the “Business Practice” filter. You may select an option to filter the results by a given year or any of the demographic options listed in the filters above.

* Due to the phrasing of this question regarding fees, DCPAS has been excluded from the 2013 results.

** This question was not distributed in 2013.

Additional information about the Provider Assessment is available in the Frequently Asked Questions, or by contacting the HR LOB at hrlob@opm.gov

Previous Reports

The HR LOB conducted the first cycle* of the Provider Assessment for the Federal HR and payroll shared service providers from February 2010 to September 2011. At the conclusion of each assessment, each provider was issued a report containing the results of the assessment. The public versions of the Cycle One Provider Assessment reports are available for download via the links below.

Provider	Assessment Period
Department of the Treasury Bureau of the Public Debt – Administrative Resource Center (BPD – ARC)**	February 2010 - July 2010
Department of the Treasury HR Connect	February 2010 - July 2010
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Program Support Center – Capital HR	June 2010 - December 2010
Department of Agriculture National Finance Center (NFC)	June 2010 - December 2010
Department of Defense's Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS)	January 2011 - June 2011
Department of Defense's Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service (DCPAS) ***	January 2011 - June 2011
General Services Administration	April 2011 - September 2011
Department of the Interior Interior Business Center (IBC) ***	May 2011 - September 2011

* The 2010 - 2011 Provider Assessment collected data differently than the assessments conducted in 2013 and afterwards. The 2013 and subsequent assessments included customer satisfaction measures and were distributed to a broader sample of respondents. As a result, the 2010 - 2011 results are not reported with the results of the 2013 and subsequent assessments. Please refer to the “Overall Results” and “Business Category Results” tabs to see the results of recently conducted assessments.

**In the 2013 and subsequent Provider Assessments the Department of the Treasury Bureau of the Public Debt – Administrative Resource Center (BPD – ARC) was included with the Department of the Treasury HR Connect in an overall evaluation of the Department of the Treasury’s Treasury Shared Service Center (TSSC).

***During the 2010 - 2011 Provider Assessment the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service (DCPAS) was named the Civilian Personnel Management Service (CPMS), and the Interior Business Center (IBC) was named the National Business Center (NBC).