The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has canceled its solicitation for a new cloud-based human capital management system.
According to the agency’s posting on SAM.gov, OPM canceled the solicitation on May 9, after disclosing that it had entered into a one-year contract on May 2 with Workday, Inc., for the new HR system.
OPM gave no reason for the about-face in its public update on the project, and the agency did not respond today to a request for comment.
In its May 2 disclosure of the contract, OPM said that Workday was ideally suited to take on the work. The agency said it did not have time to bid out the contract more fully because the work needed to be completed before mid-July.
The pressing need to get the new system in place, OPM said, was driven by breakdowns in OPM’s current IT infrastructure, pressing deadlines imposed by White House executive orders, and fresh waves of Federal employee retirements.
“A sole-source award to Workday is necessary due to an urgent confluence of operational failures and binding federal mandates that require immediate action,” OPM said on May 2.
“OPM is experiencing a systemic breakdown in its HR, payroll, and benefits infrastructure, evidenced by payroll errors, retirement processing delays, grievance filings, and serious data reconciliation failures,” the agency said.
“These challenges are further compounded by the Presidential Hiring Freeze Memorandum (January 20, 2025), Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Services Memorandum (January 20, 2025) and Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative Memorandum (February 11, 2025), which mandates the submission of a fully compliant, merit-based hiring plan within 120 days and limits new hires to a 4:1 attrition ratio,” OPM explained.
“Any delay beyond July 15, 2025, the date the hiring freeze is scheduled to end (Extension of Hiring Freeze Memorandum, April 17, 2025) and 4:1 ratio to begin, would result in failure to comply with OMB deadlines, disruption to retirement services, and over $600 thousand in labor-intensive workaround costs,” OPM said.