According to DHS, the limitations in its human resources environment, which includes fragmented systems and duplicative and paper-based processes, were compromising the department’s ability to effectively and efficiently carry out its mission. For example, according to DHS, the department does not have information on all of its employees, which reduces its abilities to strategically manage its workforce and best deploy people in support of homeland security missions. Additionally, according to DHS, reporting and analyzing enterprise human capital data are currently time-consuming, labor-intensive, and challenging because the department’s data management largely consists of disconnected, standalone systems, with multiple data sources for the same content. To address these issues, in 2003, DHS initiated the HRIT investment, which is intended to consolidate, integrate, and modernize the department’s and its components’ human resources IT infrastructure. These components include U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service. HRIT is managed by DHS’s Human Capital Business Systems unit, which is within the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer and has overall responsibility for HRIT. Additionally, the Office of the Chief Information Officer plays a key supporting role in the implementation of HRIT by reviewing headquarters’ and components’ human resources investments, identifying redundancies and efficiencies, and delivering and maintaining enterprise IT systems. From 2003 to 2010, DHS made limited progress on the HRIT investment, as reported by DHS’s Inspector General. This was due to, among other things, limited coordination with and commitment from DHS’s components. To address this problem, in 2010 the DHS Deputy Secretary issued a memorandum emphasizing that DHS’s wide variety of human resources processes and IT systems inhibited the ability to unify DHS and negatively impacted operating costs. Accordingly, the Deputy Secretary memorandum prohibited component spending on enhancements to existing human resources systems or acquisitions of new solutions, unless those expenditures were approved by the Offices of the Chief Human Capital Officer or Chief Information Officer. The memorandum also directed these offices to develop a department-wide human resources architecture. In 2011, in response to the Deputy Secretary’s direction, the department developed a strategic planning document referred to as the Human Capital Segment Architecture blueprint, which redefined the HRIT investment’s scope and implementation time frames. As part of this effort, DHS conducted a system inventory and determined that it had 422 human resources systems and applications, many of which were single- use solutions developed to respond to a small need or links to enable disparate systems to work together. DHS reported that these numerous, antiquated, and fragmented systems inhibited its ability to perform basic workforce management functions necessary to support mission critical programs. To address this issue, the blueprint articulated that HRIT would be comprised of 15 strategic improvement opportunity areas (e.g., enabling seamless, efficient, and transparent end-to-end hiring) and outlined 77 associated projects (e.g., deploying a department-wide hiring system) to implement these 15 opportunities. HRIT’s only ongoing program is called PALMS and is intended to fully address the Performance Management strategic improvement opportunity area and its three associated projects. PALMS is attempting to implement a commercial off-the-shelf software product that is to be provided as a service in order to enable, among other things, comprehensive enterprise-wide tracking, reporting, and analysis of employee learning and performance for DHS headquarters and its eight components. Specifically, PALMS is expected to deliver the following capabilities: Learning management. The learning management capabilities are intended to manage the life cycle of learning activities for all DHS employees and contractors. It is intended to, among other things, act as a gateway for accessing training at DHS and record training information when a user has completed a course. Additionally, it is expected to replace nine disparate learning management systems with one unified system. Performance management. The performance management capabilities are intended to move DHS’s existing primarily paper- based performance management processes into an electronic environment and capture performance-related information throughout the performance cycle (e.g., recording performance expectations discussed at the beginning of the rating period and performance ratings at the end of it). Each component is responsible for its own PALMS implementation project, and is expected to issue a task order using a blanket purchase agreement that was established in May 2013 with an estimated value of $95 million. The headquarters PALMS program management office is responsible for overseeing the implementation projects across the department. Additionally, the Office of the Chief Information Officer is the Component Acquisition Executive responsible for overseeing PALMS. In addition, according to DHS officials, as of September 2014, PALMS was expected to address part of our High Risk Series on strengthening DHS’s management functions. Specifically, PALMS is intended to address challenges in integrating employee training management across all the components, including centralizing training and consolidating training data into one system. DHS has made very limited progress in addressing the 15 strategic improvement opportunities and the 77 associated projects included in HRIT. According to the Human Capital Segment Architecture Blueprint, DHS planned to implement 14 of the 15 strategic improvement opportunities and 68 of the 77 associated projects by June 2015; and the remaining improvement opportunity and 9 associated projects by December 2016. However, as of November 2015, DHS had fully implemented only 1 of the strategic improvement opportunities, which included 2 associated projects. Table 1 summarizes the implementation status and planned completion dates of the strategic improvement opportunities—listed in the order of DHS’s assigned priority—as of November 2015. DHS has partially implemented five of the other strategic improvement opportunities, but it is unknown when they will be fully addressed. Further, HRIT officials stated that DHS has not yet started to work on the remaining nine improvement opportunities, and the officials did not know when they would be addressed. Additionally, DHS developed an HRIT strategic plan for fiscal years 2012 through 2016 that outlined the investment’s key goals and objectives, including reducing duplication and improving efficiencies in the department’s human resources processes and systems. The strategic plan identified, among other things, two performance metrics that were focused on reductions in the number of component-specific human resources IT services provided and increases in the number of department-wide HRIT services provided by the end of fiscal year 2016. However, DHS has also made limited progress in achieving these two performance targets. Figure 1 provides a summary of HRIT’s progress towards achieving its service delivery performance targets. Key causes for DHS’s lack of progress in implementing HRIT and its associated strategic improvement opportunities include unplanned resource changes and the lack of involvement of the HRIT executive steering committee. These causes are discussed in detail below: Unplanned resource changes. DHS elected to dedicate the vast majority of HRIT’s resources to implementing PALMS and addressing its problems, rather than initiating additional HRIT strategic improvement opportunities. Specifically, PALMS—which began in July 2012—experienced programmatic and technical challenges that led to years-long schedule delays. For example, while the PALMS system for headquarters was originally planned to be delivered by a vendor in December 2013, as of November 2015, the expected delivery date was delayed until the end of February 2016—an over 2-year delay. HRIT officials explained the decision to focus primarily on PALMS was due, in part, to the investment’s declining funding. However, in doing so, attention was concentrated on the immediate issues affecting PALMS and diverted from the longer-term HRIT mission. Lack of involvement of the HRIT executive steering committee. The HRIT executive steering committee—which is chaired by the department’s Under Secretary for Management and co-chaired by the Chief Information Officer and Chief Human Capital Officer—is intended to be the core oversight and advisory body for all DHS-wide matters related to human capital IT investments, expenditures, projects, and initiatives. In addition, according to the committee’s charter, the committee is to approve and provide guidance on the department’s mission, vision, and strategies for the HRIT program. However, the executive steering committee only met once from September 2013 through June 2015—in July 2014—and was minimally involved with HRIT for that almost 2 year period. It is important to note that DHS replaced its Chief Information Officer (the executive steering committee’s co-chair) in December 2013—during this gap in oversight. Also during this time period HRIT’s only ongoing program—PALMS—was experiencing significant problems, including schedule slippages and frequent turnover in its program manager position (i.e., PALMS had five different program managers during the time that the HRIT executive steering committee was minimally involved). As a result of the executive steering committee not meeting, key governance activities were not completed on HRIT. For example, the committee did not approve HRIT’s notional operational plan for fiscal years 2014 through 2019. Officials from the Offices of the Chief Human Capital Officer and Chief Information Officer attributed the lack of HRIT executive steering committee meetings and committee involvement in HRIT to the investment’s focus being only on the PALMS program to address its issues, as discussed earlier. However, by not regularly meeting and providing oversight during a time when a new co-chair for the executive steering committee assumed responsibility and PALMS was experiencing such problems, the committee’s guidance to the troubled program was limited. More recently, the HRIT executive steering committee met in June and October 2015, and officials from the Offices of the Chief Human Capital Officer and Chief Information Officer stated that the committee planned to meet quarterly going forward. However, while the committee’s charter specified that it meet on at least a monthly basis for the first year, the charter does not specify the frequency of meetings following that year. Furthermore, the committee’s charter has not been updated to reflect the increased frequency of these meetings.