We spend a lot of time talking and about the federal hiring process and how long it takes. What gets less attention is the onboarding process: all the steps that have to happen once the hiring process is over to get new employees in a position to actually do their jobs.

Previous studies have shown the onboarding process is especially troublesome in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a collection of 19 sub-organizations that tend to each do things their own way. From basic things like getting people signed up for benefits to issuing Common Access Cards and IT equipment, there’s not much of a structure in place to make the onboarding process efficient, so on average, it takes about 90 steps.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks recently approved an implementation plan to modernize the onboarding process for OSD’s workforce. On this edition of On DoD, we’re joined by one of the officials will lead the effort: Danielle Metz, OSD’s chief information officer. 

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