DCHRMS (Department of Defense Civilian Personnel Management System)

Chronicle

2025: Project Closure

At the end of March 2025, it became known that the Pentagon had curtailed a problematic project to digitalize its personnel infrastructure. Due to numerous delays and other difficulties, tens of millions of dollars were wasted.

This is an initiative called the US Defense Civilian Human Resources Management System (DCHRMS) civil personnel of management system. The project started in 2018 with a planned implementation period of one year and a budget of $36 million. But instead, the work dragged on for seven years, and the costs were revised several times, eventually exceeding $300 million. In particular, an additional $280 million was required - plus 780% of the original amount. Moreover, the creation of the system was never completed. As a result, officials concluded that the injection of additional funds into the development of the platform would be "throwing even more taxpayer money to the wind."

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At the same time, as noted by The Register, the curtailment of the DCHRMS initiative does not mean that the US Department of Defense is refusing to modernize its civilian personnel systems. A memorandum signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon still expects to find a suitable solution to HR digitalization. Hegseth directed officials to develop a new plan within 60 days to achieve the initial goals of the project.

Although the main point of the memorandum is the cancellation of the DCHRMS, Hegseth also ordered the reduction of a number of other programs, contracts and grants. Among them was a project to develop "fair models of AI and machine learning," for which it was planned to allocate $9 million. The memorandum also prescribes the cancellation of contracts worth $30 million with Gartner and McKinsey for analytical products.^[1]

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