OPM Sends Suitability and Fitness NPRM to OMB

On Friday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on “Suitability and Fitness “. There was no listing for this rulemaking in the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda, but it appears that this rulemaking is in support of a March 20, 2025 presidential memorandum on “Strengthening the Suitability and Fitness of the Federal Workforce”.

That memorandum provides that:

“The Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is delegated the authority to make final suitability determinations and take suitability actions regarding employees in the executive branch based on post-appointment conduct, consistent with applicable law.  In this context, a suitability action can include a directive by OPM to the head of an executive department or agency (agency) to remove an employee who does not meet the suitability criteria defined in OPM’s regulations.”

The speed with which OPM was able to submit this rulemaking to OIRA suggests that the action was well coordinated in advance of the memorandum’s publication. I suspect that we will see similar speed with OIRA’s approval and subsequent publication in the Federal Register of this rulemaking.