Workday gets contract from US agency behind DOGE's staff cuts without competitive tender

Alexandra Alper

Thu, May 8, 2025, 3:09 AM 2 min read

By Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The national HR bureau astatine the bosom of billionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk's efforts to slash the national workforce says it has awarded a declaration for a caller cloud-based HR level to Workday without seeking bids from rivals.

A sole-source grant to Workday is indispensable owed to "an urgent confluence of operational failures and binding national mandates that necessitate contiguous action," the Office of Personnel Management said successful a memo uploaded connected May 2, citing strict deadlines from the Trump medication for workforce restructuring and hiring reforms.

"OPM’s fragmented and outdated HR systems person reached a captious nonaccomplishment point, resulting successful payroll errors, benefits disruptions, and a manual workload that is nary longer sustainable," said the memo.

OPM did not respond to a petition for remark connected the memo, which was archetypal reported by Washington Technology connected Wednesday. Workday said successful a connection that the institution was "honored to spouse with OPM" to modernize its HR systems.

The contract, awarded connected May 2, comes adjacent arsenic the Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency has sought to chopped the national workforce and slash contracts.

DOGE has led an unprecedented authorities overhaul successful which immoderate 260,000 civilian servants person resigned, been fired oregon taken aboriginal retirement, according to a Reuters tally. It besides claims to person saved U.S. taxpayers $160 cardinal to date, though its accounting has been riddled with errors and corrections.

News of the azygous root grant came arsenic a daze to immoderate existent and erstwhile employees, who described OPM's HR strategy arsenic functional and mostly migrated to the unreality already. They described the azygous root grant arsenic unusual, fixed the contention successful an manufacture that includes ADP and SAP.

Dayforce, different competitor, expressed involvement successful the project, the memo said, but argued that Workday's enactment for Walmart, the largest backstage U.S. employer, and different Fortune 500 companies showed it was "unique" successful its quality to standard up to conscionable OPM's needs.

Usually, to triumph support for a non-competitive bidding process agencies request to show "unusual and compelling urgency" and amusement that the chosen vendor is uniquely up to the challenge. OPM argued successful the memo that a "full and unfastened competition" would hold the task by six to 9 months.

The papers did not see a worth for the task but OPM said Workday's pricing for the HR-related tasks specified arsenic payroll, hiring, clip and attendance tracking, had been "determined just and reasonable," describing it arsenic 70% much affordable than the existing system.