OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver will serve as the acting director of the agency, replacing outgoing leader Kiran Ahuja after a three-year tenure. The Washington Post / Getty Images
Shriver assumes acting OPM director role
The federal government’s dedicated HR agency will be led by its long time deputy director, following Director Kiran Ahuja’s resignation.
Weeks following the news that Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja would step down, agency Deputy Director Rob Shriver has been appointed acting director of the federal government’s dedicated HR agency.
Shriver announced the news in a post on LinkedIn.
“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as acting director at [the] Office of Personnel Management,” he wrote. “I wouldn’t have this opportunity without the support of OPM’s outgoing director, Kiran Ahuja. Thank you, Kiran!”
Ahuja announced that she would step down from her post last month, reportedly due to a health issue and recent death in the family. Her nearly three-year tenure atop OPM marked the longest for a Senate-confirmed director in a decade.
Shriver is in the midst of his second stint serving at OPM. During the Obama administration, he worked as a deputy general counsel for policy and then as associate director of national healthcare operations. Since rejoining the agency under President Biden, he was associate director for employee services before he was nominated and confirmed to the deputy director post.
Since his return to government, Shriver has been intimately involved in federal personnel issues, from COVID-19 response and return-to-office efforts to the ongoing effort to reform OPM into a government-wide leader on human capital and labor issues and efforts to protect the federal workforce from a potential revival of Schedule F.
“Honestly, I think about the [National Academy of Public Administration] report a lot, and it’s baked into our strategic plan at OPM, and you’re absolutely right that across OPM as an organization, we take those recommendations seriously,” he told Government Executive last fall. “Compliance continues to be important, but there’s so much more that we can do . . . I like to think that OPM is this center of excellence when it comes to personnel policy matters, because we have expertise here that goes into the way that we form policy, but we can also use that to really drive change.”
According to the Vacancies Act, Shriver may serve as acting OPM director for 210 days, or until Dec. 2. If he is ultimately nominated to succeed Ahuja on a permanent basis, he likely will be able to remain in the acting director role during the Senate confirmation process, thanks to his service as her “first assistant” in a Senate-confirmed position.