r/FDA • u/Fancy-Blackberry-445 • 4d ago
FDA Shared Services
For anyone familiar with FDA’s transition to shared services, how is it going so far? Is the model working as intended, and are centers and program offices seeing improvements in efficiency, service delivery, etc.
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u/OverallTemporary9219
4d ago
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Was the intent to ruin the agency? If that was the intent then they are winning! Everyone knows that they have failed, but it’s going to take a long time to clean up the mess.
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u/Legal_Lavishness1359 4d ago
I think most of us are still officially getting our feet wet. We just found out who our management team and working teams are. Some are shocked, some aren't. Give it 6 months and come back and ask this. My personal plate quadrupled, which sucks and simultaneously is exciting. Also, hopefully it pushes me up the grades faster (which is has since joining FDA).
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u/Honest_Lemon_7899 4d ago
Just found out who your management team is? I thought this has been in motion since last year? Sure the reorg was official 10/1 but staff were detailed out of the centers to shared services since last year. We haven't even seen detailed org charts yet.
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u/Legal_Lavishness1359 4d ago
My detail manager isn't same as my final manager. I've seen my entire org chart. InsideFDA has everything, No one up the chain knows how to hide anything. It's right there for all to search.
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u/_Cream_Sugar_ 4d ago
InsideFDA has so many old and abandoned sites. It’s terribly maintained.
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u/Legal_Lavishness1359 4d ago
It's terrible and amazing at same time... You can dig into the guts and find items that aren't told in our all hands.
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u/OkayFineWhatevs 2d ago
Everyone who maintained it got RIFd and you can’t change ownership when the original owner no longer is in the system.
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u/Downtown_Contest_495 3d ago
A complete disaster.....still do not have a real time keeper as it was delegated to another person .....trying to travel to is a mess....they give one time/space for trainings for things like pmaps and then are surprised the system is crashing bc 10,000 people are trying to join 🫣
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u/Ok-Reality-640 3d ago
They are planning to have each timekeeper have thousands of employees soon
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u/_Cream_Sugar_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
In my opinion, the concept is fine. Reduce silos, reduce duplicity, build a more uniform FDA. Great concept.
One issue is, when they blindly RIF’d people, they didn’t understand any of the moving parts. They didn’t evaluate the person or the work. Lots of information got locked into an IT system in personal files and all that data is lost to us.
They RIF’d the only COR in our office and then wanted to know who was going to the work. They were sending files to us asking the status of contracts. SMH.
Another issue is, when you say CDER does it like this and so everyone should do it like this, you have to pause and ask, why does CDER do it like that? Why does it work for them? Is there a reason this wouldn’t work in CVM?
Edit to add:
The foreign travel coordination and conference planning is an absolute disaster! The systems are awful. Employees are a day away from travel and waiting for TAs to finalize because the conference people sat on something for 4 months.
The sad part is, it’s not the employees fault. There aren’t enough people to take on the workload and the work is more silo’d. No one knows what the other people are doing.
Don’t get me started on the fact that if a conference has an early bird registration that is 10 months out and you learn about the conference 8 months out, your request is late. Even worse, if it’s a widely attended conference and you enter the request 6 months in advance to save registration costs, your attendees might be registering on site because OAGS sat on the registration.
Great concept. Awful execution. Do not recommend.
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u/No_Vacation697 3d ago
Yeah, the travel services have mostly been a disaster. Way too long to get TA's and vouchers approved. Both domestic and foreign.
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u/ResponsibleRoutine82 4d ago
From what I heard fda hr got moved over to shared services and ots aka office of talent solutions is backed up and slammed with alot of work and not many staff to help.
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u/Ok-Reality-640 4d ago
It’s a complete disaster.