Pencils down! Clinical Center switches to electronic performance management tool

New, secure system online in 2019

Starting in 2019, supervisors in the Clinical Center will be putting away their pens and paper and firing up their computers to establish their staff's annual performance evaluations of federal employees. The electronic performance management appraisal program – ePMAP – will provide greater security, efficiency and accuracy than the paper versions. The ePMAP will be used for performance evaluations being established in 2019 and beyond – current employees must sign in the new ePMAP system no later than January 30, 2019. 2018 PMAPs will be closed out using the old process to avoid any confusion and disruption.

These annual evaluations, known as PMAPs within the Department of Health and Human Services, have a 5-tier rating system for federal employees. The filing process by managers can be time consuming and inconsistent; the lack of centralized filing practices meant each department in the hospital manages their files differently.

"This is a really important change that will not only save time and effort for staff and supervisors, but also help ensure accuracy and timely completion of PMAPs" said Dan Lonnerdal, chief of the Office of Administrative Management at the NIH Clinical Center.

In late 2018, the ePMAP was piloted by the hospitals Office of Administrative Management, Nursing, Radiology and the Clinical Research Informatics Departments.

Recognizing the need for confidentiality, the program's developers focused on ensuring the security of employees' data. The ePMAP system is behind the NIH firewall to protect personal information and is certified under Federal Information Security Management Act guidelines.

Previously, a printed copy of an employee's PMAP could easily be forgotten on a desk or in a copier but now, only the employee, his or her supervisor as designated in the NIH Enterprise Directory (NED) and system administrators can see ePMAP records.

The process for logging on to ePMAP is simple. Staff will receive an email from the ePMAP system with sign-in instructions. Once the system is implemented, four years of prior performance evaluations will be saved digitally in the ePMAP system. After four appraisals, the system automatically disposes of the oldest employee performance records although longer retention is allowed if it is required for business use.

More than 20 other NIH Institutes and Centers (I/Cs) have already implemented the ePMAP program and have found that it reduced their administrative burden. The Clinical Center will implement the best practices learned from the other I/Cs.

The rollout of ePMAP will include frequent demonstrations and trainings tailored specifically for supervisors and employees. The Clinical Center will also help staff resolve any issues through an ePMAP email account – ccepmap@cc.nih.gov – run by subject matter experts to provide rapid responses to questions or issues. Staff are happy to set up in-person training for anyone who needs it, as well.

For more information on the ePMAP program, visit http://intranet.cc.nih.gov/owmd/pmap/index.html (NIH staff only).

-Donovan Kuehn