Success Stories
Charles Conyers: 2003 PMI
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Washington DC (September 2003-Present – GS-14)
Currently Dr. Conyers is the Supervisory Management Analyst for the Office of the Executive Secretariat, Privacy and Information Management (OESPIM). Beyond his role for recruiting, training and leading a staff of Information Management Specialists, he also serves as the agency Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)/Forms Officer and the program lead for developing and implementing the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program agency-wide. In addition, he is the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) for the Interagency Agreement with the National Archives Records Administration and the contract for the installation of FOIA Express. Formerly he was Senior Program and Management Analyst for the creation and implementation of OPM’s Open Government Plan related to the Open Government Memorandum (OMB-10-06) of December 8, 2009, commonly known as the Open Government Directive. Dr. Conyers was part of a Core Team comprised of senior level staff across OPM; operations, finance, compliance, policy, retirement and benefits, information technology, investigations, and legislative affairs. The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), based on this plan, introduced innovative technologies to enable employees, the public and other agencies to access centralized documentation and to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders. One such example is the Searchable Frequently Asked Questions, which is a database of responses allowing inquirers the ability to find answers using a self-service functionality. Additionally, requirements documents were written, reviewed and approved by the OCIO for Mentoring and Knowledge Management (KMS) systems. Budgetary constraints delayed the implementation of the systems beyond proto-type status; however, the KMS proto-type code is widely shared in the open source community.
In addition to his duties with Open Government, Dr. Conyers was one of the OCIO leads for the IT Products and Services Blanket Purchase Agreement (ITBPA). This was a $670M procurement action allowing expedited IT purchases for OPM and also was the contact for OCIO training activities for mission critical series to close skills gaps. Dr. Conyers led two Communities of Practice (CoP), to address the training needs of IT project managers needing Project Management and Federal Acquisition certification. This model allowed both Project Management Professional holders and those desiring the certification, the hours required. The Project Management CoP has partnered with the Project Management Institute (PMI) so that attendees can receive continuing education units. The Big Data CoP was an internal, federal-wide, non-governmental, and academic membership group designed to support strategic uses of OPM data.
Previously Dr. Conyers was the Acting Deputy Director and a Senior Program Analyst serving in several simultaneous capacities within the USAJOBS® Program Office that led to the launch of the 2.0 version of USAJOBS.gov. Dr. Conyers was the COR for all contracts with the Program.
Howard University, Washington, DC, Lecturer (2005 - Present), Department of Political Science
Adjunct Professor for Political Science 001, Introduction to Research Methods and U.S. Government, duties include curricula development administering/grading examinations, providing substantive lectures both in person and online and conducting student consultations, grading assignments and academic planning. Courses were taught online using both Blackboard Ultra and Canvas during the pandemic.