The modifiers are customarily declared int the following order: annotations, scope (public, protected, private), abstract, static, final, transient, volatile, synchronized, native, strictfp. Consider reordering your modifiers to comply with this custom.
It is considered good practice to use the Java Collections API interfaces over specific implementations to define public objects and methods. Consider changing the return type of this method from HashMap to Map.
The Java specification lists the customary order.