During a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing Wednesday, Office of Personnel Management Director Rob Shriver responded to mostly Republican concerns about federal telework policies by citing the practice’s usefulness with the cybersecurity workforce in advancing agency missions. 

“If we were to require cybersecurity professionals to come into the office five days a week, I think we wouldn’t be able to recruit the kind of workforce that we need,” Shriver said. “I think agencies need to keep working here to make sure they’re getting it right, that those arrangements are driving good performance.”

Shriver’s comments come weeks after Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced legislation that would require federal workers to spend 60% of their time in their offices. And a bill introduced last month from Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, would call on agencies to collect telework data and boost monitoring of how the practice impacts performance metrics. 

In his witness statement, Shriver pointed to OPM’s efforts to assist and support agencies in retaining and attracting cyber talent within the federal government. He also shared that the agency supports the Tech to Gov initiative and “is helping to connect aspiring tech talent with federal employment opportunities to bolster agency cyber and emerging tech programs.”

Those efforts follow White House moves to relax education requirements for some cybersecurity contracting jobs, shift to skill-based hiring and diversify the cybersecurity workforce.

Matt Bracken contributed to this story.

The post Federal cyber workforce needs telework flexibilities, OPM director says appeared first on FedScoop.

The NSF AI Education Act of 2024, introduced Thursday by Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., supports investments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, part of an effort to “help make certain the U.S. is an AI leader in the next century,” Moran said in a press release. 

The legislation would not only authorize NSF to grant fellowships and scholarships within AI and quantum education — along with awarding fellowships for professional development — but would also allow the agency to conduct an outreach campaign throughout the nation that increases awareness of its educational opportunities. The campaign would prioritize outreach to “rural and underserved areas,” per the bill summary.

“Demand for AI expertise is already high and will continue to grow,” Cantwell said in the release. “This bill will open doors to AI for students at all levels and upskill our workforce to drive American tech innovation entrepreneurship and progress in solving the toughest global challenges.”

The bill would also direct NSF to create publicly available playbooks about introducing AI into classrooms for pre-K through 12th-grade students, with “consideration for rural and economically depressed areas.”

NSF would also be granted authorization to hold a grand challenge for AI education and training that would include strategies for upskilling 1 million workers in the United States. in AI-related areas by 2028. Bipartisan Senate legislation released earlier this month also charges NSF with administering a grand challenge, with $1 million prizes awarded for innovations in AI.   

The bill from Moran and Cantwell also calls for related frameworks that “promote increasing the number of women who receive AI education and training” and ensure that “rural areas of the United States are able to benefit from artificial intelligence education and training.”

“Artificial intelligence has tremendous potential, but it will require a skilled and capable workforce to unlock its capabilities,” Moran said. “If we want to fully understand AI and remain globally competitive, we must invest in the future workforce today.”

The post Bipartisan Senate bill calls on NSF to boost AI and quantum education appeared first on FedScoop.

“Frankly, there aren’t enough places for agencies to go across government when they have technical questions or need technical help, so we get a huge array of requests,” USDS Administrator Mina Hsiang said in an interview with FedScoop.  

Those requests, many of which are detailed in the 2024 impact report USDS released Thursday, can’t all be addressed. Hsiang said USDS works to fulfill “over a quarter” of the agency requests for partnership, with consultation but not full engagement provided on approximately 10% of those asks. 

“We do a lot of work to contemplate the size of the population impacted, the vulnerability of the population impacted, the change it will have on the service and how critical the service is for people’s livelihood,” she said.

In its report, USDS outlined progress on 10 different projects across agencies, covering topics including digital service accessibility, building veteran trust, federal benefits for families and more. 

A closer look at USDS projects

In its partnership with the Social Security Administration, USDS worked with the agency to “observe customers” and learn how the public engaged with SSA’s website. According to the report, the project would save an estimated $285 million over five years for infrastructure expenses. 

The partnership with SSA has “created momentum to improve service delivery” through transforming the agency’s static homepage, the report noted, replacing “complicated” policy language with a conversational eligibility screener and building development infrastructure that involves a content management system and more.

The USDS is currently working with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of the Chief Technology Officer to develop software intended to improve the lives of veterans. In teaming with the agency on VA.gov, USDS aimed to build veterans’ trust in the VA. Per the report, veterans’ trust in the VA climbed from 70.4% in FY18 — the year of VA.gov’s relaunch — to 79.3% in FY23.

“The Veteran Experience Office does a very comprehensive work of engaging veterans and building an array of metrics together,” Hsiang said.

The impact report also touted USDS’s partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services to help modernize and implement services that support an interagency Life Experience Research Team, aiming for “simpler, more accessible and equitable” digital experiences. Specifically, the organization conducted research with a nationwide group of participants, documenting their experiences throughout pregnancy and childbirth along with any relevant interactions with the federal government. 

Working with an HHS Life Experience Research Team that included  representatives from the General Services Administration, the Department of Labor, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and others, USDS piloted three digital programs to support families, including a text message service called Notify.gov that allows government partners to send texts about benefits and support programs to the public.

“This is one of those places where we can partner very closely with an agency that’s building out a shared capability for more folks and give them direct feedback,” Hsiang said. “The team had a very good experience with it.”

Though not listed in the impact report, the USDS also worked “extremely closely” with the IRS on the implementation of its Direct File pilot program. Hsiang said the partnership was not included in the report due to a timing issue, but noted that USDS assisted in technical expertise, user research, product management and more. Direct File was utilized by over 140,000 taxpayers in its inaugural run, according to the IRS. 

“This pilot is only with 12 states, but obviously there’s real opportunities for growth there because building out that capability so that folks in every state can have this option will be important,” Hsiang said. “The tax code is huge and incredibly complex, so there were almost 20 million people who were eligible for this pilot, but it will be important to expand that capability to encompass more individuals.”

A busy year followed by more to come from USDS

For Hsiang, who has led USDS since September 2021, the release of the impact report represents what she views as “a year of launching things.”

“There’s a lot of programs here that are a demonstration of incredible value in themselves, but also a proof of concept of a new model working,” Hsiang said. 

USDS is investing in hiring both internally and with agency partnerships, Hsiang said, in an effort to capitalize on momentum to build long-term capacity within agencies. She confirmed that the USDS is working to support agencies in hiring more talent, including as part of efforts called out in the White House’s artificial intelligence executive order.

“I think there’s a lot of interest, but the talent moves quickly, gets hired quickly, looks for competitive salaries and opportunities,” Hsiang said. “That will definitely be a challenge, but one we’re excited to take on.”

Hsiang said her hope for this report is a “clear illustration” of what government talent is able to accomplish, and stressed the importance of USDS’s investment in technology-centered work.

“I think the report starts to give a real detailed window into the range of different types of work that we do and the short- and long-term impacts that it can have,” Hsiang said. “One of the things that we hear across government regularly is that technology ends up slowing people down instead of speeding them up, if it’s not implemented right. That is not what anyone intends and that’s not what we’re investing for.”

The post USDS impact report showcases ‘a year of launching things’ appeared first on FedScoop.

The Tech Diplomacy Academy, which launched Tuesday, is an online platform centered on teaching its enrollees about the science and engineering behind emerging technology, how those technologies are being commercialized, and the foreign policy risks and opportunities for those innovations, Michelle Giuda, the CEO of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Krach Institute and former assistant secretary of state, told FedScoop. 

As the first adopter, the State Department will use that platform as an educational resource for its officials.

“The Krach Institute’s gift of educational licenses for their new Tech Diplomacy Academy will provide our public diplomacy and cyber and digital technology professionals access to cutting-edge training,” Elizabeth M. Allen, State’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, said in a written statement provided to FedScoop.

Allen underscored the importance of technology in global affairs, noting that “tech diplomacy is a central foreign policy priority” and that mastery of tech diplomacy “is critical for the State Department workforce to keep the United States on the leading edge.”

The establishment of the academy comes as understanding technology has become even more important in foreign affairs. Giuda said technological threats have only grown with things like generative AI, advanced semiconductors, 6G, and Iranian drones, and State Department leaders have highlighted the need to upskill diplomats.

“What we’re doing with the Tech Diplomacy Academy is empowering U.S. and allied government, business, tech, and then citizen leaders, so that they can compete and win in this rapidly changing technology landscape and rapidly changing and contested geopolitical landscape,” Giuda said.

Having the State Department as the first organization to adopt a new program is also something of a full-circle moment for the Krach Institute, which was founded by former State Department officials. 

The institute was co-founded in 2021 by Keith Krach, former chairman and CEO of Docusign and former undersecretary of state for economic growth, and Mung Chiang, now president of Purdue University and a former science and technology adviser to the secretary of state. 

While working at the State Department during the Trump administration, Giuda said that she, Krach and Chiang worked together to engineer the Clean Network, an alliance of countries and telecommunications companies, and in the process engineered new methods they called “tech diplomacy.”

“We’ve got this proven model now for how we work together with U.S. and allied governments, with corporations — not just in the U.S., but across all of those allied partners — in order to secure a critical tech sector, and so the founding of the Krach Institute was meant to continue that work,” Giuda said.

The Krach Institute’s “North Star” is to ensure that “technology advances freedom” and the Tech Diplomacy Academy advances that, she said.

The first curriculum the academy is offering is called the Tech Primer Series and focuses on fundamentals of critical emerging technologies, according to a release provided to FedScoop ahead of the announcement. 

Officials at the State Department using the new platform will be able to take the courses provided by the academy on demand as their busy schedules allow, Giuda said. Courses are roughly one hour long and are composed of 10 six-minute modules. The initial curriculum has about 20 courses, and upon completion, the enrollee will receive a certificate, Giuda said.

The No. 1 metric for the success of the program will be whether the academy is providing value and new information to U.S. diplomats, she said. 

While the State Department is the first, more partnerships within the government are part of the vision for the academy. Ultimately, Giuda said “the goal is for the entire USG to be learning on this platform.” 

The post State Department to use new Purdue tech diplomacy platform to train officials appeared first on FedScoop.

During a Wednesday event on U.S. investment in R&D, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science Foundation and National Science Board discussed findings in The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2024 report, including the fact that the U.S. spent $806 billion, or 3.5% of its gross domestic product, on R&D in 2021.  

While officials were eager to share R&D successes from the federal government, they also looked to the report to shed light on workforce development needs for STEM-related fields, as well as the need to enhance educational opportunities for domestic students. 

“R&D is how we open the doors so that the future can be better than the past; it’s how we overcome the limitations of today and step into a better tomorrow,” OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar said during the event. “This report and the president’s budget both remind us of the tremendous strengths that we have here in America with our R&D capabilities, and they also start us on this important path to the work ahead.”

President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget leans into innovation through R&D efforts: A fact sheet OSTP shared with FedScoop highlights a request for a 36% funding increase (to a reported $900 million) for NSF’s Directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships, along with $606 million for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science to “integrate supercomputing, AI and quantum-based technology for developing the next-generation high-performance computing systems.”

“Most of these innovation-intensive industries, of course, grew out of prior federal R&D investments,” Prabhakar said. “If you think about that, that is true in fields that are diverse as artificial intelligence and new medicines and clean energy, so I think it’s a very consistent theme.”

Additionally, OSTP shared in the release that artificial intelligence R&D funds will be spread across federal agencies to further the development of responsible AI, citing a budget request of $729 million for NSF, a 10% increase, including $30 million for a second year of the National AI Research Resource pilot. 

An OSTP spokesperson shared in an email that the FY 2025 budget also includes a reported $32 million request to support the AI talent surge, and pointed to upcoming Office of Management and Budget issuance of AI guidelines for government to both address risks and encourage innovation. 

OMB “will soon issue the first governmentwide policy to mitigate the risks and harness the benefits in the federal government’s own use of AI,” the spokesperson said. “To fully deliver on this mission, we need the right people. President Biden launched an AI talent surge to bring more AI professionals into the Federal government to help us achieve our ambitious AI agenda. … We’re very excited about the talent we’ve brought on to date, and the talent we will bring on to work on high-priority AI projects.”

The spokesperson noted the Presidential Innovation Fellows, the U.S. Digital Corps and the U.S. Digital Service as some of the tech talent programs that have been advancing the goals of the administration where the AI talent search is concerned. 

Still, the country can’t rely solely on those programs, given the fact that occupations requiring STEM knowledge account for 24% of the U.S. workforce, and 19% of all STEM workers were born abroad, per the report. NSB Chair Dan Reed said the flow of domestic talent into the STEM workforce has to increase. The total STEM workforce is around 37 million individuals, a mix of those with at least a bachelor’s and those with technical skills who do not have at least an undergraduate degree. 

Reed acknowledged the value of attracting foreign workers, calling the country “a global magnet for talent. That’s been one of our superpowers, that the best and the brightest on the planet want to study and work here. We have to preserve that, but it’s not a given. They come because they see opportunities; we have to continue to create those opportunities.”

For the domestic workforce, Reed said there is cause for concern, and it starts with education.

The NSB chair referenced the report’s findings of a “sharp decline” in elementary and secondary education mathematics performance, and the fact that women and minorities are underrepresented when it comes to bachelor’s and graduate degrees in science and engineering.

“We have to improve access to higher education as students are to pursue advanced STEM degrees,” Reed said. At the same time, the country “must continue to welcome international students from around the globe and to implement policies that entice [and] enable them to stay and work here after they receive their degrees.”

The post U.S. is leading the way in R&D, but tech workforce development is still a concern for federal officials appeared first on FedScoop.

The series, “Accelerating the Mission with AI and Security,” produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and underwritten by Google for Government, invited leaders to share where they hope to see the most significant return on investment for AI implementation in the coming year.

Artificial intelligence to meet core mission needs

Workforce augmentation was a highly discussed use case for AI implementation in the series.

FEMA’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer is one agency that has been strategically working on a generative AI tool to improve mission efficiency.

Christopher Kraft, Assistant Administrator, Financial Systems for FEMA’s OCFO shared that his office is developing a proprietary generative AI tool – owned and operated by FEMA and DHS – to generate draft responses to budget requests that his team can review for accuracy.

The Department of Labor CISO Paul Blahusch discussed how his agency is leaning into AI with a dedicated AI office inside the Office of the CIO to help develop and implement tools and techniques to streamline workflows, which can translate into cost avoidance and improved programs. He referred to three AI implementation areas his agency is focusing on, including cybersecurity, back-office support, and assisting constituents in accessing services more quickly.

For agencies like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, using AI as an augmented assistant has been developing even further over the past three years, according to CISO Jamie Holcombe, providing each examiner with an augmented intelligence system next to them.

“So, during its searches, it can bring up not just one thing but a myriad of things that pertain to the uniqueness of that patent application or trademark registration. So, you really have to think that the examiners don’t want one thing, they want a plethora of things to say, ‘yes,’ it is unique and novel, or ‘no, it’s not,’” Holcombe explains. “AI and generative AI has helped in that regard because each examiner has a customized version that just applies to them.”

Many leaders see generative AI as a way to improve standard workflow procedures. Department of Commerce CIO Andre Mendes, said that for tasks that are incredibly onerous, his department is looking at how AI can be used to break through some of the clutter.

“In HR processes, for example, position descriptions are not really that exciting, but at the end of the day, consume an enormous amount of people and time and resources, and where we can, I think, leverage AI to dramatically improve and optimize those environments,” he explained.

Improved security for federal data

Agencies like U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) are far along in their cloud migration strategies, which means that data security strategies must now shift to account for an explosion of digital resources.

“All the immigration data that has to be cataloged and identified and tagged is a monstrous task. And frankly, there is no easy button to push when you’re talking about the volume and scale of data that we have, and the amount of change that it goes through on even a daily basis,” shared USCIS CISO Shane Barney.

“We have, from a cybersecurity perspective, in my plans I am building, what we’re referring to as a security integration platform, which is an open source-based platform, and it has a whole AI/machine learning piece built into it based on open-source principles and practices, as well as some software platforms that will be integrated into the security program. And more on the threat hunting side of things where we’re looking for those abnormal changes in the environment that could indicate a breach.”

His agency leadership is waiting on further White House guidance on AI implementation but is working on foundational principles that can help the organization move forward with implementation plans quickly, referring to an open cybersecurity schema framework USCIS has been working on.

“I see it as the future. It’s the way we have to handle it; the future of cybersecurity is data,” said Barney.

This sentiment was echoed by other leaders who want to improve how they manage, store and analyze data to strengthen their agency’s security posture. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) CISO Robert Wood said that his agency is building a security data lake to minimize data silos.

According to Wood, generative AI models could play a more significant role in empowering the government workforce to ask plain language questions to get actionable insights from data if properly structured and react more quickly to security threats and vulnerabilities.

Other participants who shared their insights in this series included:

• David Shive, CIO, U.S. General Services Administration
• Guy Cavallo, CIO, Office of Personnel Management
• Dr. Kelly Fletcher, CIO, Bureau of Information Resource Management, Department of State
• Josh Lehman, Director, Office of Business and Customer Assurance, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
• Russell Marsh, Director, Cybersecurity Operations, National Nuclear Security Administration

This video series was produced by Scoop News Group, for FedScoop, and sponsored in part by Google for Government.

The post Federal leaders on accelerating the mission with AI and security appeared first on FedScoop.

The long-awaited order arrived with a laundry list of requirements for agencies, which are now tasked with growing the federal talent pool with workers who have experience in AI research, development, procurement and deployment. 

To fill that pool, the Biden administration is “putting a lot of emphasis on bringing in talent from everywhere,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar said in an interview with FedScoop, underlining the importance foreign nationals will play in getting the federal government up to speed on AI.

The executive order’s callouts to boost the AI workforce within federal agencies “is just the next chapter of a long American story of people, American kids going into science and technology and making huge contributions,” Prabhakar said. “Also coupled with being able to attract some amazing talent from around the world and who come here for these tremendous opportunities in our country. [White House officials] very much want to make sure both of those continue to happen.”

At AI.gov, the Biden administration has highlighted both immigrant and nonimmigrant pathways for foreign nationals to bring their knowledge of AI to the federal government. 

And in cases where agencies face challenges in the form of lengthy hiring processes or other roadblocks for meeting workforce requirements laid out in the order, OSTP is providing “levers” to help, Prabhakar said. That includes AI-specific cohorts, created by the Presidential Innovation Fellows and the U.S. Digital Corps, bringing talent from the private sector to the public sector.

Lynne Parker, a former deputy U.S. chief technology officer who assisted with the Trump White House’s 2020 executive order that called on agencies to annually create AI use case inventories, said in an interview with FedScoop that there is a “shortage” of AI talent. There’s also the challenge, Parker added, of the government competing for AI talent with industry,  where individuals are able to solve “interesting problems” for higher pay. 

“If you’re going to be training the talent in our universities here, then obviously it makes a lot of sense for us to try to recruit them to stay here to benefit the United States,” Parker said. “Since there’s such a huge shortfall of talent, I think there’s that emphasis on immigration, [which] is a recognition of the fact that … a high percentage of people who are getting that expert-level training [in AI] are coming from overseas. That’s where I think the most immediate pipeline of available talent is.”

Parker said it’s possible that “many Ph.D. graduates would like to go into academia, but they may feel like it’s too difficult to get the research funding that they need in order to be successful.” But if funding were available to train more students, and funding was easier to attain, then individuals may be more inclined to go into academia to train the next generation, she said.

Prabhakar, meanwhile, noted the various open roles for AI across the government makes clear the “need to learn how to use this powerful technology in really creative ways that are deeply responsible as a great way for government to lead by example in the use of AI.” 

“We were thrilled with the response to the AI talent surge when the executive order came out,” she added. “Just an enormous volume of wonderful resumes that came in —  people who have built all the data systems and the computational capacity that you have to have [in order] to use AI intelligently.”

OSTP is trying to leverage effective tech talent programs deployed over the past decade to bring more tech-centric skills into government, Prabhakar said, with the aim of providing those interested in working on AI with more opportunities in federal agencies. 

The feedback from agencies on the EO’s actions, including workforce requirements, has so far been positive, according to Olivia Zhu, a senior policy adviser with OSTP. In an interview with FedScoop, Zhu said the White House is “super optimistic that we’ve gotten a really large influx of interest from the public.”

“When we were creating this executive order, the president directed the team to pull every lever,” Zhu said. “The feedback is reflecting our intentions of understanding that AI has such broad applications in various areas, right from the workforce to the use in government, to ensuring that we have safety standards.”

This article was updated Dec. 22, 2023, with quotes from OSTP’s Olivia Zhu.

The post AI talent wanted: The federal government is searching far and wide to fill new cutting-edge positions appeared first on FedScoop.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s third bipartisan, closed-door AI insight forum, to be held Nov. 1, will lay down a new foundation for AI policy in the workplace and discuss potential avenues for regulating the technology by gathering both those bullish on AI as well as skeptics and critics of the technology.

“This Forum is focused on the intersection of AI and the workforce. It aims to explore how AI will alter the way that Americans work, including the risks and opportunities,” Schumer’s staff said in an invite to the forum viewed exclusively by FedScoop. 

“Workers in industries across the economy, from medicine, manufacturing, transportation and energy, to entertainment, hospitality, and more, will feel the impacts of widespread use of AI. The primary objective is to examine how the federal government can bolster the domestic Al workforce and ensure the use of AI benefits everyone,” the invite said.

The list of attendees invited to the third AI forum includes: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Visa CEO Al Kelly, National Nurses United Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, UNITE HERE President D. Taylor, SAG-AFTRA Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, IBEW President Kenneth Cooper, CWA President Claude Cummings, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Education Policy Allyson Knox, and Center for American Progress (CAP) President Patrick Gaspard.

Schumer’s first AI forum in September was focused broadly on finding and agreeing on the most pressing problems related to AI, while the second forum earlier this week was focused on innovation through increased federal research and development funding, tech immigration issues, and ways to find common ground on AI safeguards.   

The New York Democrat has planned nine different “insight forums” that will focus on issues including national security, privacy, high-risk applications, bias and others.

Schumer’s AI push comes as federal officials, along with Congress, weigh myriad approaches to regulating AI.  There’s growing pressure on the U.S. to catch up to the European Union, which recently passed draft legislation called the AI Act. At the same time, federal officials are also searching for ways to push U.S. companies to the forefront of global AI technology development — particularly as China continues to invest in the technology.

Schumer in June introduced a plan to develop comprehensive legislation in Congress to regulate and advance the development of artificial intelligence in the U.S. Called the “Safe Innovation Framework for AI Policy,” the plan outlines ways to “protect, expand, and harness AI’s potential” as Congress pursues legislation.

The Biden administration has also expressed a commitment to safeguarding Americans’ rights and safety with a focus on protecting user privacy and addressing bias and misinformation in AI. Biden in June met with tech leaders and academics in the AI space in Silicon Valley.

The post Schumer to host AI workforce forum with labor unions, big banks and tech scholars appeared first on FedScoop.

The 2023 leave year ending Jan. 13, 2024 will have 27 pay periods, OPM said in a memo sent on Monday to human resource directors of U.S. government agencies. That means most federal employees will receive an additional pay period’s worth of leave in 2023, which could be four, six, or eight hours depending on their accrual rate, according to the memo.

The change doesn’t apply to agencies whose first pay period was Jan. 8, 2023, as they will have 26 pay periods, the memo said. 

While most federal workers will get more leave time, the maximum carryover amount for annual leave – 240 hours for most employees and 360 hours for overseas employees – won’t change, OPM said. It encouraged agencies to remind affected workers to use any time over that limit before the end of the leave year so they don’t lose it.

OPM also clarified that while there are 27 leave pay periods for most workers, there will still be 26 pay days in the 2023 calendar year. The number of pay periods affects leave accrual, not pay days, the agency said.

The post Most federal workers to get more leave in 2023, OPM says appeared first on FedScoop.

Approximately one-third of federal employees will be reaching retirement age within the next two years, according to the Partnership for Public Service, while just 1.6% of the federal workforce is composed of Gen Z employees, those born between 1997 and 2012.

“I mean, we don’t want to try to push them out the door unnecessarily, there’s a lot of experience and talent in older generations that we want to make sure is passed on like institutional knowledge and memory is important,” Congressman Glenn Ivey, D-Md., told FedScoop on the sidelines of a Washington tech industry event Thursday. 

“But as they say, old wineskin needs to make room for new wine — we got to make sure we’re creating the space for younger people to come in and utilizing new skills, new talents, broader horizons, and working through these new technologies that, frankly, my generation doesn’t understand as well as,” said Ivey, whose district in Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C., is home to multiple federal agency buildings and thousands of federal workers. 

The government has long struggled to hire and retain talented young workers. According to an Office of Personnel Management report from last year, less than 10 percent of the federal workforce is under the age of 30, compared to 23 percent of the workforce in the private sector in that same age group. 

The report also found that federal workers in their 20s are five times more likely to quit than those in their 50s.

Congressman Ivey said creating new organizational structures that allow federal staff to try and integrate with new technologies is one potential solution for bringing in young, fresh talent.

“I think part of it is creating different departments within agencies. Because it doesn’t all have to be the same infrastructure that it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. You can have organizational charts that are slightly different than they are now,” Ivey told FedScoop.

“You can give them more latitude, more leeway to try and integrate with new technologies. And you can put leadership in place that really understands the needs. And it’s not that you’re pushing people out the door necessarily who really still have something to offer. But you’re creating a space between the talent team to come in and thrive,” he added.

The federal government is uniquely positioned to attract technology talent looking for new opportunities amid the current labor market turmoil, according to the U.S. Digital Service. USDS Chief Delivery Officer Ankit Mathur highlighted last year how the values of public service can align with some of the new top priorities for IT specialists looking for new roles.

The post Rep. Glenn Ivey: Government must ‘create the space’ for younger tech talent appeared first on FedScoop.