While the astronaut process itself did not change, NASA became aware of OPM’s systems that support automation alongside continuous evaluations and improvements through the partnership between agencies, J. Patrick Sharpe, USA Hire program manager at OPM, said in an email to FedScoop. NASA is now taking advantage of features and capabilities offered by OPM-managed sites, including USAJOBS, USA Staffing and USA Hire. 

Now, according to Sharpe, the astronaut application process is fully automated and has a new “online competency-based pre-screen assessment.” Additionally, NASA has since implemented all three integration offerings from USA Staffing: request processing, new hire and data APIs. 

Sharpe noted that once the cycle is done for 2024 astronauts, both OPM and NASA plan to review the application process and determine any necessary changes or improvements. Significantly, OPM reported having added online interviewing capabilities and accessible mobile assessments to USA Hire specifically over the past year, and “will be working with NASA and other federal agencies in the near future to fully implement these capabilities as part of the hiring process,” according to Sharpe.

“USAJOBS continuously works to assess and improve the user experience using human centered design methodology,” Sharpe said. “USAJOBS improved the application experience for all federal occupations, including the astronaut candidate, by implementing a new user interface explaining the application process more clearly and clarifying the required application materials.”

Sharpe said that the modernized approach for the astronaut application process in concert with the pre-screen assessment “reduced burden on NASA’s HR staff and allied the Astronaut Office to focus on the highest quality candidates in the applicant pool for further evaluation.”

This is the second time that NASA and OPM have teamed up for the astronaut application process, the first being in 2020 when OPM reportedly assisted with a manual review of applications for NASA’s partially automated application process.

Sharpe said that because of the “success of the 2020 application cycle,” NASA decided to partner with OPM for 2024. 

For the astronaut position, OPM reported that NASA received over 12,000 applicants during the 2020 cycle. The space agency then selected 10 applicants from the original pool, according to a release shared with FedScoop. 

“NASA’s maximization of USA Staffing’s data and interconnection capabilities has increased automation, transparency, data quality and enhanced the overall hiring manager and HR user experience throughout the hiring process,” Sharpe said in the email.

The hiring systems for federal agencies go through “extensive usability testing” as part of the evaluation and review of the technology and processes for each site, according to Sharpe. 

Sharpe shared that USA Staffing is currently working on new capabilities for high-volume hiring; he reported that the staffing system is collaborating with multiple agencies to support and understand the challenges that come with high-volume hiring. 

USA Staffing is looking to design new tools so HR professionals and hiring managers can more efficiently hire at scale. The new capabilities, according to Sharpe, will include expanded integrations for personnel processing and tracking systems, the ability for agency leaders to establish hiring goals and provide data to track progress. 

Sharpe said that these changes will help those responsible for hiring to have data flow across systems “without duplicative effort and reducing the risk of human error.” 

By providing data and offering the ability to establish hiring goals, Sharpe said agencies can report to Congress and identify areas in need of improvement as well as find “creative ways to connect high-quality applicants for federal jobs with managers who have the legal authority to hire them.”

NASA did not respond to FedScoop’s request for comment by the time of publication.

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The memo and guidance from OPM Director Kiran Ahuja, which was shared with FedScoop, summarizes the “considerable discretionary authority” that agencies have for pay, incentive pay, leave and workforce flexibility programs for AI and other key technical jobs, and includes tips for agencies seeking to use the incentives. 

Among the benefits noted in the guidance: Recruitment and retention incentives, student loan repayment, a higher annual leave accrual rate for certain positions, multiple mechanisms for allowing higher pay, alternative work schedules and remote work.

The guidance was required by President Joe Biden’s October executive order, which placed an emphasis on federal AI hiring and included plans for “a national surge in AI talent in the Federal Government.” As part of those efforts, OPM announced in December that it authorized direct-hire authority for AI positions in government to create more flexibility for recruitment.

“For the few flexibilities that require OPM approval — special rates, critical pay, and waivers of the recruitment, relocation, and retention incentive payment limits — we stand ready to assist agencies and respond to their requests for enhanced compensation tools,” the memo said.

The flexibilities OPM outlined include a recruitment incentive for new employees and a relocation incentive for existing employees in difficult-to-fill positions of up to 25% of basic pay times the number of years in a service agreement, with a maximum four years. The guidance noted that for both of those incentives, OPM’s approval of direct-hire authority can serve as an agency’s justification that a position is difficult to fill without any further evidence.

Agencies can also offer a retention incentive for certain workers who are likely to leave the federal government of up to 25% of basic pay for a single employee or 10% for a group. To qualify for that incentive, employees don’t have to have a job offer from outside the federal government, OPM said.

Already, agencies are working to attract AI talent quickly. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced a “hiring sprint” to build a team of 50 AI experts for its “AI Corps,” modeled after the U.S. Digital Service. That sprint, the agency said, will use OPM’s direct-hire authorization for AI positions to expedite and streamline the process.

Caroline Nihill contributed to this article. 

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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.

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All civilian agencies will adopt the National Contract Management Association’s (NCMA) Contract Management Standard (CMS), which means the new Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting (FAC-C) professional program will now match that of the Defense Department.

The CMS accreditation sets out clear definitions for every phase of a contract lifecycle, and is intended to improve the mobility of contracts between the Pentagon and civilian agencies.

“NCMA celebrates the increase in talent mobility in government that will come through adoption of our CMS,” said NCMA Chief Executive Officer Kraig Conrad in a statement. “Our members invested considerable resources to achieve American National Standard Institute approval of our standard and accreditation of our certifications. We are proud that the federal government recognizes their power.”

The NCMA, which was founded in 1959, is the largest association in the contract management field within the U.S. with more than 18,000 members.

Lesley Field, deputy administrator for federal procurement policy said the FAC-C (Professional) is designed to draw  more people into the federal contracting workforce from a variety of sources: universities, the industry, internal candidates, and state and local governments.

Contracting training is “critical to the success of important public priorities, such as advancing equity, promoting sustainability, increasing domestic sourcing, and ensuring our supply chains and cyber assets are secure,” Field said in a January 19 memo to chief acquisition officers and senior procurement executives in the government.

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Speaking Friday at a roundtable event with reporters, the agency’s CIO said it would appoint new staff as part of a wider scheme to hire 1000 new employees within its Office of Information and Technology.

The scheme will be used to hire new staff to work on technology transformation across a range of areas including the EHR program. Other areas where newly hired staff will work include financial accounting, supply chain and HR management systems.

appointing employees to jobs focused on transformation efforts including the update of financial accounting, supply chain and HR management systems, in addition to the EHR system.

He told FedScoop: “The EHR has been, as you rightly point out, a challenging project. We are already the largest Oracle Cerner customer in their EHR system. It is also a very complex environment with our medical centers and clinics across the U.S., and we are stressing Cerner in ways they had not been stressed before.”

DelBene added: “I think [the new EHR hires] will be able to focus our efforts in very clear ways, which is what product managers do great at which is here’s all the issues, here’s the underlying problems around those issues – now let’s get to a plan of attack that actually gets us the fastest possible improvement there,” he said.

New product managers brought in through the hiring scheme will be tasked with overseeing implementation of Oracle Cerner’s Millennium platform. The hiring scheme will use a new special salary rate for Technology workers, which is expected to be rolled out early next year.

“Let’s have them define a set of metrics around what great looks like that we’re going to track and we’re going to hold Oracle Cerner accountable for improving their performance as well,” DelBene added, commenting on the role of product managers.

According to DelBene, the VA will also use the lure of a remote-work environment to bring private sector talent to federal service.

The VA hopes that a new roster of product managers could help to hold Oracle Cerner accountable for IT system implementation through aggressive problem solving.

Since its initial rollout in October 2020, the Oracle Cerner EHR system has been roiled by outages and glitches that in some instances — including at a VA medical center in Spokane, Washington — have caused major harm to veterans.

In July, the VA led several federal agencies in submitting a Special Salary Rate (SSR) proposal to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), requesting a higher pay rate for federal IT management workers that fall under OPM’s 2210 occupational series.

The Special Salary Rate for cyber hires, if approved, would mark the first major governmentwide step to address its cyber workforce shortage.

DelBene said that OPM is expected to approve the new SSR pay hike by late January 2023.

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As part of the sprint, the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has established the first civilian federal cybersecurity apprenticeship program to provide a pathway to quickly hire underserved populations veterans into the federal government through cybersecurity roles. Through this new program, a cohort of 8-10 VA cyber apprentices will begin in February 2023.

In total, the sprint resulted in more than 7,000 cyber apprentices getting hired, of which over one-third were female and 42% were people of color. Out of the cyber apprentices hired, 1,000 were from the private sector.

The sprint was launched in July in a bid to alleviate a shortage in cyber employees. There have been massive challenges in hiring cybersecurity employees within the government due to a tight labor market and a severe shortage of skilled cyber engineers and analysts and the problem continues to get worse. 

Some federal agencies have even been forced to poach cybersecurity employees from other agencies in the federal government, the Commerce Department CIO André Mendes told FedScoop earlier this year.

CyberSeek, a recruiting website for cybersecurity jobs in the U.S., funded by the Commerce Department, says that in the public sector or the government, there are 47,114 vacant cyber jobs and 72,599 cybersecurity experts currently employed.

The Labor Department’s cyber sprint, which aimed to help solve this talent gap, was created in coordination with the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, Defense, and other federal agencies. The largest cybersecurity registered apprenticeship program was sponsored by the Defense Department’s United Services Military Apprenticeship Program (USMAP).

The Sprint was also driven by federal agencies’ partnerships with major private sector companies like Cisco, CompTIA, McDonald’s, and IBM along with community groups like Howard Community College and Island Mountain Development Group.

There has been a huge surge in cybersecurity job openings within the private sector in the past year following a series of massive attacks in the last two years on the computer systems of the federal government, the Colonial Pipeline, and the meat producer JBS that have brought mainstream awareness to the need for increased cybersecurity within the government and the private sector.

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According to David Shive, GSA saw enough good business outcomes with Federal Acquisition Service systems that CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation (COMET) task orders are now being placed for Public Buildings Service and corporate systems, as well as shared services.

The agency rapidly added eight additional small businesses, offering new and enabling technologies, to COMET in December because some of the 12 initial awardees grew into mid- or large-size businesses from work on the blanket purchase agreement (BPA), mergers and acquisitions.

“I don’t know if any have been accepted yet,” Shive said during an ACT-IAC webinar. “But I suspect they are very aggressively submitting bids against the vehicle.”

GSA wants an entire listing portfolio of COMET industry partners, he added.

The agency is also piloting ways to outcompete the private sector and other parts of the government on hiring.

“We’re looking at some accelerators, such as doing instant offers, having events where we can literally have technologists, people who are domain experts, interview people on the spot and give them a conditional offer for employment at GSA,” Shive said.

That pilot occurred in Chicago and will shift to Washington in the next couple of months.

GSA is further using data analytics to improve human resources’ recruitment work and “knee deep” in data science modernization on the financial side, Shive said.

“It’s no great surprise that a well-run finance shop uses data as an enabler and a force multiplier for the limited dollars that we have,” he said. “They stretch us as an IT shop.”

The effort includes funding for tooling and capabilities but also training to maximize those investments.

Without proper visibility into IT work, GSA can’t accelerate projects that are lagging, continue those that are working or kill technologies failing to deliver enough value. That requires project, program and product management expertise, on top of retrospectives ensuring they met goals and sharing best practices, Shive said.

“We have something called an app graveyard, where we actually have a big board that has little tombstones with the names of the projects and apps on it; last I checked there were 60 or something on it,” Shive said. “It’s been around a little while, but we do that; we shut stuff down.”

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Agencies are being encouraged to evaluate job candidates based on their knowledge, rather than whether that knowledge came by a four-year degree. The guidance includes an updated General Schedule Qualifications Operating Manual; qualifications, assessment and hiring FAQs; and a new Guide to Better Occupational Questionnaires.

Federal hiring historically relied on education and candidate self-assessments to determine a potential hire’s ability to perform in a job. In June 2020, then-President Trump issued an executive order to modernize the process, an initiative that the Biden administration is advancing.

“At U.S. Digital Service, we have from the beginning used the skills-based hiring approach to identify and hire talent, as it has become the standard approach in the technology sector, based on its ability to hire skilled professionals no matter their formal background,” said Administrator Mina Hsiang in the announcement. “This hiring practice will also expand the government’s reach with diverse and historically unrepresented candidates, as well as increase the number of individuals with the right skills and experience to do the important work.”

USDS has a diverse, inclusive staff due to skills-based hiring, Hsiang said.

In fact, USDS was instrumental in introducing the Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessment (SMEQA) job application process for data scientists now being customized by the State Department.

NASA uses competency-based talent assessments to hire everyone from interns to astronauts, and the Department of Homeland Security has a multi-hurdle assessment process to evaluate candidates for IT positions.

OPM updated the General Schedule Qualifications Operating Manual to apply minimum qualification requirements and use passing grade assessments, and the Guide to Better Occupational Questionnaires will improve their rigor by having agencies meet professional standards.

The agency plans to offer sessions and further guidance and tools as part of the Federal Assessment Strategy Initiative, as well as optional, hands-on human resources solutions implementation support for other agencies.

OPM is also working with teams to establish job positions and track progress toward agencies’ hiring goals.

“Given today’s booming labor market, the federal government must position itself to compete with other sectors for top talent,” said OPM Director Kiran Ahuja in a statement. “By focusing on what an applicant can do — and not where they learned to do it — skills-based hiring will expand talent pools by making it easier for applicants without a bachelor’s degree to demonstrate their skills and will help remove barriers to employment for historically under-represented groups.”

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Together the Center for Analytics and Bureau of Global Talent Management will host a webinar in early April on a new Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessment, through which qualified applicants will be certified to work at the participating bureau of their choosing.

The qualification will be similar to the one the U.S. Digital Service, Office of Personnel Management and Federal Chief Data Officers Council rolled out on behalf of 10 agencies in January 2021 with subject matter experts reviewing condensed resumes, a written assessment, a multiple-choice questionnaire with some technical questions and conducting structured interviews.

“People have to demonstrate in a fair way these quant skills, which takes more work up front,” Garrett Berntsen, deputy CDO for the State Department, told FedScoop. “But you get people with the hard skills, and then you can still have further discussions with them about team fit following the test.”

A lot more department bureaus want to participate in mid-April when State’s Center for Analytics (CfA) posts a yet-to-be-finalized position description for data scientist positions. This will seek candidates with skills in core math and statistics; written, verbal and visual communication of analyses; and data cleaning and engineering, Berntsen said.

Participating agencies have until April 1, 2022, to hire qualifiers off the original joint hiring announcement certification, or cert, but the State Department finished onboarding the last of its 15 data scientists hired that route the week of March 14.

Several other bureaus hired about 10 data scientists total, after helping craft position descriptions and conduct 500 resume reviews with the CfA and the other department divisions.

“We were looking for people with programming skills, who could do statistics but also understood the mission of the department and could apply data and data science to foreign policy and mission challenges — which is mostly what our office tackles,” Berntsen said.

About 90 of the 100 candidates the State Department sought were interested, boasting backgrounds in tech, consulting, campaigns and media and representing diverse races, ages, genders and sexual orientations.

The State Department made its first hires in the summer, with on-the-job training starting immediately, but the process wasn’t without hiccups. Berntsen detailed many of these in a Twitter thread earlier this month, including the fact new hires had to wait for their security clearances.

Despite the fact relatively young data scientists were hired at the competitive General Schedule-13 and 14 pay grades, most still took salary cuts.

Private sector hires had to adjust to more limited technology access and State Department leadership not always buying into data-based diplomacy, Berntsen said.

On the other hand trust is inherently higher with data scientists who are civil servants rather than contractors, and new hires hit the ground running with leadership opportunities available to them, Berntsen said.

Data scientist hires made by State’s CfA broadly focus on one of two areas: diversity, equity, inclusion- and accessibility related data analysis or strategic competition with China. But the team was also tapped to assist with the response to the Afghanistan retrograde.

“Some of our new team members, their very first day, were thrown in to support what’s called the Afghanistan Task Force that was stood up in July and August of last year,” Berntsen said.

The work involved supplying State Department leadership with data analyses on the situation and assets on the ground.

CfA is also assisting the department’s Operations Center as the situation in Ukraine evolves post-Russian invasion.

“Some [task forces] require more quantitative analysis and tracking, and others don’t,” Berntsen said. “But we definitely support that mission as well.”

When the Biden administration released its modernization agenda for the State Department, it placed an emphasis on acquiring the best talent, skills and information.

CfA has focused “a lot of energy” on addressing its talent gap, Berntsen said.

“It all starts with good candidates applying,” he said. “And you have to communicate and talk outwardly about the great opportunity of serving in government in data and tech roles.”

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Ahuja recently signed off on “critical” pay increases for a couple of cyber positions to keep pace with other agencies, she said, during a National Academy of Public Administration webinar Friday.

Pressure to hire more cyber professionals only increased after President Biden issued supply chain and cybersecurity executive orders requiring agencies to get a better handle on where their hardware and software comes from and implement zero-trust security architectures.

“We know this particular occupation is in huge demand across all the different agencies,” Ahuja said. “There’s just a challenge around equalizing the playing field.”

OPM also has an obligation to ensure other organizations can hire top talent as well, which is why the agency is preparing to launch a USAJobs.gov website for key infrastructure hiring governmentwide. The Infrastructure Implementation Task Force — established by executive order on Nov. 15 to coordinate implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — includes OPM for this reason.

Agency leadership is further considering the feasibility of creating a centralized portal on USAJobs.gov for publicizing federal and third-party internship and fellowship programs onboarding early career talent. That’s in addition to a Workforce of 2030 initiative that would expand the Future of Work website among other efforts.

The success of all of these endeavors will hinge on OPM’s ability to modernize its IT systems, Ahuja said.

OPM wants to update its retirement calculator and pilot a retirement application, and the agency submitted a Technology Modernization Fund project proposal to upgrade its health benefits comparison tool so people can shop around for plans more easily.

Backend IT systems aren’t readily apparent to OPM’s customers but also badly need security upgrades likely to come later, Ahuja said.

“We’re still sitting on a host of legacy systems and so slowly making the move to more cloud-based systems within our agency,” she said. “That’s just going to take time to do.”

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