“Although the Login.gov team is researching facial recognition technology and conducting equity and accessibility studies, GSA has made the decision for now not to use facial recognition, liveness detection, or any other emerging technology in connection with government benefits and services until rigorous review has given us confidence that we can do so equitably and without causing harm to vulnerable populations,” said Dave Zvenyach, director of TTS, in a statement provided to FedScoop.

“There are a number of ways to authenticate identity using other proofing approaches that protect privacy and ensure accessibility and equity.”

Login.gov ensures users are properly authenticated for agencies’ services and verifies identities, and the Technology Transformation Services team that manages it is also studying facial recognition equity and accessibility.

GSA‘s methodical evaluation of the technology contrasts with that of the IRS, which announced Monday that it would transition away from using ID.me‘s service for verifying new online accounts after the company disclosed it lied about relying on 1:many facial recognition — a system proven to pose greater risks of inaccuracy and racial bias.

Login.gov currently collects a photo of a state-issued ID and other personally identifiable information, which are validated against authoritative data sources. The last step involves either sending a text message to the user’s phone number or a letter to their address containing a code that must be provided to Login.gov to complete identity verification.

More than 60 applications across 17 agencies — including USAJOBS at the Office of Personnel Management and the Paycheck Protection and Disaster Loan Application programs at the Small Business Administration — use Login.gov, encompassing more than 17 million users.

GSA’s rejection of facial recognition for Login.gov was first reported by The Washington Post, but the technology is most certainly in the agency’s, and the government’s, future.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is crafting an Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights to protect people from technology infringements and focused its initial request for information on biometrics like facial recognition.

While OSTP’s definition of biometrics needs refining, not all facial recognition algorithms are prejudicially biased. Technical and operational bias also exist and don’t necessarily lead to inequitable outcomes.

“There are not direct correlations between technical and operational biases and prejudicial bias,” Duane Blackburn, science and technology lead at MITRE‘s Center for Data-Driven Policy, told FedScoop in January. “Even though in a lot of policy analyses they’re treated as equivalent.”

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In fields where the government also faces a widening skills gap, such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI), the loss of valuable institutional knowledge could exacerbate the problems the skills shortage creates. The United States must act quickly because its strategic competitors are turning toward cyber- and AI-enabled means to prepare for future confrontations. Without a robust, well-trained cadre of federal employees, this country has little chance of keeping up in the ongoing technological arms race.

To keep mission-critical positions staffed, the executive and legislative branches are exploring strategies to attract more young federal employees. Despite these efforts, youth representation in government remains low. At the end of 2018, nearly 24 percent of the U.S. labor force was under age 30. The federal workforce? Only 6 percent.

To make youth recruitment more effective, the Biden administration will need to craft a strategy that speaks to the target demographic’s needs. Heightened attention should be given to Generation Z. This group of digital natives is poised to help close the talent gap — that is, if the government can reel them in.

Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Zers are on track to become the best-educated generation with 57 percent enrolled in a two-year or four-year college. And nearly one in every five applications submitted by Gen Zers are for software engineering jobs, which are instrumental in both the cyber and AI fields. While their predilections for technology and higher education make them ideal candidates, most Gen Zers are flocking to the private sector instead of government.

As expected, national-level initiatives have focused on macro-level solutions to curb the government’s high-tech talent shortfall. If agencies do not account for more tactical, candidate-centric changes that must be made, such impediments will remain a fixed barrier and dampen any progress made through legislation or policy. Most federal workforce proposals push for big-ticket items, including security clearance reform and expanded hiring authorities, but prospective candidates also have their own unique needs that must be addressed.

Place yourself in the shoes of a current college student searching for employment during a global pandemic. You were savvy enough to major in cybersecurity (a field that has consistently experienced zero percent unemployment rates). But when logging on to USAJOBS, the federal government’s primary hiring portal, you discover there are currently just six cybersecurity openings for recent grads nationwide. Is it any wonder that the public sector actually suffers from a deficit of 30,000 cyber workers?

Updating online job announcements may seem like an inconsequential priority when it comes to closing the federal workforce gap, but micro-level impediments can stack up and deter qualified applicants. Mitigating the roadblocks from a job seeker’s perspective — small as they may seem — will make it easier for students to secure federal jobs.

The government must adapt its approach anew. This is not to say that the more than 60 recommendations made by the Trump White House and Congress on improving the AI and cyber workforce should be wholly abandoned. The suggestions put forth by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission set the foundation for progress. But there are still numerous candidate roadblocks to clear.

For example, a common recommendation for bolstering federal talent is the expansion of scholarship-for-service programs where, in exchange for a term of service, the government helps students finance their education in priority fields like cybersecurity and AI. However, increasing the number of scholarship offerings does not guarantee students will pounce on the opportunity. Such opportunities are difficult to find online unless a candidate knows where to look. They are spread across multiple, and sometimes outdated, agency websites, shifting the burden onto students to chase down pertinent information.

Once a student completes a scholarship obligation and has integrated into the federal workforce, there’s a new challenge: professional development. Some may wish to pursue an advanced degree, building upon foundational technical knowledge. Unfortunately, there is no discernable guidance on enrolling in a federal scholarship-for-service opportunity more than once. In reality, programs like CyberCorps have a statutory limitation on funding years available per candidate. As these cohorts develop within government, agencies should continue cultivating the existing talent pool and encourage dedicated federal employees to stay.

Irina Novoselsky, CEO of CareerBuilder, notes that in recent years there has been a “significant shift of power from employers to candidates” and that “the fight for talent is only going to become more intense.” In a tight hiring market, organizations that fail to put their employees first run the risk of losing out on key talent. If the public sector wants to recruit younger workers, compete with private industry for AI and cyber talent, and close its workforce deficits, it must adopt a more candidate-centric approach that addresses the lived experience of students applying for jobs in the federal government.

Cindy Martinez has been serving as a Semester Research Analyst working on the CyberAI Project at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University. She was also a recipient of the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service in 2012.

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OPM‘s top priority is evaluating the interface that links the website with agencies’ talent acquisition systems (TASs). Then the agency can decide where applicant information and documents should best be collected: USAJOBS or an agency’s TAS.

Agency officials told GAO  that common complaints from applicants involved challenges with uploading documents. Separately the Department of Justice reported collecting resumes, human resources forms and veterans’ discharge papers twice through USAJOBS.

“OPM officials said that they have given this issue a lot of attention and that reducing redundant documentation requirements to enhance user experience is an ongoing effort,” reads the report to Congress. “OPM expects to continue working on these changes and to deploy incremental changes as part of regular updates to USAJOBS.”

Improvements to search

OPM also plans to test a search capability in fiscal 2021 that will allow job seekers to see recommended opportunities based on their stated skills. Testing will occur on the Open Opportunities section first, before being added to the main USAJOBS site, according to GAO.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is also working with OPM to streamline veterans’ preference adjudication in fiscal 2021 by allowing them to import and verify data on military service and disability into USAJOBS. The system would then automatically assess veterans’ eligibility for categories of preference, inform them of the positions and send results to the relevant agencies if they claimed preference. Hiring agencies will no longer need to manually adjudicate claims, per the report.

A final update OPM is making is adding a “job status” indicator to every announcement in early fiscal 2021 for improved transparency and accountability. The indicator will be publicly displayed and accessible, detailing the date the announcement closed, number of applicants and number of people selected, according to GAO.

OPM has been developing the capability since at least November, when officials told FedScoop of “lots of complications behind the scenes” hindering regular job status updates — namely the lack of alignment between USAJOBS and each agency’s TAS. 

GAO found OPM generally tracks key website performance measures suggested by Digital.gov like page views, percentage of users using search and overall customer experience since USAJOBS’s 2016 redesign. OPM also surveys users about their USAJOBS experience in accordance with Office of Management and Budget guidance, in addition to performing its own usability testing, focus groups and analysis of data from help desk submissions.

OPM determined that USAJOBS user experience varied when it came to the job search and application process, prompting the creation of the Hiring Paths feature in 2017 describing eligibility and guiding job seekers.

More recently OPM shifted to a more secure login method; added search filters and keyword autocomplete; reduced duplication and jargon in job announcements; provided job seekers guidance on applying and federal hiring authorities; and highlighted jobs linked to COVID-19 pandemic response.

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USAJOBS’s mission-critical code allows agencies to tag COVID-19-related job announcements so potential applicants can easily sort through all related opportunities.

Agencies will continue to publicly post response positions across a wide range of careers, according to OPM.

“Visitors to USAJOBS can quickly find opportunities that will have a direct impact on the American people and the federal government’s response to COVID-19,” said Michael Rigas, acting director of OPM, in the announcement.

OPM is also working with agencies to allow current federal employees to join the coronavirus response effort for up to six months through short-term, developmental assignments. In particular, licensed health care providers currently serving in non-clinical positions and employees with healthcare backgrounds are being encouraged to apply to Open Opportunities.

The Office of Management and Budget told agencies to minimize face-to-face interactions and focus on “mission-critical” work in a March memo.

OPM subsequently issued another memo asking agencies to temporarily expand their use of videoconferencing and e-signature tools to hire and onboard new employees. Onboarding and training should be done remotely as well, with chief information officers tasked with choosing the best tool for their agencies in each circumstance, wrote Rigas in the memo.

The USAJOBS program has been working on improving applicants’ visibility into the federal hiring process with job status updates, irrespective of the coronavirus, since the start of the fiscal year.

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The Office of Personnel Management hopes these status updates will help with a compounded problem set it faces in managing federal hiring through USAJOBS. Half of the jobs posted on USAJOBS.gov go without selections being made, in part, because applicants overestimate their skills when asked to self-assess — a problem the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) is working to fix.

And on top of that, the competition for open jobs is fierce: The USAJOBS system sees 18 million applications started annually for about 350,000 announced positions. Data from the talent acquisition system USA Staffing showed only 340,000 selections made out of 11.3 million applications processed, a mere 3 percent.

“That gives you a sense for the high-stakes nature of federal employment and why it may feel like a ‘black hole’ because of the steep competition,” Dianna Saxman, deputy associate director of human resources solutions (HRS) within OPM, told FedScoop.

USAJOBS already updates applicants on their application status depending on grades, which refers to the General Schedule pay scale, and locations, which vary between its 130 agency customers.

But there are “lots of complications behind the scenes” that hinder regular updates, said Michelle Earley, program manager of USAJOBS.

Job announcements may generate numerous certificates if they’re posted in multiple grades or locations.

“Trying to roll that back up into a status has been challenging,” Earley said. “In some cases, HR just didn’t press the button to send that forward. And then there are other situations where the messages are being delivered from the talent acquisition system, and it’s just not getting updated on USAJOBS.”

A “concerted effort” is underway to fix those problems, she added.

Adding a job status update in addition to the application update would mean applicants are notified when a position closes and can see how many people applied compared to the number selected. The update would be accessible at any time in the future.

“USAJOBS depends on the agencies to provide updates, and because of the complexity not all agencies send their updates to USAJOBS,” Saxman said. “Wherein this case USAJOBS would automatically update those, and it would be part of closing the case.”

As for problems with applicant self-assessments watering down the hiring pool, USDS piloted pass-fail assessments conducted by two subject matter experts (SMEs). OPM’s Office of Human Resources Solutions is working with USDS to automate the SME process as much as possible within USA Staffing, using a prototype still in development at the Office of Management and Budget.

Applicants deemed qualified by SMEs are added to certificates that a few agencies already share through talent acquisition systems, but not many.

“We’re still evaluating the requirements to see if it makes sense to keep that within talent acquisition systems, to elevate it to USAJOBS, or use some other resources,” Saxman said.

Talent acquisition data analytics is another evolving area at OPM. Systems now capture data on recruitment sources, applicant flow, demographics at each stage of the hiring process, the ratio of qualified to unqualified applicants, assessment score distributions, and hiring manager satisfaction.

“We’re in a far better place now than we’ve ever been to actually look at this large, complex dataset and start doing analysis that will drive better behaviors, better decisions, as it relates to federal hiring,” Saxman said.

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OPM’s talent acquisition system USA Staffing is used by more than 70 customer agencies. That includes the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, parts of Interior and Homeland Security, and agencies as small as the American Battle Monuments Commission.

At the end of fiscal 2018, the program finished decommissioning its legacy system and moving all agency customers over to an upgraded platform. The new-and-improved USA Staffing makes better use of underlying data and sports redesigned interfaces used by about 7,400 HR specialists, 80,000 hiring managers and 200,000 job applicants a week.

“It was really a dance between the legacy and new systems, on the [chief information officer] side, to reduce costs for hardware, reduce our software costs and reduce people costs,” MC Price, program manager at OPM, told FedScoop in an exclusive interview. “And we did that gradually to avoid having to charge customers more money for that new system.”

Servers were dropped as customers were migrated, and members of the legacy team were reskilled in the agile approach to software development, Price said.

Agency customers also had to adapt to the continuous delivery model, but now OPM deploys new USA Staffing features and changes every four weeks with no downtime for job applicants, said Bridget Dongarra, program manager for USA Staffing.

The program recently added position classification functionality for human resources users, and that will be expanded to hiring managers this fiscal year, Dongarra said. Last month, hiring managers were given the ability to search through a position description library, and soon they’ll be able to receive and review draft descriptions electronically and provide edits.

USA Staffing integrates programmatically and technically with 15 HR systems including the USAJOBS federal hiring portal and USA Hire platform for advanced assessments of applicants. And the program is eyeing 14 more.

On tap for this year are DHS’s employment verification system, E-Verify, and the Pentagon’s NBIS — being developed to expedite the issuance and review of security clearances.

E-Verify is being tested in USA Staffing’s stage environment, while NBIS remains in the negotiation phase.

“NBIS is going to be publishing an integration standard that we’ll adhere to, but I have a commitment from them that this is on their roadmap for FY 2020,” Dongarra said.

USA Staffing is also partnering with USAJOBS to streamline the application process and create a time-to-hire data warehouse.

“There’s really an underutilization of talent acquisition data in government,” Dongarra said. “There’s a lot of rich data out there, but there’s a lack of expertise and experience in turning that data into insights and actionable policy — or even just business process, you know, setting aside regulation and policy.”

Alongside the U.S. Digital Service, USA Staffing is working to automate the panel review process that selects qualified candidates for review by hiring managers. And Dongarra said she’d like to tackle “bottlenecks” in the pre-employment phase like vetting.

The addition of a single sign-on has allowed for a more “consistent” experience as applicants move from a job posting on USAJOBS to USA Staffing’s hiring process to, in certain cases, an assessment delivered through USA Hire, Dongarra said. USA Staffing handles much of the data integration facilitating assessments including returning scores.

A cadre of about 200 HR data analysts at OPM undergo two-day, online training, in addition to being part of a monthly user group and sharing extensible markup language to promulgate best practices.

Another aspect of federal hiring that stands to improve is content management, Dongarra said.

“I think there are a lot of tools for managing that well in the automated system,” she said. “But the environmental assessment of good writing, good organization and high-quality assessment content is still a lack that we’re working with other stakeholders here at OPM to help agency customers improve.”

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So she went to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University just to become a presidential management fellow.

“The problem I saw was that people actually couldn’t get in,” Grosser said at a National Academy of Public Administration event Tuesday. “And when I came into government, more than anything, I dreamt of being able to open that hood and look into what’s happening to figure out why people aren’t getting through.”

A decade later, she has her wish working as a “bureaucracy hacker” for the U.S. Digital Service. The Office of Personnel Management‘s then Acting Director Margaret Weichert called on her to lead a team of USDS experts focused on making the federal hiring process more fair and open.

Particularly, the federal government’s hiring website USAJOBS has proven a “black hole” for applicants and hiring managers seeking qualified recruits — with up to 50 percent of jobs posted on the website going without any selections made, Grosser said.

Only 20 percent of government jobs are now hired through a competitive, public process as hiring managers have learned to work around requirements like veterans’ preference, according to USDS.

In the last six months, USDS has run pilots with the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Park Service testing an alternative, underused hiring assessment in the selection of IT personnel at the General Schedule-13 level — meaning a college degree wasn’t necessary.

“When we came in, we said time [to hire] was important, but if the quality of the lists for hiring managers to select from isn’t high enough, and you’re canceling certificates, the amount of time it took to get there doesn’t matter,” Grosser said.

Under the current USAJOBS process, an applicant is considered qualified if they have a federal resume — a document that can span up to 60 pages listing accomplishments for human resources to evaluate — and pass a self-assessment questionnaire. People who list themselves as an expert in every skill area get qualified, even if they’re lying, Grosser said.

But when hiring managers see the list of everyone who qualified for a position and realize many don’t qualify, they abandon the process, she added.

Rather than reforming civil service legislatively, Grosser’s team suggested replacing the self-assessment with a pass-fail assessment of applicants against IT job requirements consisting of two interviews.

USDS brought subject matter experts, or SMEs, together with HR teams at both pilot agencies to establish IT job requirements and solicit two-page resumes. SMEs reviewed each resume and used them to determine which applicants would go on to the interview phase.

Applicants who passed two interviews with SMEs would be certified and added to the list of qualified individuals for the hiring manager to choose from.

Out of 165 HHS applicants 36 were considered qualified, and seven people were selected for IT jobs. At NPS, 25 applicants qualified out of 224 that applied including four veterans. The Department of the Interior, which oversees NPS, only had seven vacancies listed but made 13 selections from the applicant pool.

Those who qualified consisted of federal employees, contractors, private sector applicants, people under age 30, women and minorities. And even though the process took 50 to 60 hours, SMEs said they would do it again, Grosser said.

Historically the average time to selection between the two agencies was 47 days, but hiring managers at HHS took 11 days and DOI took 16 days to make their selections off of certificates using the new process.

As for the applicants that qualified for NPS jobs but weren’t hired, DOI is trying to figure out how to share the certificate departmentwide so any of its agencies can hire one of the IT specialists, rather than starting from scratch, Grosser said.

USDS is currently running a roadshow to all 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies in an effort to scale use of the process.

Most agencies are at a place where they only want to share certificates among a handful of their own offices, but Grosser is thinking bigger.

“We’re actually going to be testing this process for a governmentwide hiring action in the customer experience field to see how that works,” she said. “To see if agencies would be willing to share SMEs and select off a shared certificate.”

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It’s a win for the government single sign-on project created by 18F and the U.S. Digital Service. USAJobs is the portal’s fifth and biggest use case to date.

USAJobs Program Manager Michelle Earley cited Login.gov’s security as a decisive element in its favor.

“A major reason USAJobs will be transitioning to login.gov is because it uses two-factor authentication, which will give users an extra layer of security to help protect their USAJobs profile against password compromises,” Earley said in a statement.

“We are very excited to partner with USAJobs and use login.gov’s platform to further USAJobs mission of serving millions of job seekers,” Joel Minton, director of login.gov at GSA, said.

Outside of USAJobs, login.gov is currently used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection for its jobs site, its Trusted Traveler Program and its Outlying Area Reporting Stations app. Login.gov is also in use by a USDS internal tool.

According to a press release, “several other agencies” are getting ready to deploy login.gov to their users as well.

One of the key benefits of login.gov is that it is a single sign-on solution, which means that users can use the same email address and password to sign into any government website. This value, however, only becomes truly meaningful as a critical mass of agencies begin to use login.gov on their websites.

“With USAJobs and CBP Jobs both utilizing our platform, we now have the first set of users using the same login.gov account to access different government services,” Minton said in a statement. “The sharing of logins will continue to increase as we bring on more agencies and will result in a more seamless user experience and costs savings to both agencies and taxpayers.”

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The agency is seeking an “experienced technical executive and an inspirational leader” for the role, the listing on USAJobs states.

The role of USPTO CIO has been empty in an official capacity since Nov. 3, when former CIO John Owens left the agency. In an interview prior to his departure, Owens spoke about being proactive in modernization and embracing failure.

“Any CIO who tells you that they don’t have a failed project is probably not challenging themselves,” Owens said at the time. After ending his nearly 10 year tenure in government, Owens announced that he has joined CGI as the vice president of the solutions development group within the company’s federal emerging technology practice.

Meanwhile, USPTO is looking to fill the post with a “results driven, service-centered, and people oriented individual to lead the USPTO OCIO team into the future.” The application will be open through March 11.

Filling the role will likely be one of incoming USPTO Director Andrei Iancu’s first tasks upon entering office. The Senate is set to vote for his confirmation sometime soon. The office has been without a permanent director since Michelle Lee left last June.

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The centerpiece of the new initiative, announced today at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is the website, USTechVets.org.

Powered by Monster.com, the site provides a wide range of job search tools designed specifically for veterans, including a military skills translator to match each veteran’s skills, training and collateral duties to civilian jobs; a searchable database of jobs in the technology sector; and educational resources to help veterans develop skills to thrive in a private sector career.

USTechVets.org member companies also receive free access to Monster’s database of more than 800,000 veteran resumes, powered by Monster’s 6Sense semantic search technology. Employers also can automatically or directly post their jobs to the site, which veterans can search.

“NVTC member companies believe overall workforce development is one of the greatest long-term challenges facing our technology community,” said NVTC president and CEO Bobbie Kilberg in a statement. “Through the combined power of the organizations involved in this initiative, we hope to accelerate veterans’ transition to civilian life by providing access to thousands of employment opportunities across the technology sector and the tools and resources they need to succeed.”

More than 1 million veterans are expected to begin transitioning out of the military to civilian life in the next three years. Recent unemployment data from the Council of Economic Advisers show the unemployment rate for recent veterans is hovering at 10 percent, with more than 240,000 post-9/11 veterans out of work.

In addition to disability and lack of civilian work experience, one of the major obstacles veterans have faced when trying to land a job has been the difficulty of finding civilian jobs that match their military training and experience, and then navigating through complex licensing and hiring procedures in many industries.

“Veterans with the right mix of business, communication and technical skills can find rewarding careers in the tech industry,” said Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA, one of the major industry associations lending its support to USTechVets.org. “In the past two years, some 16,000 veterans have earned nearly 22,000 CompTIA certifications. These IT skills certifications can be a first step in transitioning from active duty to civilian life.”

Merlin Guilbeau, executive director and CEO of the Electronic Security Association, characterized the partnership with Monster.com as “an effort to create the largest collection of veteran job candidates and open technology industry jobs.” According to Guilbeau, ESA member companies often complain finding and hiring quality talent “is a continuous challenge.”

Joining CEA and NVTC in this effort are:

• Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association
• Central Station Alarm Association
• CompTIA, Electronic Security Association
• National Association of Broadcasters
• Professional Services Council
• Security Industry Association
• Telecommunications Industry Association
• Wireless Infrastructure Association

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