“We do not block AI any more than we block general internet access,” Howard Spira, chief information officer of Ex-Im, said during a Thursday panel discussion hosted by the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC).

Spira said the agency is approaching generative tools with discussions about accountability and best practices, such as not inputting private information into tools like ChatGPT or other public large language models. “But frankly, that is just an evolution of policies that we’ve had with respect to just even search queries on the general internet,” Spira said.

He emphasized the importance of context in AI usage, noting that the agency — whose mission is facilitating U.S. exports — deals with the kinds of decisions that it believes are “a relatively low-risk environment” for AI. Most of the work the agency is doing with AI is with “embedded AI” that’s within its existing environments, such as those for cyber and infrastructure monitoring.

“We’re also actually encouraging our staff to play with this,” Spira said.

His comments come as agencies across the federal government have grappled with how to address the use of generative AI tools by employees and contractors. Those policies have so far varied by agency depending on their individual needs and mission, according to FedScoop reporting.

While some agencies have taken a permissive approach like Ex-Im, others are approaching the tools with more caution.

Jennifer Diamantis, special counsel to the chief artificial intelligence officer in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Information Technology Strategy and Innovation, said during the panel that the SEC isn’t jumping into third-party generative AI tools yet, citing unknowns and risks. 

There is, however, a lot of exploration, learning, safe testing and making sure guardrails are followed, Diamantis said. She added that while the agency is exploring the technical side, there is also an opportunity right now to explore the process, policy and compliance side of things to make sure they’re ready to manage risks if and when they do move forward with the technology. 

Diamantis, who noted she wasn’t speaking for the commission or commissioners, encouraged people to use this time to focus not just on the technology, “but also, what do you need in terms of governance? What do you need in terms of updating your lifecycle process? What do you need in terms of upskilling, training for staff?”

In addition to exploration, the SEC is also educating its staff on AI. Diamantis said those efforts have included trainings — such as a recent one on responsible AI — and having outside speakers, as well as establishing an AI community of practice and a user group.

Spira similarly noted that Ex-Im has working groups addressing AI and is including discussions about the technology in its continuous strategy process. This year, that process for its IT portfolio included having “the portfolio owners identify potential use cases that they were interested in exploring” and the identification of embedded use cases, he said.

Tony Holmes, another panelist and Pluralsights’s director of public sector presales solution consulting for North America, underscored the importance of broad training on AI to build a workforce that isn’t afraid of the technology. 

“I know when I talk to people in my organization, when I talk to people at agencies, there are a lot of people that just haven’t touched it because they’re like, ‘we’re not sure about it and we’re a little bit scared of it,’’’ Holmes said. Exposure, he added, can help those people “understand it’s not scary” and “can be very productive.”

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In a recent FedScoop survey, 8 in 10 federal CIOs, budget officials and human capital managers surveyed said they are moderately or highly concerned about being able to replenish their IT staffs with a younger generation of talent that is trained in these modern technologies. And 46% indicated that a key opportunity to improve IT workforce development lies in prioritizing funding to support upskilling or reskilling opportunities.

That’s one reason agencies should lean on data analytics tools to establish more proactive skills development programs, says Brandon Peay, executive vice president of skills at Pluralsight, a company that provides online skill development training. A former team leader at Bain & Company, Peay espouses the need for “democratizing tech skills.” He shared his perspective with FedScoop on how data-driven tools can help agencies meet their most urgent IT skills needs.

FedScoop: What steps can agencies take to properly gauge, and not merely guess, what skills they have, and what skills they need, for workforce planning?

Brandon Peay, Executive VP, Skills, Pluralsight

Peay: Those organizations which find the most success with talent development take a strategic approach that includes mechanisms to precisely measure the skills of individuals within the organization. From a measurement perspective, the use of smart, dynamic assessments — such as Pluralsight’s Skill IQ assessments — is critical to not only measure their knowledge base, but also to provide a customized learning path to help the individual accelerate their development plans.

By working with skills development partners, organizations can deliver data-driven insights that track individual assessments, provide analytics on where skills gaps may exist and show how skillsets align to the team’s larger goals. In our experience, as organizations take this strategic data-driven approach they are able to get better results out of their upskilling efforts and deliver services to customers and team members faster.

What makes “skilling up” teams an essential component of workforce planning, versus trying to acquire and retain skills?

One of the biggest challenges facing any enterprise organization today is keeping pace with the rapidly changing innovations in technology. As innovation accelerates and demand for more mobile and distributed services increases, skills gaps can arise pretty quickly. It’s extremely difficult for organizations to hire their way out of a skills gap. Oftentimes it’s expensive to attract and retain top talent with the requisite skills — especially for emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning, data science, cloud computing, or cybersecurity. And that’s assuming that you can find candidates that have the skills you’re looking for.

By taking a wider approach with a focus on building the skill sets for current team members, organizations are able to close skills gaps in a more cost effective and strategic manner. Providing a standardized and strategic upskilling program from technology teams can lead to significant improvements in outcomes down the line.

How has the pandemic and the push to remote work potentially created a new opportunity to rethink workforce planning?

The pandemic has accelerated a number of digital transformation efforts, including the push to remote work. We have seen a number of customers take advantage of this dynamic by focusing more efforts on upskilling — especially when it comes to ensuring that technology organizations can deliver the business-critical services demanded by a distributed workforce.

We are working with a number of forward-thinking organizations to help them implement remote, on-demand upskilling solutions that map to current projects and help them accomplish more despite the constraints that remote working can place on technology teams.

What should agencies consider as they look to bolster support for online skill development?

Agencies should consider a number of factors to support skills development efforts. First, it’s essential to choose a program that is scalable and virtual. With remote work now becoming routine, upskilling efforts need to be on-demand, self-paced, and accessible from anywhere. Agencies should also consider the need to provide hands-on learning opportunities — especially for large critical projects such as cloud computing implementations. Hands-on learning in sandbox environments can dramatically accelerate skill development in the areas that can carry the most impact to the organization.

Finally, agencies should ensure that all upskilling efforts are able to meet the specific demands inherent in individual learning, team learning and wide-scale organizational strategic learning efforts. Whether it’s individuals looking to expand their skill sets in specific programming languages like Python or JavaScript, teams looking for virtual instructor-led classroom training time that aligns to specific projects, or large programs that align to massive multi-year initiatives such as digital transformation, agencies should look for skill development partners can meet all of those needs — and do it at scale.

Learn more about building more robust IT skills plans to better equip the agency to meet modernizations goals.

This article was produced by FedScoop and WorkScoop, and underwritten by Pluralsight.

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Among the findings: 8 in 10 federal CIOs, budget and human capital officials surveyed said they are moderately or highly concerned about being able to replenish their IT staffs with a younger generation of talent who are trained on more modern tools.

Read the full report.

Additionally, 1 in 3 respondents reported more than 10 percent of their full-time IT jobs are currently vacant; and 6 in 10 have at least some full-time positions open. Roughly 2 in 3 said IT vacancy rates are higher, or the same, compared to a year ago.

Roughly half of respondents cited the government’s complicated hiring process and the lack of focus around IT workforce planning as key constraints to improving the federal IT workforce.

The study surveyed 126 prequalified federal decision makers in IT, human resources and budget offices. It explores how the federal government can foster more effective IT workforce planning and development to meet mission goals.

The report, which was underwritten in part by Pluralsight, also highlighted the importance for agency executives to devote more attention to developing and sharing IT workforce development plans. Only half of agency leaders surveyed said their agency had an IT workforce development plant that aligned with their agency’s broader strategic goals.

Respondents identified multiple opportunities to improve IT workforce development, including:

• Support changes to the General Schedule to better align IT salaries with market norms.
• Provide funding to upskill and reskill.
• Revise IT descriptions to align with private sector jobs, based on capabilities versus qualifications.

The survey, conducted online in August amid the pandemic, found that widespread moves to allow federal employees to work remotely may lend longer-term support to looking farther afield for IT talent. Nearly half of respondents indicated that the pandemic presented officials with greater latitude at their agencies to hire remote IT workers to fill some of their skills needs.

“Agencies can improve the hiring and retaining of the workforce by creating more opportunities to work outside of DC — permanent telework, flexible remote work or with satellite offices in other locations,” according to one respondent in the report.

The report concludes that agency leaders should consider focusing more attention on five areas to help ease systemic constraints on hiring and developing needed IT skills in government, including:

• Prioritizing workforce development plans that align with agency strategies.
• Renewing pressure on OPM, Congress and the administration to address constraints in the GS schedule.
• Aligning job descriptions with today’s technology world and streamline the hiring process.
• Putting experience ahead of college degrees to provide wider recruitment opportunities.
• Providing more time and resources to upskill and reskill current employees.

Addressing these workforce challenges could significantly improve agencies ability to hire, retain or reskill to fill the IT skills they need now, and over the next two years. Those skills, identified in a prior study by FedScoop and WorkScoop, released earlier this year, included expertise in cloud-based computing, artificial intelligence, data analysis, enterprise engineering and DevOps.

Download the report, “Federal IT Workforce Planning: Opportunities and Obstacles” for detailed findings and guidance on IT workforce needs in the federal government.

 This article was produced by FedScoop and WorkScoop, and underwritten in part by Pluralsight.

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