After agencies shed more than 200,000 federal employees this year — and with more staffing reductions possibly on the way — the Office of Personnel Management is now looking to pivot toward attracting more technological expertise into the federal workforce.

OPM Director Scott Kupor, during an interview at the National Academy of Public Administration’s national conference on Monday, hinted at some upcoming tech hiring initiatives that OPM is planning to launch “very shortly.”

Though Kupor did not provide a specific timeline for the launch, nor many details of what the tech hiring initiatives would entail, he emphasized a broad goal of pushing agencies toward the recruitment of tech skills — particularly in artificial intelligence.

“There’s no question the world is going to get supercharged with the introduction of AI, and I think the thing that government has to do is not be the last dinosaur,” Kupor said during NAPA’s event. “If we do that, there’s no amount of organizational structure or marketing or anything else that’s going to save us — we have to be willing to embrace these things.”

In addition to tech hiring initiatives in the works, Kupor also discussed the need for the current federal workforce to adopt AI and other technologies into workflows. That should be through a more incremental approach, he explained — for example, by incorporating technology to see if it can make employees’ work “5% better or 10% better,” rather than having agencies launch a full-fledged “2040 AI plan.”

“We know that risk-taking generally has not been a strong suit of government, quite frankly,” Kupor said. “We’ve got to push people to go a little bit out on the risk curve and be willing to adopt new technologies.”

Emphasizing early-career recruitment

At the same time that OPM is looking to onboard more tech expertise in government, Kupor said he also wants to double down on the recruitment of early-career federal employees.

Currently, many long-time federal employees have either left, or are on track to leaving, the civil service. That’s partially a result of the Trump administration’s workforce overhauls this year, coupled with an aging federal workforce, many of whom are retirement-eligible. Less than 10% of the federal workforce is under the age of 30.

“We have to figure out a way to actually get early-career people to think about government as an important part of their development process,” Kupor said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of activity, certainly from OPM, to try and progress that.”

Kupor also discouraged the idea that individuals should spend their entire careers in just one sector. Instead, he said he wants to allow flexibility for employees to join or leave the civil service at various points in their careers.

“I think one of the things we’ve done a really poor job on is embracing people having evolving career opportunities that encompass both private sector and public sector,” Kupor said.

OPM has forecasted that by the end of the calendar year, the government will shrink from 2.4 million employees down to 2.1 million employees, with a total loss of about 300,000 feds. The Partnership for Public Service estimates that about 211,000 employees have so far vacated their jobs, either voluntarily or by force, since President Donald Trump took office in January.

When asked how he would encourage early-career talent to join the government moving forward, Kupor pointed to what he sees as future possibilities for recruitment, following Trump’s latest executive order on federal hiring. The Oct. 15 order allowed for hiring to continue more openly in areas like immigration enforcement, national security and public safety, but maintained relatively strict limits for the rest of government.

Most areas of federal hiring will see a heavier hand from political appointees and senior agency officials, with a new hiring approval process agencies are required to implement. Agencies will also have to get sign-off from OPM and the Office of Management and Budget before moving forward with long-term staffing strategies.

Skills focus for the federal workforce

Kupor also noted that OPM wants to focus on attracting talent based on skillsets, rather than job titles. It’s an effort that would build on agencies’ already ongoing move toward more skills-based hiring.

During the NAPA event Monday, Kupor noted that he has seen a pattern of consistent skills agencies are seeking, across a range of positions and job titles.

“We’ve got to streamline that process, where we have jobs that are actually quantifiable and that exist across government,” Kupor said. “Centralized recruiting [and] centralized creation of certificates will … dramatically change the efficiency of the process, but also make it a much better experience for those who are involved.”

Many of OPM’s current goals for streamlining federal recruitment are not necessarily new for agencies. During the Biden administration, for example, OPM and OMB released a hiring experience memo that focused on improving the recruitment process for three key groups: applicants, federal hiring managers and HR specialists. The 2024 plan encouraged strategies that are similar to what the current administration is considering, such as using shared certificates, incorporating skills-based assessments and speeding up time-to-hire.

Moving forward, Kupor said he wants to centralize the federal hiring process when it comes to roles that are common across multiple agencies.

“If we can do that, we’ll have a much more systematized way of hiring people in all facets of government,” Kupor said. “And do it in a way that’s consistent, that’s merit-based and … more efficient.”

The post OPM’s Kupor wants more tech expertise in the federal workforce first appeared on Federal News Network.