TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

Millenial social networking Web site Brazen Careerist last week rolled out a new tool that allows users to create social résumés. The tool enables users to showcase ideas, blog posts and other projects, all in addition to traditional résumé information, like work history and education.

Last week, I wrote about how current and future young workers will demand state-of-the-art technology and equipment in the workplace. Andrew Krzmarzick, director of community engagement for GovLoop, argued that federal agencies must begin using social networking tools to engage potential young workers before and during their federal employment. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as the new open government initiative, provide powerful tools to agencies to discover who is active in agency dialogues and providing thoughtful responses and ideas, he said.

Could social résumés be the way of the future for federal agency recruiting and hiring efforts? The federal government only recently began asking applicants for just a traditional résumé, rather than lengthy essay questions, when submitting an application for a federal job. The government also recently rolled out a new version of job search Web site USAJobs.gov, which now allows users to share information on social networking Web sites.

Social résumés could prove to be a powerful tool for agencies to attract a younger cadre of workers, while also learning some information about them, such as writing skills and knowledge of the agency, beyond what may be included in a traditional résumé. But as Krzmarzick said Friday, if agencies are going to recruit and hire young people using social networking tools, they must allow them to use such tools in the workplace.

What are your thoughts? Can the government keep up with the new ways of attracting and hiring the next generation of workers, many of whom will demand that technology play a role in their work?

On Wednesday, I wrote about a new report by Accenture that found that 97 percent of Millennials (ages 14 to 27) in the United States at least partly agree that state-of-the-art technology and equipment will be essential when choosing an employer. Research by Deloitte released in January also found that 88 percent of teens use social networks every day, with more than half saying they would consider their ability to access them at work when weighing a job offer from a potential employer.

While the studies did not target federal workers, it's worth noting that the research has significant implications for government agencies, particularly as they seek to recruit and retain Millennials to help fill the gaps left by large numbers of retiring Baby Boomers. My colleague Allan Holmes sounded the same alarm this week.

Andrew Krzmarzick, director of community engagement for GovLoop and writer of the Generation Shift blog, said Friday that the results of the survey should be a wake-up call for federal agencies to begin paying attention to the ways Millennials have grown accustomed to working and communicating.

"Let's say the Baby Boomers showed up to work and found there were no land-line phones," Krzmarzick said. "That's the kind of shock that the Millennial generation is experiencing when they get into an office and are not issued a workstation or a laptop, find that there's no high-speed Internet, or realize that social media is blocked."

He recommended that agencies begin using social networking tools to engage potential young workers before and during their federal employment. For example, human resources professionals and agency recruiters should be engaging with potential recruits through social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and through the new open government initiative, in part to discover who is active in agency dialogues and is providing thoughtful responses to agency questions, he said.

"Agencies should take note of these folks and reach out and encourage them to consider government employment," he said. "You're seeing performance in advance. But if you're going to recruit them using those tools, you have to allow use of them when they get there."

Meanwhile, the Accenture survey also found that communication is shifting away from e-mail towards instant alternatives, particularly for younger Millennials. Older Millennials (age 23-27), for example, still spend an average of 6.8 hours per week writing or receiving work-related e-mails, while younger Millennials already in the workforce spend just 4.2 hours per week on e-mail and more time on text messaging (3 hours) or instant messaging (3.2 hours), the survey found.

Krzmarzick noted that the government is not yet adapting to this shift in communication. For example, he said, agencies recruiting on college campuses are probably collecting e-mail information but not mobile phone numbers from potential recruits. Agencies could ask for permission to send recruits text messages when a job opportunity comes available, Krzmarzick said.

What are your thoughts on the survey's implications for government, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining the workforce of the future? Can the federal government adapt quickly enough to the changes young people demand?

The White House on Tuesday unveiled the unclassified version of its Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, the government's plan to secure public and private sector computer networks. Availability of the plan, which was announced by White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, consists of 12 major priorities, including building a top-notch cybersecurity workforce.

The initiative outlines the importance of creating a national cybersecurity education strategy, similar to an effort to upgrade math and science education in the 1950s, to meet the daunting challenge of creating a pipeline a technologically-skilled and cyber-savvy workers for the future. Existing cybersecurity training and personnel develop programs are limited in focus and lack unity of effort, the CNCI states.

"While billions of dollars are being spent on new technologies to secure the U.S. government in cyberspace, it is the people with the right knowledge, skills and abilities to implement those technologies who will determine success," the initiative states. "However there are not enough cybersecurity experts within the federal government or private sector to implement the CNCI, nor is there an adequately established federal cybersecurity career field."

The initiative also includes plans to develop and implement a governmentwide cyber counterintelligence plan, largely by expanding counterintelligence education and awareness and workforce development programs, increasing employee awareness of the cyber counterintelligence threat and increasing counterintelligence collaboration across government.

Schmidt noted at the conference that the government has been making great progress towards creating an international awareness campaign to promote cybersecurity. The White House has pulled together an interagency working group to look at this area, he said. The working group has included efforts by the Office of Personnel Management and the Defense Department to examine how to create a top-notch cybersecurity workforce, and efforts by the Homeland Security Department to create a national workforce training strategy and a national cybersecurity awareness campaign, Schmidt said.

"We're not going to wind up beating our adversaries because they're weak ... we'll beat them because we will become stronger," Schmidt said. "We'll develop stronger technology, train and equip a better cadre of security professionals that understand this issue to become our critical assets and become more resilient."

The Office of Personnel Management is building a new Web-based recruiting resource to assist managers, employees and human resources professionals in the planning and implementation of recruiting strategies and promote interagency sharing and learning through online forums.

The new tool, which will launch this summer, does not yet have a name, and OPM has reached out to social networking site GovLoop for help. GovLoop has created an interactive forum where members can contribute and vote on names and ideas for the recruiting initiative. The winner will receive bragging rights and some OPM and GovLoop swag.

Have an idea? Click here to participate in the forum.

Several major IT projects at the Veterans Affairs Department are being hampered by a shortage of experienced federal IT project managers, Federal Computer Week reports. VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker said on Tuesday that managing projects such as telehealth and moving to paperless benefit systems at VA requires a specific set of IT skills that are in short supply across the federal government. "We cannot turn it over to non-government workers," Baker added.

The Office of Personnel Management has launched an effort to enhance the oversight of recruitment, relocation and retention (3R) bonuses, largely due to concerns about the continued growth of such payments given recent labor market conditions.

In a Feb. 3 letter posted online on Wednesday, OPM Director John Berry said he was concerned about the growth of the bonuses, noting that 47 agencies paid out more than $284 million in 3R payments in 2008. Between 2007 and 2008, he added, the total number of incentives paid increased by more than 21 percent, and the total incentive cost increased by more than 37 percent.

With the nation's sluggish job market and the unemployment rate around 10 percent, Berry noted that the government may be overpaying to recruit and retain in-demand skills.

Berry also noted concern that agencies do not actively oversee or manage the 3Rs program, and instead delegate the administration of their 3Rs programs to subordinate organizations or to field offices. Many agencies simply rely on OPM's annual 3Rs report to Congress to understand the nature of the incentive payments, but this data reflects practices in the previous calendar year, Berry said.

Still, the 3Rs program has provided agencies with valuable compensation tools for attracting and retaining critical skills, Berry said. The personnel chief vowed to review the 3Rs data for agencies that have used the greatest number of incentives and develop additional guidance and tools to help agencies write stronger justifications for 3Rs authorizations and improve their plans for using them. "Once the 3Rs data is validated, OPM and agencies will be better able to track 3Rs trends on an ongoing basis, and, if necessary, investigate any 3Rs data anomaly and take corrective actions immediately," Berry wrote.

I've written some on how the private sector IT job market has begun to show some signs of recovery in 2010. IT skills will undoubtedly continue to be critical, in-demand skills for the federal government, and incentive payments will likely play a role in recruiting and retaining top-notch IT talent. Is the government overpaying for IT skills? How critical will incentive payments prove to be in luring IT experts to the federal sector?

A disconnect exists between information technology managers and the human resources professionals who assist them when it comes to increasing IT workers' motivation, according to the February issue of the Dice Report.

In a recent survey, Dice asked IT managers and HR professionals to identify the most significant impediment to increasing their tech team's motivation. IT managers identified pay as the biggest impediment, while HR managers said that no impediment exists, contending that IT workers were already motivated.

"As the economy begins to improve, companies are dusting off technology projects they'd put on hold when the recession began," Dice noted, adding that the number of technology jobs listed on Dice.com has increased 20 percent from the low in the middle of 2009. "That, in turn, is increasing demand for technology professionals at the top of their game."

IT leaders and HR professionals do agree on one issue, however: more interesting and challenging assignments will have the biggest impact on motivating the tech team this year. "While technology professionals are always looking for the next challenge, it may take more than that to keep your team in tact in 2010," the report states.

What are the most significant impediments to enhancing the motivation of the IT staff at your federal agency? What would have the most significant impact on recruiting, retaining and motivating the tech team at your agency this year?

The House on Thursday passed a bill that would require the White House to submit a report to Congress on the current and future needs of the federal cybersecurity workforce.

The bill calls on the White House to provide a report that would provide an analysis of the availability of cybersecurity talent, a comparison of the skills and expertise sought by the government and private sector, and an analysis of the capacity of colleges and universities to provide cybersecurity education based on the needs of the federal government and private sector. The White House also would have to report on the barriers to recruiting and hiring cybersecurity talent, and make recommendations for federal policies to ensure a well-trained cyber workforce.

The bill also calls for the report to examine the effectiveness of federal scholarship and internship programs, particularly the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education, the Centers of Academic Excellence in Research and the Federal Cyber Scholarship for Service programs.

Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-N.Y., a co-sponsor of the bill, said on the House floor Wednesday that the government will need to recruit and hire between 500 and 1,000 more cybersecurity workers each year in order to address potential threats. "Through increased workforce development and continued strengthening of our public-private partnerships, we can and will ensure that the IT systems, on which so much of our way of life depends, are safe from cyberattack," he said.

The bill also would authorize $94 million in scholarship for students who pursue cybersecurity studies in exchange for a service commitment in the public sector upon graduation. The House passed an amendment by Rep. Carol Shea Porter, D-N.H., that would lengthen the amount of time students would be required to work for the federal government in exchange for the scholarships. Currently, scholarship recipients are required to serve a federal agency for a period equivalent to the length of their scholarship, or one year, whichever is longer. The amendment would require one additional year of public service for undergraduate students, two additional years for masters degree students and three additional years for doctoral candidates.

The House also passed two other amendments relating to cybersecurity scholarships. One amendment would add veteran status as an additional item for consideration when selecting individuals for the Federal Cyber Scholarship for Service. The other amendment would allow scholarship recipients to perform internships with businesses before completing their degrees.

The legislation also would provide the National Science Foundation with $120 million to construct new cybersecurity research facilities and offer new training programs in colleges and universities.

The fiscal 2011 budget proposal unveiled by the White House on Monday identifies several high-priority goals for the Office of Personnel Management over the next two years.

Those goals include recruiting and hiring a top-notch federal workforce, implementing a human resources dashboard to gauge employee satisfaction, expanding telework programs, and implementing new wellness programs, all of which play a huge role in ensuring the government can attract and retain a highly skilled federal IT workforce, particularly given the large number of projected retirements in the coming years.

On hiring reform, the budget laid out plans to ensure that at least 80 percent of federal agencies meet agreed upon targeted improvements to improve hiring managers' satisfaction with applicant quality, improve applicant satisfaction and reduce the time it takes to hire. The hiring plan also aims to increase outreach to veterans and persons with disabilities, improve the diversity of the federal workforce, and improve the timeliness and quality of personnel background investigations.

The White House also laid out plans to construct a human resources dashboard to help the government focus on employee and manager satisfaction with the hiring process and other key metrics of personnel management. Similar to the IT Dashboard implemented by the Office of Management and Budget in June 2009, the HR dashboard will provide senior leaders and managers with a mechanism to have better information on the current status of hiring and other key people issues so agencies can focus on areas that need improvement, the budget states.

The budget also prioritized increasing by 50 percent the number of eligible federal employees who telework by 2011, and proposes funding for worksite wellness demonstration projects that apply best practices from the private sector to the federal workforce.

In his State of the Union address on Wednesday evening, President Obama proposed extending a student loan forgiveness program to students who commit 10 years to public service careers. Obama's proposal appears to be an extension of the 2007 College Cost Reduction Act, which took effect in July 2009 and allows students to tailor payments made on federal loans to their incomes. Federal loans they have not paid off after 10 years of public service are forgiven in their entirety. The law does not apply to private loans, however, and public servants must make at least 120 monthly payments on the loan while in a qualifying job for their remaining debt to be erased.

It's unclear how Obama's proposal for public service loan forgiveness would differ from the recent change in the law, but it seems worth a mention, particularly when it comes to attracting current and future college graduates who previously may not have considered a career in public service.

The president also called for improvements in math and science education and for strengthening the role of community colleges in education. Community colleges are increasingly playing a role in grooming workers for health IT and cybersecurity positions in the federal government, so boosting their role and reach seems critical to ensuring the federal government has a top-notch IT workforce in the future.