Hiring/Retention

Attracting in-demand cybersecurity talent to government service could be as simple as retraining current federal employees for the jobs of the future.

Years after the buyout surge of the 1990s some still-working feds are hanging on until the next round of buyouts. But that could take a while.

The Trump administration is also planning to study the full scope of federal employees’ pay, benefits other opportunities for recognition, in effort to prove to Congress that the workforce would benefit from more flexible performance-based awards over across-the-board pay raises.

For a couple of decades, the Government Accountability Office has published its biennial list of high-risk federal programs. To go deeper, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin this week.

The Trump administration’s 2020 budget proposal includes significant changes in federal employee retirement programs, most of which are cuts but with one exception.

The federal employment question forms a knot that remains difficult to untie.

Retirement expert John Grobe, himself a former fed, said the length and uncertainty of the recent shutdown has a lot more people thinking about retirement, or just leaving government for greener pastures.

In effort to build a better talent pipeline and foster more collaborative, working relationships between government and universities, the Volcker Alliance has announced the creation of two “government-to-university” councils in Kansas City, Missouri, and Austin, Texas.

Who would apply for a job at a place where you might be forced to work without pay for a month, or that is threatened with bankruptcy every year? American University’s Bob Tobias says that is how the federal government looks right now.

The White House plans on spending 5 percent more to secure federal networks and data in 2020, with more than half of the funding going toward Defense Department cybersecurity. Get this story and others in today’s Federal Newscast.

Rebecca Gambler, director of Homeland Security and Justice issues at the Government Accountability Office, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for some of the numbers.

U.S. Cyber Command said the new Cyber Excepted Service has cut its time-to-hire by 60 percent. But so far, DoD has only used the new personnel system for a few hundred positions.

The detailed version of the President’s 2020 budget request includes a series of familiar pay and retirement cuts and a wide variety of proposals designed to change the way agencies compensate, hire, manage and reward both current and future federal employees.

Faced with longstanding hiring and recruiting challenges,  Customs and Border Protection made its first hire earlier this month using its data analytics-driven “fast track” personnel system.