Federal Leaders Revamp Tech Workforce, Policy

Federal agencies are investing in training, fostering sustainable processes and rethinking policies, to empower the workforce and unlock the full potential of emerging technology. Tech leads said these steps are essential to navigating challenges in tech adoption and ensuring mission success, during ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC last month in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine highlighted the different ways agencies can tackle tech use and adoption challenges by focusing on workforce development, creating forward-thinking policy and investing in modernization.

Chief of the Office of the National Manager for the National Security Agency Tanya Simms added that the increased access to emerging technology, especially with the introduction of generative AI, has made workforce training even more critical.

“You now have users driving the features and the usability of AI-related products,” said Simms. “From our perspective, that means we want to make sure that we’re not talking about AI policy after there has been a huge AI-related incident.”

Investing in people, process first

The federal workforce is the starting point for successful tech adoption. Agencies need to invest in “wetware,” or the humans behind the technology, in addition to investing in hardware and software, said Greg Touhill, CERT division director at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute.

“We need to invest more into our workforce to apply the right type of AI to the right mission, to make sure that we securely and effectively serve the people of the United States and enhance national security and prosperity,” said Touhill.

Rob King, Chief Data Office at the Department of Energy, emphasized that agencies need to be data-centric, creating data career paths to retain top talent.

“We don’t have a job series for data. We have the 1560 data science … they spend 70 to 80% of their time, finding the data, wrangling the data, understanding the semantic application,” said King. “We have to figure out how to professionalize the data management function so that people can come in and understand that there’s a whole career path.”

Effective tech integration also relies on process that supports the people. Erika Dennie, General Services Administration’s (GSA) associate CIO for digital infrastructure technologies, told GovCIO Media & Research during an interview that creating a sustainable process means adding value with technology.

“If what we’re putting in place is not providing value to the people or not enhancing their ability to do their job, then we have a there’s a problem within that process,” Dennie added. “There’s a reason why it’s a circle, you constantly have to look at all of that.”

Creating policy to drive change

As federal agencies continue to modernize to meet the evolving needs of emerging technology, leaders are investing in training and revising policy to boost transparency and accessibility.

The Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) is focusing on creating a healthier employee relationship with data governance. OPM’s CDO, Chief AI Officer and Director of Enterprise Data and AI Taka Ariga joked that despite the many policies OPM releases, a data governance policy is a necessity, given the sensitivities around federal data.

Ariga said data governance should come through as a way of storytelling, so it feels less “you shall do this,” said Ariga. Instead, “storytelling [allows an understanding] so people actually want to participate,” he added.

Charolette Phelan, assistant commissioner for the Office of Strategy and Innovation at GSA, told GovCIO Media & Research that demystifying data enables organizations to make the right choices based on their needs. Most importantly, they can do it quickly.

“One of the foundational [benefits] of a good data posture within an agency or business is how quickly I can make an informed decision,” Phelan added. “It’s a nuanced and very multifaceted thing, all wrapped up in the little word: ‘data.'”

If leaders align workforces, policies and data effectively, agencies can improve mission outcomes and drive operational success.

For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and GSA are working together to centralize procurement data. Through the Procurement Co-Pilot, released in May, agencies can find hi-definition acquisitions to improve modernization. Co-Pilot allows agencies to search for vendors, analyze pricing and improve market research, according to Kristen Wilson, strategic acquisition data management lead at OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

“It really demonstrates the power of bringing together all this disparate data for the first time,” said Wilson. “We are seeing tremendous, great feedback from the field.”