White House’s Plan for Hiring Reform Signals Tech, AI Needs

The White House’s call to reform the federal workforce hiring process calls on the Office of Personnel Management to integrate more technology into recruitment and continue increasing the talent pool based on people’s skills.

The executive order signed on President Donald Trump’s first day in office calls on OPM along with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to develop a “Federal Hiring Plan” for agencies to develop within 120 days of the order — or May 19.

The move is a continuation of Trump’s initial executive order he signed about skilled-based hiring during his first term and echoes similar efforts under the Biden administration, noted Jennifer Mattingley, vice president for government affairs at Partnership for Public Service, in an interview with GovCIO Media & Research.

“This executive order is kind of this continuation of five-plus years of work trying to get agencies to really think about changing how they identify skills, assess for those skills and bring on qualified talent,” said Mattingley.

The plan also instructs agencies to incorporate modernized technology to aid in the hiring process. It also encourages agencies to use data analytics to recognize hiring gaps and trends and implement digital platforms to enhance engagement with candidates.

Mattingley expects agencies to focus on creating assessments — so developing platforms to house the assessments and share them. She said organizations might also prioritize tech like artificial intelligence to help boost the digital experience and develop more user-friendly features on sites like USAJobs.

“I know private-sector companies have been looking at how can AI help in sort of the initial stage of resume review, so I do suspect we’ll see both an IT platform conversation and an AI conversation,” said Mattingley. “I think for HR, even for private-sector companies, there’s still some how do you balance the efficiency and the scale that AI brings with things like, you’re looking at people’s resumes, people’s work, so making sure there isn’t sort of inherent bias in how it’s looking at different resumes and different experience.”

The order also outlines accountability and reporting requirements. OPM Director Scott Kupor would establish clear performance metrics to evaluate the success of these reforms. OPM has long pushed for agencies to think about time to hire, Mattingley said. One of the major metrics has been cutting that time down to 80 days to hire.

“This is where OPM will have to think about — use assessments and subject matter experts, particularly if they’re moving through multiple assessment processes, to get at the most qualified talent that could take longer and yet yield better outcomes,” said Mattingley. “What they’re going to have to look at is, are we just going for a time-to-hire metric? Are we looking at other metrics to drive outcomes that we want, of getting the best talent in place?”

The order also calls on OPM to implement practices that will monitor progress and ensure that the improvements are meeting the needs for both the candidates and the agencies.

“This goes back to the whole customer experience piece, and I would love to see a greater emphasis on user feedback and making sure that we really understand what the applicant experiences, where the pain points are and then an intentional effort to address those pain points,” said Mattingley.

Former DOD CIO John Sherman, now dean of Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, also shared his perspective on OPM’s guidance regarding redesignating senior executive service CIO positions.

Sherman was a political appointee twice in two different administrations. He said he sees the rationale at the departmental level and even down to some agencies.

“I think it’s great for that person to have a higher up who’s an appointee like the DOD CIO or Intelligence Community (IC) CIO, but going too far down into the into the plumbing, as it were, I think that’s where you could run into some challenges,” Sherman said during a recent GovCIO Media & Research GovCast interview. “Now, one could argue, you put a career deputy with that person and a staff around them, they could be successful, and I don’t deny that, but I think their learning curve is going to be pretty steep. So respectfully to the new administration, I would just ask, you need a blend, and going too far down, I think, has got some hazards.”