OMB Turns To The People-Solution To Fix Troubled IT Programs

The Obama administration has spent a lot of the last five years talking about and experiencing some of the long-standing problems with federal technology. But the one area it hasn't focused a lot of attention on is the people doing the work.  That is all changing under President Barack Obama's second term management agenda.

Steve VanRoekel, the federal chief information officer, detailed two specific initiatives under the agenda's smarter IT delivery area to address the technical expertise of federal employees. One is around flexible hiring, and a second is trying another employee exchange program.

"Flexible hiring is really looking at, can we build more flexibility into the way we hire technologists and bring them in? It's something we have today with lawyers. We have with cybersecurity experts and procurement officials. We are looking at, can we bridge that into the tech space?" VanRoekel said Friday during the President's Management Advisory Board meeting in Washington. "We are running pilots today in a few targeted agencies to prove out the value of this right now."...