The IRS will have to rely on contractors for support with the herculean task of recruiting and hiring thousands of employees, but the agency must guard against potential pitfalls, observers say (note that the actual article is behind a ‘pay wall’ but with the publisher’s permission, the full text is reproduced here).

COMMENTARY | If we really want to rid the VA (and the rest of the federal civil service) of poor performers, we need to find a middle ground between making every employee “at will” and defaulting to today’s status quo. 

The White House’s new strategy for expanding the national cyber workforce carves out a key role for agencies by positioning the federal government as a leader in adopting skills-based hiring practices, while officials will also consider the creation of a Federal Cyber Workforce Development Institute.

The leader of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, says her agency is “not tracking a significant impact against the civilian .gov enterprise” because of the MOVEit hack. But there is more CISA can do to help civilian agencies fight cyber attacks, according to Ron Sanders, the President and CEO of Publica Virtu; former Associate Director at OPM; and former Chief Human Capital Officer at the IRS, and the intelligence community. He’s writing about what CISA can do that it’s not in Gov Exec, and he tells you what steps he thinks CISA can – and should – take.

Classic private sector pay-for-performance schemes may not work for federal civil servants, but something called ‘equity theory’ says that neither does the status quo. So what’s the answer? I don’t know, but we can’t stop searching for it!

The Homeland Security Department has the power to do a lot more than just issue words of warning. 

Despite Herculean efforts by its Democratic sponsors, a statutory ban on the Trump administration’s controversial Schedule F failed in Congress, and the chances of it ever passing are now less than zero. So, what’s next?

The Office of Personnel Management, looking to fully close the gender pay gap in the federal workforce, is taking a new approach to try to level the playing field for new federal hires.

There are lots of job ready federal retirees out there prepared and willing to return to work for Uncle Sam, but we need to eliminate the biases and disincentives that make it too hard for them to do so. 

Ron Sanders, the former staff director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, said companies in the medical industry are soft targets for cyber criminals. “If you’re a small company or a health care company with lots of decentralized franchises or outlets, you’ve got a huge attack surface, and it’s pretty easy for cyber criminals to get in,” Sanders said.