The White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) is launching a 30-day cybersecurity sprint tomorrow – Sept. 4 – in partnership with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
National Cyber Director Harry Coker shared that news today at the 15th Annual Billington CyberSecurity Summit in D.C., adding that the sprint aims to help address the cyber workforce shortage.
Coker explained that the cyber workforce shortage is not due to a lack of talent in the United States, so the Federal government is focusing its efforts on hiring and recruiting initiatives.
“The task at hand is to find that talent, hire the talent, motivate that talent, inspire, develop, and retain that talent. That’s what we have to do,” Coker said during a fireside chat on Sept. 3. “We’re just delighted that our office, the Executive Office of the President, partnered recently on a 120-day sprint on cybersecurity [with the] Department of Labor, Department of Commerce, DHS, and others to go across the country to focus on cybersecurity positions.”
“As a matter of fact, tomorrow, in partnership with the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, we will have a ‘Service for America’ 30-day sprint,” Coker said. “It will focus not only on cybersecurity positions, but AI and other high-impact jobs.”
“These are not only good paying jobs, they are meaningful jobs. These jobs work with our economic prosperity, our technological innovation, and our national security,” he added. “So, we’re going to launch that tomorrow, and we hope to make progress.”
Last week, Seeyew Mo – the assistant national cyber director for workforce, training, and education – teased the coming sprint. Mo said the sprint will focus on filling about 3,000 open jobs in the 2210 series – or the IT management series.
Mo explained that ONCD is partnering with OPM to get an inventory of cybersecurity jobs in the Federal government as part of the implementation of the National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy. During this effort, the two agencies discovered nearly 3,000 open technology jobs.
“One of the areas that we’re focusing on is we’ll be launching an engagement and hiring and recruiting sprint in the fall to make sure we can start filling some of these positions,” Mo said on Aug. 27.
“We’re going to have an engagement campaign to make sure that we are also engaging with private sector employers to encourage them to hire interns, registered apprentices, as well as entry-level folks, so that we can just get more people into the national cyber workforce in general,” Mo said of the sprint.
