The White House is working closely with Congress to develop legislation that would establish a Cyber Workforce Development Institute, as directed by the Biden administration’s National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy.
Seeyew Mo, the White House’s assistant national cyber director for workforce, education, and awareness, said last week that the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) is working through the process of creating legislation for the new institute. In the meantime, Mo said ONCD is providing weekly training to agency HR professionals to help them in their efforts to recruit technology talent from the private sector.
“When we were developing the strategy, we thought that the Federal Cyber Workforce Development Institute [is] a good approach … that we can use to respond to the demand for a highly skilled cyber workforce in the Federal government,” Mo said during a Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) event on Nov. 6. “In the meantime, [ONCD] … is looking for ways to actually fill the gaps right now.”
“So recently, almost every week now, we have about an hour of training on HR professionals to prep somebody’s HR professional to support the tech to gov initiative,” Mo said. He explained that ONCD is essentially supporting the workforce development institute without the program structure – because that will require legislation.
“We are supporting a lot of the ideas behind it,” Mo explained. “How do we make sure that HR professionals know to hire cyber folks … and we’re providing training through OPM’s [Office of Personnel Management] coordination to support that as a trial run.”
The Biden-Harris administration unveiled its long-awaited National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy on July 31. “Unleashing America’s Cyber Talent” is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive approach aimed at addressing both immediate and long-term cyber workforce needs.
The strategy includes four pillars around cyber education and workforce, with the final pillar focusing on strengthening the Federal cyber workforce.
Specifically, the strategy calls on ONCD to “explore the creation of a Federal Cyber Workforce Development Institute, which would provide standardized, role-specific skilling, reskilling, and upskilling opportunities.”
“By providing curriculum guidance and training for entry-level positions, the Institute could create valuable pathways into federal service and rapidly strengthen the cyber talent pipeline,” the strategy reads. “The Institute would also facilitate career progression for current cyber practitioners by providing continuing education and professional development opportunities.”
The strategy also calls on OPM to “develop a training program for HR specialists who will be able to apply best practices to the recruitment and hiring of federal cyber workers. This cadre would also be equipped with the knowledge and tools for cyber personnel management, as tailored to the needs of each department or agency.”
The strategy notes that the Federal Cyber Workforce Development Institute would serve as the hub to train HR specialists on the unique dimensions, requirements, and talent acquisition challenges associated with the cyber workforce.
The Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) originally posed the idea of a Federal cyber development institute to help diversify the Federal workforce, Mark Montgomery, the executive director of CSC, said during the FDD event.
“We were thinking about a mid-career development institute. In other words, how do we help people who were hired on as GS [General Schedule] 6s or 7s with a certain certification and now they want to compete for a GS 10 or 11 or mid-career job,” Montgomery said.
“Our idea was a two-to-three-month Federal onboarding in cyber,” he explained. “You’d have a guaranteed job at the back end, but you’d get the certification, some experience, get your placement, and then later in career, four or five years later, you could come back for mid-career development, that next level certification.”
Montgomery also expanded on the idea of training Federal HR employees to better understand cybersecurity and noted that members of Congress – including Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. – already have legislation in the works.
“The idea [is] training talent management people, just a one-week class within this institute,” he continued, adding, “If there’s an institute, I think OPM is the natural home for it. There’s legislation out there now for OPM to do this. It’s moving – it’s not on the floor yet of the House or Senate – in a very bipartisan way.”
“Having OPM lead this kind of effort to better recruit, size, develop, and then retain the Federal cybersecurity workforce, I think this is an idea that has value, but OPM is going to have to be the one that turns an idea into a process that works,” he said.
