FedRAMP has accepted its first rotational employee from another federal agency as the cloud security program works to launch its new FedRAMP Cybersecurity Service despite hiring challenges, FedRAMP Director Pete Waterman said Thursday.
Speaking on July 23 at GovForward’s Carahsoft FedRAMP Summit in Washington, D.C., Waterman said FedRAMP accepted the rotational employee last week.
“We have someone that just started at FedRAMP that works at another agency. They’re coming over to us for four to six months to learn how we’re doing things, so they can go back to their agency and help their agency move faster,” Waterman said. “We’re super excited about that.”
Waterman first announced plans for the FedRAMP Cybersecurity Service in January as part of the program’s broader FedRAMP 20x modernization effort. The FedRAMP Cybersecurity Service aims to hire 15 employees for two-year terms of service.
In an exclusive interview with MeriTalk earlier this year, Waterman shared more details on the program. The vision, he said, is a rotating workforce model that would blend career federal staff with detailees and private-sector experts to keep technical expertise current.
FedRAMP officially opened applications for the initial cohort of four lead cloud security engineers on May 4.
However, on Thursday, Waterman said the FedRAMP Cybersecurity Service has “run into some glitches in the hiring process.”
Waterman has also publicly detailed those hiring challenges. In a LinkedIn post last week, he said FedRAMP officials had expected to evaluate applicants based on their specialized cloud security experience but were instead told that only applicants eligible for veterans’ preference would initially be considered.
Waterman wrote that FedRAMP did extend an offer to one qualifying applicant and is interviewing additional candidates. Still, he stressed that the program ultimately needs the ability to recruit engineers with direct private-sector cloud experience.
“The future for FedRAMP is pretty dark if we can’t hire experts from private sector who have actually worked on cloud services,” Waterman wrote.
Nevertheless, during Thursday’s discussion, Waterman encouraged experienced cloud security professionals to consider government service.
“I can’t offer you more money. I can’t offer you a better job. I can’t offer you better benefits. But I can offer you working at FedRAMP, which is pretty damn cool, assuming that I can figure out how to get that hiring process to kick in properly,” he said.