FedRAMP Director Pete Waterman will return to work on Aug. 27 after the General Services Administration (GSA) placed him on administrative leave in July, following his comments on social media that criticized veterans’ preference in federal hiring.
Waterman announced his return date in an Aug. 26 LinkedIn post, which also noted that today marks his two-year anniversary of joining FedRAMP. GSA did not immediately provide a comment to MeriTalk on Waterman’s return.
“I’m incredibly excited to return to duty tomorrow after a month on leave. There’s still so much work to do,” Waterman wrote on his personal LinkedIn account.
GSA placed Waterman on leave following his comments in a July 9 LinkedIn post that has since been deleted.
“Veterans preference is brutally unfair when taken to the extreme of blocking any consideration of non-veterans, but we’re seeing that everywhere these days,” Waterman wrote in the post. “Even Tech Force wouldn’t let us look at normal folks until we made offers to all the veterans first.”
In the July 9 post, Waterman also apologized to applicants for the newly launched FedRAMP Cybersecurity Service, writing, “We were told we’d have access to the highest qualified candidates based on the specialized experience and job analysis worksheets we created but our HR decided instead to only review veteran applicants.”
“The future for FedRAMP is pretty dark if we can’t hire experts from private sector who have actually worked on cloud services,” he added.
Veterans’ preference recognizes the economic loss suffered by citizens who have served their country, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s website. Under federal law, veterans are entitled to preference over others in hiring for certain agency positions.
In a statement to MeriTalk earlier this month, GSA Administrator Edward Forst said veterans “are a critical backbone of our agency.” He noted that veterans represent approximately 30% of GSA’s workforce.
“We categorically and completely disagree with a senior employee’s recent remarks denigrating veterans preferences in hiring,” Forst said at the time. “He has been placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, until further notice.”