The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has announced the launch of advertisements for its government-wide Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program, meaning Federal cybersecurity employees can now apply to rotational assignments at agencies outside of their own.
Cyber employees have the opportunity to browse through the rotations – or details – offered across government on OPM’s Open Opportunities platform. The rotations last from six months to one year.
“This is really a win-win for the agency and for the employee,” Jason Barke, the deputy associate director of strategic workforce planning at OPM, told MeriTalk. “It’s really meant to help develop skills of current cyber employees. It’s meant to help agencies. It’s kind of like a two-pronged approach where we have cyber employees who will be serving in rotations, or details, from one agency to another.”
“It helps them gain on the job experience, learn new skills in IT, develop current skills in IT or cybersecurity, or cyber-related functions,” he explained. “It helps another agency that may be looking to bring in new skills, to learn new skills, or just to improve their workload as well.”
Thus far, Barke said there are 14 agencies participating in the program that have committed over 70 cyber rotation opportunities for Federal employees.
Once agencies review applications, he expects a lot of the rotations will begin in January but noted that it’s up to the agency and the employee to work out official start times.
Barke said these are non-reimbursable rotations, meaning participating employees will retain their same salary and stay on their home agency’s payroll.
The program was enacted under the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act of 2021, which President Biden signed into law in June 2022.
OPM said it has been working with the Office of the National Cyber Director to ensure the National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy – which the Biden administration released in July – is built into this program.
“We also look at this as kind of a broader human capital goal to help develop the cyber workforce,” Barke said. “It’s something we’ve been working on for a long time, trying to identify where critical needs are, where work roles are that we need help and support in. And so, we see this program as a great opportunity to do that and to kind of strengthen the overall cyber workforce skills.”
Once the rotations begin, Barke said that agencies and OPM will look to evaluate the rotations and look at “where we may see greater needs within the cyber workforce.”
In other words, he said agencies can add more rotations as they see fit and bring in new cybersecurity or IT work roles.
“Once this kicks off and starts going, we’re going to see benefits on both sides and more and more rotations will become available,” Barke said. “We really want to encourage agencies to let their employees go on these rotations.”
“It’s really important to be able to have these developmental kind of opportunities and these kinds of programs to help people develop and learn new skills. And so, we want agencies to see the benefit of letting somebody go and then coming back to bring those skills,” he added. “We have an opportunity to really make this successful.”
